Prospects of peace as frontlines in Ukraine ossify and foreign aid dwindles

New reports about a secret meeting between Ukraine, its G7 allies, and a group of the Global South countries held in Saudi Arabia in late 2023 have fueled speculation about the possibility of freezing the Russo-Ukrainian war.

NV analyzes the resurgence of conversations about freezing the conflict, what is known about Ukraine’s behind-the-scenes meetings, and Kyiv’s official position.

Blocking Western aid to Ukraine and Putin’s “peace signals”: where does the new discussion about “freezing” the war come from

The end of 2023 became the worst and most difficult period for Ukraine in terms of Western support, which has already affected the course of the war. In December, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, noted a drop in aid from Ukraine’s partners by almost 90% over the previous months and recorded the lowest amount of aid packages since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The EU was unable to agree on a EUR 50 billion aid package for Ukraine at the end of the year over Hungary’s position, which now requires the funds to be allocated on an annual basis with a review each year, according to Politico.

Read also: Davos summit gathers 80+ delegations for key talks on Ukrainian peace formula

Meanwhile, further funding of support programs for Ukraine, in particular arms packages, is still blocked in the United States: U.S. lawmakers cannot find a compromise in the internal dispute over limiting migration flows across the southern U.S. border, which is why they are delaying the approval of the security package proposed by the White House, which also includes aid to Ukraine.

The United States will not be able to continue supplying weapons to Ukraine until Congress approves the request for additional funding, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby stated during a briefing on Jan. 3, 2024.

“The [U.S.] President [Joe Biden] signed out the last security assistance package for which we had replenishment authority funds. That’s it. We need the supplemental passed so that we can provide additional security assistance to Ukraine,” Kirby said.

At the same time, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Jan. 4 that the United States would continue to support Ukraine “as long as it takes,” but “that does not mean that we are going to continue to support them at the same level of military funding that we did in 2022 and 2023.”

“We don’t think that should be necessary because the goal is to ultimately transition Ukraine—to use the language that you repeated back—to stand on its own feet and to help Ukraine build its own industrial base and its own military industrial base so it can both finance and build and acquire munitions on its own,” he said, admitting that “we are not there yet.”

Frontline Ukrainian troops face shortages of artillery shells and have scaled back military operations due to diminished foreign assistance, Tavria operational group commander, Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, said in an interview with Reuters on Dec. 18.

“The volumes that we have today are not sufficient for us today, given our needs. So, we’re redistributing it,” he said, adding “there’s a problem with ammunition, especially Soviet-era [shells]—122mm and 152mm. And today these problems exist across the entire front line.”

Read also: U.S. State Dept reiterates that it believes all weapons provided to Ukraine were used appropriately

Tarnavskyi said the shortage of artillery shells was a “very big problem” and the drop in foreign military aid was having an impact on the battlefield.

The New York Times reported on Jan. 9 that Ukrainian troops along most of the 600-mile front line are now on the defense. Only in the southern area of Kherson Oblast are they still on the offensive in a tough assault across the Dnipro River.

At the same time, Western media produced a wave of reports about the alleged imminent conditions for a “frozen war.” The New York Times reported on Dec. 23 that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin “has been signaling through intermediaries since at least September that he is open to a ceasefire that freezes the fighting along the current lines.” At the same time, the newspaper, citing former and current high-ranking Russian, U.S., and other officials, noted that Putin “is not willing to cede one meter” of captured Ukrainian soil. Some U.S. officials say it could be a usual Kremlin attempt at misdirection and does not reflect a genuine willingness by Putin to compromise.

Meanwhile, Politico reported that with U.S. and European aid to Ukraine now in serious jeopardy, the [U.S. President Joe] Biden administration and European officials are quietly shifting their focus from supporting Ukraine’s goal of total victory over Russia to improving its position in eventual negotiations to end the war.

“Such a negotiation would likely mean giving up parts of Ukraine to Russia,” according to a Biden administration official and a European diplomat based in Washington. The said strategy will involve bolstering air defense systems and building complex fortifications along Ukraine’s northern border with Belarus. In addition, the Biden administration is focused on rapidly developing Ukraine’s domestic defense industry to supply the desperately needed weaponry the U.S. Congress is neglecting to provide. At the same time, “the only way this war ends ultimately is through negotiation,” said a White House official.

