Ukraine’s, so far, unexpectedly successful and deep incursion into Russian state territory since August 6th 2024 has changed the conversation about the Russo-Ukrainian War. The most crucial global impact that the Ukrainian surprise action may yet have is that on officially neutral non-western countries specified as China, India or Brazil. The West was and will be supportive of Ukraine – irrespective of the Kursk operation and its outcome. In contrast, a prolonged Ukrainian business of legitimate Russian state territory introduces a fresh dimension into non-western approaches to the war.
The Ukrainian offensive, if not reversed shortly and full by Moscow, changes Kyiv’s position and leverage in hypothetical negotiations which have been officially promoted by many third-party actors since the war’s start in 2014. So far, Kyiv has had to trust solely on moral and legal arguments, referring to the rules-based planet order, in its communication with abroad partners. Now, in contrast, a little normatively driven, more transactional and simpler “land for land” deal between Russia and Ukraine has become theoretically feasible.
Ukrainian-Russian pre-Kursk negotiations
The pre-Kursk military-political constellation repeatedly led to highly unfavourable negotiation formats and ceasefire agreements for Kyiv – whether in bi- or multilateral settings. The 2014 Minsk-I and 2015 Minsk-II Accords signed by Kyiv at gunpoint, as well as the following talks, happened mostly under the unofficial motto of “peace in exchange for sovereignty”. The Minsk agreements, to be sure, foresaw that Kyiv could have indeed got a settlement for mainland Ukraine and yet resumed control over the de facto Russia-occupied parts of the Donets Basin (Donbas). Yet, this would have been, under the unjust Minsk deals, only possible if Kyiv had allowed Moscow’s local proxies in east Ukraine to become legitimate players within the Ukrainian polity.
The Kremlin’s 2014-2021 instrument, foreseen in the 2 unequal Minsk Accords, for implementing this neo-colonial strategy to make Ukraine submit erstwhile more were pseudo-elections in the Donbas. Kyiv was expected to conduct local and regional polls in east Ukrainian territories which were and would remain, during the voting procedure, under the effective control of Moscow. Obviously, specified a spectacle would have been manipulated by the Kremlin in akin ways in which Russian “elections” are operated at home. Ukraine’s sovereignty would have been limited by Russian proxies installed as veto players in Kyiv and the Donbas. Meanwhile, the annexed Crimean Peninsula was kept altogether out of the Minsk discussions.
The 2022 Istanbul talks occurred under the unofficial motto of “peace in exchange for security”. This meant that Moscow was only ready to end the alleged “special military operation” it had started in Ukraine on February 24th 2022, if Kyiv were to limit its military defensibility and multilateral integration. The Kremlin’s apparent intention was to fundamentally weaken the Ukrainian state’s national security, isolate it from its abroad partners, and keep it vulnerable. The draft Istanbul agreement foresaw that, although safety guarantees would have been given to Ukraine, Russia would hold a veto power enabling it to block global aid to Ukraine. As a result, Ukraine would have become either a fresh post-war Finland, a satellite state akin to the russian bloc’s “people’s republics”, or a second Belarus. Above all, it would have been easy prey in case of a repeat Russian invasion. The failure of the Istanbul talks led to Russia’s illegal annexations of 4 additional south-eastern Ukrainian regions in September 2022.
In the next stage, Russia switched to an even more legally nihilistic “peace in exchange for land” strategy vis-à-vis Ukraine. According to a late circulated Kremlin settlement proposal, Ukraine would gotta not only limit its sovereignty but besides agree to Russia’s annexation of the occupied Ukrainian territories. Moreover, the Kremlin demanded that Kyiv hand over to Moscow the non-occupied parts of the 4 Russia-annexed Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. The Kremlin has officially and unofficially warned that the alternate to this proposal is Russia’s continuation of its genocidal war until Ukraine’s full annihilation – whether with or without weapons of mass destruction.
The approaching Minsk-III
These Russian approaches have, for 10 years, been continuously promoted by the Kremlin in various mass media, public fora and global organizations. As a result, they have been taken up implicitly or even explicitly by many 3rd parties. The supporters of Russian legal and normative nihilism vis-à-vis Ukraine scope from western pacifist groups and self-professed “realists” to the international extremist right, as well as various representatives of the alleged Global South.
