A new proposal by Ukraine’s foreign minister for a peace summit is refocusing attention on the possibility of a negotiated settlement to the war with Russia, which has claimed thousands of lives, forced millions of people from their homes, reduced cities to ruin, and disrupted global food and energy supplies.
There have been no peace talks between Ukraine and Russia since the early weeks of the conflict, which began when Russia launched a full-scale invasion on Feb. 24. Both sides, in public at least, have sketched out negotiating positions that appear flatly unacceptable to the other, leading U.S. and European officials to conclude that serious discussions on ending the fighting are unlikely in the immediate future.
On Monday, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said that “every war ends in a diplomatic way” and detailed a plan for a peace summit by the end of February, around the invasion’s anniversary. But he told The Associated Press that Ukraine would negotiate with Russia only if it first faced a war-crimes tribunal.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, responded that Kyiv would have to accept Moscow’s demands — including giving up the four Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims to have annexed — or else “the issue will be decided by the Russian Army.”
The hard-line positions suggest that any real peace process remains distant, at least while both sides believe they have more to gain militarily. Ukrainian forces are pushing to recapture the eastern town of Kreminna after a string of battlefield successes in the east and south and a series of strikes on military targets deep inside Russian territory.
Moscow has repeatedly launched missile and drone attacks to debilitate Ukraine’s energy grid, inflicting more pain on Ukrainians even as its army struggles on the ground.
“The Ukrainian proposal offers a glimpse at Ukraine’s vision of how the war with Russia could one day end,” said Stella Ghervas, a professor of Russian history at Newcastle University in Britain. “But Lavrov’s reaction is not very promising, and it’s an indicator that a peace negotiation could be months and months away.”
Last month, addressing a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 nations, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine presented a wide-ranging 10-point peace plan that called for the full withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern area known as the Donbas that Russian forces seized beginning in 2014.
It also demands an international tribunal to try Russian war crimes; Moscow’s release of all political prisoners and those forcibly deported during the war; compensation from Russia for war damages; and steps by the international community to ensure the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants and to provide for its food and energy security.
It is a much tougher set of requirements than Ukrainian negotiators initially offered at talks in Istanbul a month after Russia’s invasion, when they proposed adopting neutral status in exchange for security guarantees from Western nations. Russian atrocities have multiplied since then, as the damage to Ukraine’s cities and its economy has deepened. In August, Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, said that the framework proposed in Istanbul was no longer viable.
“The emotional background in Ukraine has changed very, very much,” he told the BBC. “We have seen too many war crimes live.”
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said over the weekend that he was prepared to negotiate over “acceptable outcomes,” without specifying what those might be, while making clear that he had no intention of ending his attacks.
Western officials have dismissed Mr. Putin’s periodic offers to negotiate as empty gestures. This month Mr. Putin emphasized that there were “no limits” to Russia’s military spending, while his defense minister ordered another expansion of the armed services by more than 300,000 members, to a target size of 1.5 million.
“This suggests there is not necessarily a push for a negotiated peace or even some sort of negotiations, but still a push for whatever endgame is being sought militarily,” said Marnie Howlett, a lecturer in Russian and Eastern European politics at the University of Oxford.
The New York Times
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