Peace prize

A year on, the postwar settlement takes shape

This week, we’ve been drowning in long reads to mark the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – my favourite being this first draft of history by Max Seddon, Christopher Miller, and Felicia Schwartz for the Financial Times.

I tried my best but, given this newsletter’s name, another 24/2 piece was unavoidable. This one will focus on the future: how and why will the war end and what this will mean for Europe’s political, economic and security architecture¹?

Your standstill or mine?

From mid-January, when Sergei Surovikin was removed as commander of Russia’s invasion force and replaced by the chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov, the war entered a new phase.

During his short tenure, Surovikin ordered a successful tactical retreat from Kherson, stabilised Russian lines in the Donbas, launched a nationwide missile campaign to test Ukraine’s air defence systems to the limit, and readied his forces for a spring offensive. President Vladimir Putin rewarded his modest success with a demotion and a transfer of command to Gerasimov, who stepped up the fighting across a broad front but with concentrations around Vuhledar, Marinka, Avdiivka, Bakhmut, Bilohorivka, and Kreminna.

Some of us were fooled into thinking this was a softening-up exercise for Russia’s long-promised spring offensive. It wasn’t. As Michael Kofman, the Ukraine-born director of the Russia Studies Program at CNA, told the Geopolitics Decanted podcast last week: "The spring offensive began in the winter. It isn't looming. This is it”.

“Action this day” may have pleased his warlord but, despite intensified pressure on Ukrainian forces in Kreminna and Bakhmut especially, the Gerasimov offensive is not going well. According to Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s chief of defence intelligence, Gerasimov promised to reach the administrative borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions by 31 March. This won’t happen. In fact, without another politically dangerous mobilisation and a surge in equipment supplies, the Russians will be hard-pressed to advance beyond their existing lines this year. This premature spring offensive is exhausting their forces and munitions. If the Ukrainians can absorb the attacks while accumulating NATO equipment in readiness for a spring/summer counter-offensive to the south, Gerasimov has actually done them a solid.

This counter-offensive is looking increasingly like the turning point in this war. Despite their “even to the end” rhetoric, Ukraine’s NATO allies are now clearly preparing the ground for a settlement that leaves Kyiv short of its war aims but negotiating from a position of strength.

Interviewed last week, French president Emmanuel Macron said: “What we need now is for Ukraine to launch a military offensive which pushes back the Russian front to open the way for a return to negotiations”. Petr Pavel, the newly elected Czech president and stalwart in support of Ukraine, added: “Liberating some parts of Ukrainian territory may deliver more loss of lives than will be bearable by society … There might be a point when Ukrainians can start thinking about another outcome”. Last and most, the White House briefed the Washington Post about its growing concerns that flagging support for the war effort inside the Republican Party will threaten financial and military aid packages as 2024 approaches.

Ideally, the Ukrainian counter-offensive will deliver decisive gains in the summer that force Moscow to the negotiating table. Failure to ensure a Russian retreat would mean a Korea-style frozen conflict after the two sides fight to a standstill. But this is not the worst-case scenario for Ukraine, as Sergey Radchenko pointed out in an anniversary editorial. “The conflict will be frozen, a far from ideal result. Yet if we have learned anything from the Korean War, it is that a frozen conflict is better than either an outright defeat or an exhausting war of attrition. Today, the glittering metropolis of Seoul — savaged by the Korean War — stands as a reminder that it is not those who win the war who matter, but those who win the peace”.

New order

How Putin saves face from a devastating war of choice leaving more than 250,000 Russians dead or wounded in return for a bit more of the Donbas and a Crimean peninsular he already occupied is one thing. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, may lose what is now a wasteland and get to be South Koreans.

The prospect of an end to the war is forcing the EU and NATO to put together realistic packages for Kyiv that get beyond the “Ukraine is the EU, the EU is Ukraine” bromides from the likes of European Council president Charles Michel. Officially, the Ukrainians believe they will soon become a member of NATO and will join the EU within two years. They’ve taken their time but both organisations are finally giving Kyiv the good and the bad news. The bad news is that they will be joining neither organisation for many years. The good news is that realistic alternatives and halfway houses are being made flesh.

The priority project – a security guarantee in the form of a defence pact with NATO – is underway with the support of the British, French and German governments, according to the Wall Street Journal.  Short of membership and NATO’s article five, the pact would continue the ad hoc and highly effective arrangements of the last year – the provision of advanced military equipment, weapons and ammunition and training – but codify them so as to avoid a repeat of the foot-dragging seen over the Leopard tanks. Ukraine will be Europe’s necessary military power – its eastern sentinel against Russian revanchism and democratic “shining city”.

And this is why talk of a two-year path to EU membership is wrong-headed and potentially damaging. It’s the mirror image of the Brexiters’ view that leaving the EU would be simple and a new trading relationship “one of the easiest in human history”. Ukraine is nowhere near economically ready to join the union. Half its land is arable and the cost of quick accession to the common agricultural policy would be onerous together with massive structural- and cohesion-fund transfers. On top of that, the World Bank estimates the cost of rebuilding Ukraine’s war-damaged infrastructure at €500-600 billion.

Ukraine needs to walk before it can run by turning its specially monitored scheme with the International Monetary Fund into a fully-fledged programme. This will include reforms to enhance private-sector competitiveness, strengthen corporate and public-sector governance, fight corruption, and ensure the rule of law. While CAP costs and the accession of another big state are brakes to a speedy process, it is these considerations – Ukraine’s endemic corruption, oligarchical economy, judicial interference, and under-developed democracy – that will be the major hurdles. Especially after the EU’s experience with Hungary. This doesn’t have to be a permanent state of affairs. With the right incentives, political and business cultures can change. Transparency International’s updated corruption perceptions index found Ukraine to be one of the few significant improvers in the region – gaining eight points over the past decade.

Politically, the EU’s leaders know they cannot leave Ukraine in open-ended accession negotiations into the next decade without rewards on the way. By far the most detailed blueprint for staged accession with interim rewards and safeguards was published by Michael Emerson, Milena Lazarević, Steven Blockmans and Strahinja Subotić four months before the invasion. But, in public at least, no design for a halfway house has emerged from the European Commission. Something tangible will be needed before the second summit of the new European Political Community convened for Chisinău on 1 June. With the NATO summit a month later in the middle of the expected decisive Ukrainian push, this will be a pivotal summer.

1. Many thanks to my former colleague Moritz Lütgerath - now at Berlin Global Advisors - for talking me through the strategic calculations.