Read also: U.S. wants to see Ukraine’s war plan for 2024 at next week’s World Economic Forum in Davos

A partitioned Ukraine poses one of the major global security risks in 2024, TIME magazine wrote on Jan. 8.

“Ukraine will be de facto partitioned this year, and Russia now has the battlefield initiative and a material advantage. 2024 is an inflection point in the war: and if Ukraine doesn't solve its manpower problems, increase weapons production, and set a realistic military strategy soon, its territorial losses could prove permanent and may well expand,” TIME reported.

“Kyiv has taken a body blow from ebbing political and material support from the United States, and the outlook for European assistance is only slightly better.”

Ukraine’s efforts to implement its Peace Formula versus pivoting to a “frozen” conflict

With all these factors at play, special attention is currently paid on any reports about whether Ukraine’s allies may pressure it towards “freezing” the war.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba recently commented on this issue, emphasizing that Ukrainian diplomats did not receive such signals from Ukraine’s Western partners.

“This is not on the agenda, our allies didn’t ask us to negotiate with Russia on freezing the war, neither when we met in delegations, nor in meetings behind closed doors. It’s not something anyone would dare put on the table as an option. Everything else is just noise,” Kuleba said in an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais on Jan. 8.

However, Bloomberg on Jan. 9 raised questions on possible peace talks with Ukraine’s participation. A secret meeting between Ukraine, its G7 allies and a small group of Global South countries reportedly took place in Saudi Arabia on Dec. 16, 2023, according to people familiar with the matter.

The secrecy was aimed in part at making participant countries feel more comfortable about joining, the sources said. The smaller format allowed for a freer, more frank discussion on Ukraine’s peace formula and plans for moving that process forward as well as principles for potentially engaging with Russia in future, the sources said.

Read also: U.S. suspends military aid to Ukraine - White House

While top officials from India, Saudi Arabia and Turkey joined the December meeting in Riyadh, other major Global South nations who had come to some of the previous larger sessions—notably China, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates—didn’t send their representatives.

The meeting was held at the level of national security advisors. The Ukrainian delegation was headed by Head of the President’s Office Andriy Yermak at previous meetings.

Reportedly, there was no major progress at the Riyadh meeting. In general, its results rather consolidated the sides’ positions:

·       Ukraine and its G7 allies continued to resist calls from the Global South nations to engage directly with Russia;

·       Kyiv and its partners reaffirmed their view that a just peace needs to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty;

·       Putin’s goals have not changed and he has shown no sign of being serious about wanting substantive negotiations and has failed to respect past agreements;

·       the allies made clear they will continue backing Ukraine, and the European Union and the United States said they were confident that future aid packages would be agreed;

·      all participants in the Riyadh discussion acknowledged Ukraine’s right to defend itself and agreed on the need to uphold key United Nations principles—including respecting the territorial integrity of states—and international law.

In addition, Ukraine and its allies have planned another meeting of a broader group in Switzerland next week ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos and invited more than 100 countries. Previous sessions were held in Copenhagen, Jeddah, and Malta last year.

Read also: Russia wants small victories on the front ahead of Putin's ‘reelection’, Zelenskyy

“Kyiv wants to hold a leaders’ summit on the blueprint [Peace Formula] early this year and use that as a springboard to establish a plan based on a set of agreed principles as the basis for any future talks with Moscow,” Bloomberg wrote.

However, some nations believe a leader-level summit in the coming months is premature, while others want to immediately involve Russia in the process.

Meanwhile, Ukraine signals it’s ready for new rounds of negotiations, ostensibly regarding the implementation of its Peace Formula and security guarantees. In particular, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will personally visit the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to deliver a speech.

