Every time Ukraine gains something in its effort to repel the Russian invaders, some well-intentioned soul suggests the time may be ripe to negotiate an end to the fighting. If Russia was able to ensure Ukrainian neutrality and keep Crimea and some of the borderlands Vladimir Putin has annexed, Russia’s president could save face and terminate his Special Military Operation, they claim.
Advocates for a negotiated settlement argue Ukraine is unlikely ever to get back the territory already annexed by Moscow, and peace now would stop the killing and destruction. If Kyiv agrees to stay out of NATO as part of the deal, it would lessen tensions and set the stage for future harmony.
Why is this a bad idea? Here are four reasons:
First, neither Putin nor his foreign policy advisers have given up their goal of resurrecting the Tsarist/Soviet empire as it existed from the 1780s to the 1980s. The source of today’s troubles was not NATO expansion but Moscow’s imperial ambitions.
A pause in the Ukraine war would permit the Kremlin to rebuild Russia’s forces and, after NATO and Kyiv relax, renew its push to take all of Ukraine and go on to Moldova, the Baltic states, and elsewhere in Moscow’s “near abroad.”
Second, the Kremlin’s promise of non-aggression means nothing. In 1945 the USSR signed the UN Charter banning war except in self-defense or for collective security. Earlier, the Litvinov Protocol in 1928 renounced war as an instrument of national policy — something ignored in 1939 when Stalin joined Hitler in invading Eastern Europe.
More recently, Kyiv only agreed to transfer its Soviet-era nuclear weapons to Russia and join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1994 in exchange for assurances from Moscow, Washington, and London to respect Ukraine’s independence and borders, assurances that have been repeatedly broken.
Third, no peace treaty with Putin’s regime can ensure justice for war criminals. So long as Putin remains in power, he cannot and will not be punished; and nor will he allow his criminal associates to face justice.
Russia’s president and his entourage have launched an unprovoked war and kidnapped at least 20,000 Ukrainian children as well as innumerable adults, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, his Commissioner for Children’s Rights.
International law grants no “head of state immunity” for war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. The Rome Statute establishing the ICC specifies that “official capacity as a Head of State or Government, a member of a Government or parliament, an elected representative or a government official shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility.”
Fourth, so long as the Putin regime survives, Russia will not acknowledge or pay for the damage it has inflicted on Ukraine or for the millions killed, wounded, shell-shocked, traumatized, crippled, evacuated, and forced to flee abroad.
The damage to the economy through the destruction of buildings, infrastructure, livestock, years of GDP lost, damage to resources, and all the foundations of growth and well-being would go uncompensated, along with devastation of the natural environment, not to mention the cultural destruction of museums looted and theaters and concert halls destroyed.
The bills for these damages amount to more than $1 trillion — a huge burden, but manageable for Russia through oil and gas sales, in the same way that Iraq paid for its invasion of Kuwait.
To get Russia to address its obligations for these harms, the Putin regime must first be replaced by reform-minded Russians and/or an international administration. As in Germany and Japan after 1945, Russian society must be nudged toward democracy.
As Elena Davlikanova has argued, genuine reconciliation with Ukraine and the West will require deep change in the Russian Federation, and it could take generations to shift the prevailing mindset. Until such reforms and shifts take root, Russia will likely maintain its imperialistic ambitions.
Insisting on democratic reforms in Russia is essential to avoiding perpetual insecurity. People of goodwill should not even think about negotiating some kind of compromise with Russia’s present dictator.
Walter Clemens is an Associate, at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, and Professor Emeritus, at the Department of Political Science, Boston University. He wrote Blood Debts: What Putin and Xi Owe Their Victims (Washington DC: Westphalia Press, 2023).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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