With all year that Russia’s business of Ukrainian lands has been continuing and expanding since 2014, the thought of, at least, any Ukrainian ceding of territory and/or sovereignty has become more popular across the world. To be sure, earlier concessions made by Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine in the past have not led to these countries’ restoration of control over their state territories, as agreed upon in writing with Russia. Nor did these past deals between Moscow and its erstwhile colonies lead to peace in Europe. Nevertheless, many if not most western and non-western political and intellectual elites saw Ukrainian “compromises” as part of the road to end the war and bring about a lasting settlement.
As Russia had certain military success in east Ukraine in 2024, a Minsk-III deal with fresh limitations on Ukrainian territorial integrity and political independence was looming on the horizon. This happened against the backdrop of continuing global ignorance about Russia’s irredentism in the past, as well as naivety concerning the future of Russian imperialism. Many observers believe until present that throwing – after Transnistria, Abkhazia, “South Ossetia”, Crimea and parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions – yet another part of land into the Russian crocodile’s mouth will yet make the incomprehensible reptile full.
Reformatting the war’s perception
Since August 6th, Kyiv has been trying to change this conversation by way of creating entirely fresh facts on the ground. With its Kursk operation, Ukraine wants to get distant from the dubious “sovereignty/security/land for peace” deals to a more intuitive swap of territory. According to this idea, Ukraine is ready to return its now captured and legitimately Russian lands in exchange for Moscow’s withdrawal from the Ukrainian territories it has occupied since 2014.
This puts Putin in a hard situation. On the 1 hand, Moscow’s continued failure of control over legitimate Russian state territory is now and will as long as it lasts be an tremendous embarrassment for the Kremlin. On the another hand, the annexed east and south Ukrainian lands are, according to the Russian Constitution revised in 2014 and 2022, now authoritative property of Russia too.
For most of the Russian elite and population, a restoration of Moscow’s full control over Russia’s own geographical terrain is more important than a permanent business of illegally acquired lands that the remainder of the planet regards as Ukrainian anyway. The annexed territories’ integration into the Russian state and economy, moreover, is costly and will stay so in the future. The illegal annexations of Ukrainian regions will proceed to hamper the improvement of Russia by draining its resources and keeping western sanctions intact.
The non-western factor
The fresh Ukrainian strategy since August 6th could supply an additional avenue of influence not only for doves in the Russian leadership, but besides for certain partners of Russia on the global scene – above all for China. Moderates in Russia’s government and in cabinets of abroad countries curious in an end to the war can now argue that the Ukrainian annexations should be reversed in exchange for the restoration of Russia’s territorial integrity. The thought of specified a “land-for-land” deal will become more popular with all additional week that Ukraine can hold its captured territories in Russia. At least, there will be expanding force on Putin to yet return the lost lands under Moscow’s control – whether by military or diplomatic means.
If Russia cannot reverse the Ukrainian incursion with conventional arms, to be sure, it could effort to do so by deploying atomic or another weapons of mass destruction. specified a dire escalation would, however, reverberate throughout the global community, and fundamentally change the war’s nature. The eventual result of the 2022 “special military operation” would become entirely unpredictable not only for Kyiv, but besides for Moscow. Even specified Russian partners as China and India may reposition themselves vis-à-vis an unpredictable Moscow – a improvement that could spell disaster for the Russian economy.
For Putin’s regime, either script – continued humiliation in Kursk or hazardous atomic escalation – are risky paths. They may besides be seen as undesirable in Beijing as well as another non-western capitals. Against this backdrop, a “land for land” deal – presently rejected by Moscow – could become salient. If Ukraine’s capture of Russian territories continues, a diplomatic solution could become an increasingly preferable result not only for parts of the Russian elite but besides abroad governments.
Over the last two-and-a-half years, a number of officially neutral nations around the planet have been advocating for an immediate and unconditioned end to the fighting and subsequent negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv. For instance, China’s 12-point peace plan of February 2023 mentions a ceasefire and a “start of peace talks” in points 4 and five. The joint Brazilian-Chinese six-point peace plan of May 2024 suggests among others that “[a]ll parties should make conditions for the resumption of direct dialog and push for the deescalation of the situation until the realization of a comprehensive ceasefire. China and Brazil support an global peace conference held at a appropriate time that is recognized by both Russia and Ukraine, with equal participation of all parties as well as fair discussion of all peace plans.”
