Ukraine is running out of options, and Russia knows it

The trilateral talks between Ukraine, Russia and the United States that took place in Abu Dhabi this week may not lead to a rapid breakthrough, but they clearly outline the trajectory of a conflict that might, after all, be nearing its end.

If anything illustrates the political and emotional rift the two sides are yet to bridge, it is President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s remarks in Copenhagen this week, in which he lamented that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was still alive. Ukraine’s harsh reality, however, is pushing him towards an unsavoury compromise with his arch-enemy.

Kyiv was compelled to enter the talks at the most disadvantageous moment, when it has few means to counter devastating Russian air strikes that damage its key industries and cripple essential infrastructure in major cities. One of Ukraine’s top negotiators, David Arakhamia, who leads Zelenskyy’s parliamentary faction, described the negotiations as among the most difficult he had participated in since 2022. He said the Russians had arrived with very strict instructions and that it had been difficult to soften the tone of the discussions. His assessment confirms that Russia sees itself as well equipped to negotiate from a position of force.

Moscow, meanwhile, expressed optimism about the outcome. Putin’s aide, Vladimir Medinsky, said the talks had brought the two countries closer to peace. Even Arakhamia said there was momentum towards reaching a solution before the end of the year. That optimism, it needs to be noted, comes without any signs of Russia changing its position on the contours of the agreement. Just as it has for years, the Kremlin insists on a genuinely neutral, demilitarised Ukraine which honours the rights of its Russian-speaking population.

If all this comes as a nasty surprise to many in the West, that’s because for most of this year, Western politicians and the mainstream media kept insisting that the tide of war was turning and that Ukraine was getting the upper hand. Their optimism was fuelled by Ukrainian long-range strikes targeting Russian oil refineries as well as by the snail’s pace of Russian advances on the battlefield.

As late as September, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said that “in all but name, Russia has already lost the war”. Around the same time, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Russia was not doing well in Ukraine.

When NATO leaders convened for the Ankara summit in July, it seemed that even US President Donald Trump had bought into the idea that Ukraine had the battlefield advantage.

But Russia responded to Ukraine’s surge, backed up by European funds and US intelligence-sharing, with round-the-clock air strikes that are bringing Ukraine close to its pain barrier. Moscow’s message was cruel: any damage Ukraine and the West might inflict on Russia would be met with epic devastation in Ukraine, from which it would take decades to recover.

The coming winter spells nationwide humanitarian disaster. Russian strikes on energy infrastructure have disrupted electricity and central heating supplies. Millions of Ukrainians, particularly in major cities, live in apartment blocks dependent on central heating, without which their homes can become virtually unliveable. Generators can provide temporary power, but their use is making the cost of war enormous for Ukraine and Western taxpayers who fund its war effort.

It is these dire circumstances, rather than pressure from Trump’s administration, that have forced Ukraine to enter the talks. Zelenskyy would have waited at least until the spring had he not felt so pressed.

Ukraine’s surge has failed to shift Moscow’s peace conditions one inch. Meanwhile, the Western perception of this war’s realities has undergone a considerable transformation. There are two major signs of the shifting landscape which directly affect the agenda of the Abu Dhabi negotiations.

For the first time since the start of the war, a larger part of the Western establishment appears to be ready to discuss Europe’s post-war security architecture. The subject was first broached by US negotiator Jared Kushner, causing outrage in the warmongering camp. But Medinsky said after the Abu Dhabi talks that it was the central issue on the agenda.

This topic harks back to the agenda which Moscow brought to the table in December 2021, a few months before the all-out invasion. It did so after the US and Ukraine signed a charter on strategic partnership which may have served as the decisive trigger for Putin’s decision to invade. The very idea of discussing Europe’s security architecture with Moscow became a strict taboo in the West for over four years, but clearly it is not any more.

Curiously, this broad and vital topic was not the main sticking point at the talks who said the territorial issue was the hardest. Moscow has long insisted that Ukrainian forces should withdraw from the remaining part of the Donetsk region for talks to succeed

But Moscow’s opposition to territorial compromise might be an act of deception aimed at achieving maximum gain on overarching geopolitical issues it considers really vital. At the end of the day, it is only propagandist symbolism that prompts the Kremlin to claim Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

The other sign of change is European governments trying to jump on the bandwagon of peace talks even as this exposes a rift between hardliners, like the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, and pragmatists who believe compromise is unavoidable. The latter most prominently include Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, who held a lengthy telephone call with Putin on October 27, ahead of the Abu Dhabi talks, with discreet consent from parts of the EU leadership.

Both the US and Ukraine suggested in recent days that Europeans should nominate a single envoy to be at the table during the next round. US envoy Steve Witkoff said on November 12 that Putin had agreed to let European representatives join the next round of talks. Russia didn’t confirm it, while Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov linked the possibility of EU’s inclusion to the personality of its chosen envoy.

Perhaps the most remarkable shift on display in Abu Dhabi was the appearance of NATO’s supreme commander in Europe, Alexus Grynkewich, especially as it was hailed by the Kremlin which tends to see the war as a proxy conflict with NATO.

But even the staunchest of hardliners, like the German and British governments, are visibly changing tack. Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested he could talk to Putin during the next G20 summit. UK Defence Secretary Wes Streeting unexpectedly called for opening communication channels with Russia.

Others, like Kallas or Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, are finding themselves increasingly isolated and unable to influence rapid developments. So is Zelenskyy, who has sounded extremely bitter about the perceived lack of Western support in his latest appearances. But he is going ahead with the US-brokered peace process because there isn’t much of a choice.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Source: www.aljazeera.com