In late September 2024, under China’s leadership, a alleged “Friends for Peace” group on the Russo-Ukrainian War was established at the last session of the UN General Assembly. The Chinese abroad Ministry announced, in relation to this, that “China hopes that the parties active will consider resuming peace talks at an appropriate time, meet each another halfway in their dialogue, and search common ground while shelving differences in their negotiations, reasonably discuss all peace plans, and advance the establishment of a fresh safety architecture.” The main question is whether the members of the “Friends for Peace” group or another non-western countries officially neutral in the war will – by their deeds and not only their words – become supporters of a Russo-Ukrainian just peace alternatively than a Russian peace of triumph (Siegfrieden) over Ukraine.
Conflicting interests
Until recently, various non-western peace plans and akin proposals implied more or little far-reaching Ukrainian satisfaction with Russia’s territorial and political appetite. Since early August 2024, however, Ukraine has, with its capture of Russian state territory, supplied the basis for a transactional agreement alternatively of the hitherto suggested unjust peace, between the 2 states. The million dollar question is now whether and how officially pro-truce, pro-negotiation and pro-peace non-western countries, above all China, will respond to and act on this fresh situation.
To be sure, Vladimir Putin and another representatives of the Russian government have made clear that Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has made negotiations impossible. This shift in the Kremlin’s ten-year public advocacy of Russo-Ukrainian peace talks is of small surprise. In the current situation, a ceasefire does not any longer imply a de facto Ukrainian capitulation under the guise of diplomatic settlement. Now, negotiations between Russia and Ukraine would make real sense, as both countries have territories to gain and lose. Thereby, peace talks have, however, besides lost their function for the Kremlin. Moscow’s, so far, only envisaged way to end the war is via a military or diplomatic triumph over Kyiv – and not through a mutually acceptable settlement.
Yet, Russia is economically and technologically dependent on abroad support, most of all on China’s. any of Russia’s crucial political and economical allies like North Korea, Iran or Syria are, to be sure, unequivocally curious in Moscow’s full victory, and will support the Russian aggression as far as they can. another countries more or little friendly to Russia including China, India or Brazil may, in contrast, have conflicting interior and abroad interests in their governments, parliaments, economies and societies. any home camps may be favouring a continuation of the war and Russian victory, while others might like the accomplishment of a sooner alternatively than later and just alternatively than unequal peace.
As is well known, Beijing has so far heftily profited from the Russo-Ukrainian War, both economically and geopolitically. The war has created many fresh business opportunities for China and another countries around the planet not participating in the western sanctions government against Russia. Beijing has not only acquired in Moscow a valuable junior partner in its geopolitical confrontation with Washington. Since February 2022, the Russo-Ukrainian War has been distracting the attention of the United States and full West from the Indo-Pacific realm, as well as diverting more and more western financial, military and another resources to east Europe. On the another hand, the war’s continuation is generating, with all additional month, more risks and after-effects not only for the West. any of the transcontinental repercussions of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine and Moscow’s intensifying non-kinetic confrontation with the West may be neither in the economical nor in the political interests of China and another profit-seeking bystanders.
Nuclear scenarios
For instance, in late September 2024, Russian president Putin indicated plans for a loosening of restrictions on the usage of atomic weapons in the future wording of Russia’s military doctrine. Putin’s announcement – even if indeed implemented in authoritative Russian papers – as well as another akin fresh signals from Moscow may, to be sure, be simply a continuation of the Kremlin’s atomic bluffing that had already begun in connection with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. Nevertheless, Russia’s always more aggressive war in Ukraine, and Putin and his entourage’s continued threats of atomic escalation in Ukraine and further west, are already eroding the normative as well as intellectual foundations of the worldwide non-proliferation regime.
As the war continues, the likelihood increases, moreover, that an escalation with grave implications not only for east Europe but besides for the wider planet could happen. Harvard’s atomic historian Mariana Budjeryn has late pointed out that a Russia that is winning in Ukraine may actually be more likely to usage atomic weapons to complete its triumph than a Russian Federation that is losing its war against the Ukrainian state. specified Russian behaviour would somewhat follow the pattern of the first and only deployment of atomic weapons so far, i.e. America’s usage against Japan in August 1945. In the worst case, the Kremlin’s continuous public intimidation of western countries supporting Ukraine with – what is either openly labelled as or implicitly amounts to – planet War III could, even if not intended, become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 1 wonders whether China, Brazil or India are curious in specified a development.
A very different script of instability is besides looming. The war could end with Russia’s crushing military defeat in Ukraine. This, in turn, could consequence not only in a government change in Moscow but besides in a partial or even full break-up of the Russian Federation into respective smaller states. The second possible is simply a possible result proposed late by, among others, 1 of the most prominent Russian contemporary historians – Professor Alexander Etkind, formerly at the University of Cambridge and now at the Central European University in Vienna. Etkind compares the actions of late Austria-Hungary with Russia’s behaviour 100 years later. In 1914, the Habsburg dual monarchy had paradoxically started a planet war that, in 1918, yet broke up the Austro-Hungarian land empire. In 2014, the Russian Federation started the Russo-Ukrainian War which may yet fracture Moscow’s post-Soviet rump empire.
Some observers fishy that this script may be 1 of the reasons why Beijing is cynically fueling the Russo-Ukrainian War through intensified economical cooperation with Moscow since 2022. The longer the war lasts, specified would be China’s logic, the more likely a break-up of the Russian Federation and the re-opening of territorial issues along its current legitimate border becomes. This concerns not least those modern Russian and formerly Chinese territories in the Far East that the tsarist empire gained from the Qing Dynasty in the alleged “unequal treaties” of the 19th century, including in the 1858 Treaty of Aygun and 1860 First Convention of Peking. The territories transferred in these acts are present mostly referred to as “Outer Manchuria” and have besides the informal description of “Green Ukraine” in view of the Ukrainian settlers who moved there after the Chinese area had been annexed to the late Romanov empire. In September 2024, the president of the Republic of China or Taiwan, William Lai, suggested to the People’s Republic that, if it is curious in irredentism, then this should above all concern those north-eastern Chinese territories that had been lost to Russia during China’s alleged “century of humiliation”.
If Beijing is indeed secretly promoting a corrosion of the Russian state through the continuation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, this would constitute a tricky strategy, however. It will not only make a region of instability north of China. If Russia indeed disintegrates as a consequence of the war, any of its north Asian successor countries emerging out of the current pseudo-federation could become atomic weapon states. Whether Russian atomic warheads end up in 1 or in respective of the successor states of the current Russian Federation will, perhaps, be insubstantial. Most of the post-Russian states, statelets and territories will be mainly populated by cultural Russians. Despite breaking distant from each other, they may thus inactive feel adequate transborder solidarity to support 1 another against non-Russian irredentism – including that of China.
Concluding remarks
Whether Russia full wins or spectacularly loses in its war against Ukraine, the global repercussions of either script will be considerable. A full Russian triumph would full unsettle the UN strategy as well as atomic non-proliferation regime. It might even involve, as Budjeryn indicated in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the detonation of 1 or more atomic warheads.
If Russia loses in a humiliating way in Ukraine, the resulting political instability in Moscow will have wider repercussions. In 1 way or another, it may spill over into the realm of global security. The Russo-Ukrainian War has created many political and economical opportunities for China and the Global South. But its negative after-effects and global risks are besides accumulating not only for Ukraine and the West, but besides beyond.
The coming weeks and months will show the strength of the either pacifist or hawkish, and risk-prone or risk-averse, inclinations present in various applicable non-western nations. Will Beijing and/or another powerful non-western capitals be willing and able to seize the chance to persuade Moscow to agree to a ceasefire along the full frontline, i.e. within Russia too? Are countries like China, India and Brazil powerfully adequate curious in peace to usage their global clout to force Russia into serious negotiations?
Will the major non-western countries admit their common interest with the West in a just peace between Ukraine and Russia, as well as in not allowing a Ukrainian capitulation that the Kremlin is aiming for? Will Beijing and another non-western countries be willing and able to force the Kremlin to leave the war via an off-ramp alternatively than a “victory avenue”? The ambivalent situation that Ukraine has created, with its incursion into the Kursk region since early August 2024, could be the last chance to prevent further escalation and the wider spread of the war beyond the Russo-Ukrainian front line.
Dr. Andreas Umland is an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for East European Studies (SCEEUS) at the Swedish Institute of global Affairs (UI).
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