Zelenskyy’s decree, which outlines the mandate for “Ukraine’s delegation to participate in negotiations […] on security guarantees for Ukraine,” was posted on the presidential website on Jan. 8. Such guarantees can reportedly be concluded “between Ukraine and other states,” while the delegation should participate in negotiations on the development and preparation of relevant “bilateral and multilateral international agreements.” The framework document on “security guarantees” for Ukraine was agreed upon by the G7 countries at the 2023 NATO summit in Vilnius, after which several other countries joined it.

Yermak will head the Ukrainian delegation, which includes 15 other officials.

He was entitled to change and expand the delegation’s composition with the approval of the Interior Ministry. At the same time, the guidelines for negotiations on security guarantees, which were attached to the presidential order, are classified.

The closest Ukraine came to concluding an agreement on bilateral security guarantees is with the United Kingdom. The President’s Office reported on Jan. 9 that Kyiv and London had already proceeded “to the direct elaboration of the draft of the relevant agreement, discussed its main elements and separate thematic blocks, as well as agreeing on the further schedule of bilateral negotiations.”

In a recent interview with Interfax-Ukraine, Deputy Head of the President’s Office Ihor Zhovkva, who regularly participates in negotiations with the United Kingdom, emphasized that Ukraine insists precisely on direct and effective security guarantees.

“We’ll make sure that our partners also adopt this wording. We remember the Budapest Memorandum, which was also initially about guarantees, and then... None of our documents will have the word ‘assurance,’” said Zhovkva.

He also denied that negotiations on Ukraine’s Peace Formula were too slow. Over the past year, “alternative” peace plans have already disappeared from the agenda, while “the Ukrainian Peace Formula has actually become the only non-alternative plan for bringing peace to Ukraine,” he said.

“Together with our partners, we began to write down the understanding of each of the points. We currently have 10 working groups and a road map for each point,” Zhovkva said, adding that “we passed the first five points” at the autumn meeting in Malta and “the remaining five” would be discussed at the upcoming meeting in Davos.

“When we complete all of this, we move on to the Peace Formula Global Summit with the full package. Why do we need it? It will launch the process. And after that, measures will begin on each of the 10 points already at the level of ministers, national security advisers. And we’ll already start implementing the Peace Formula,” said Zhovkva, announcing the involvement of not only Western countries, but also of India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Brazil.

What a static front line may actually mean                                             

Meanwhile, both Western and Ukrainian experts and diplomats warn against any agreements with Russia that would involve freezing the current front line.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) noted in late 2023 that continued Western security assistance that empowers Ukrainian forces to repel ongoing and future Russian offensive efforts and to liberate more Ukrainian territory is the only course of action at this time that can make the Russian failure to achieve Putin’s maximalist objectives in Ukraine permanent.

ISW has assessed that the collapse of Western aid would likely lead to the eventual collapse of Ukraine’s ability to hold off the Russian military and that the current positional warfare in Ukraine is not a stable stalemate because the current “unstable balance” could readily be tipped in either direction by decisions made in the West.

Read also: Kremlin sends FSB agents to search for Ukrainian partisans in Kherson Oblast, Kyiv says

ISW experts also warned that Putin is likely using back channels and intermediaries to signal his interest in a ceasefire only to delay and discourage further Western military assistance to Ukraine. Putin has recently reiterated that his objectives in Ukraine— “denazification,” “demilitarization,” and the imposition of a “neutral status” on Ukraine—remain unchanged, and Putin and senior Kremlin officials have increasingly expressed expansionist rhetoric indicating that Putin’s objectives do not preclude further Russian territorial conquests in Ukraine, ISW analysts stressed.

Political scientist Petro Oleshchuk recently said the “freezing” the war can only be very temporary since Russia in this case does not achieve its war aims.

“Let’s imagine a situation where the war is ‘frozen’ for some reason, and Ukraine even agreed to it, ignoring the rights and interests of its own citizens in the Russian-occupied territories. In any case, this will mean that Ukrainian statehood is preserved, as well as Ukrainian identity. And they will be openly anti-Russian. […] They [the Russians] don’t want to ‘freeze’ anything as it means losing what they started the war for. Namely, most of Ukraine. This is about a temporary ‘freeze,’ but not for months. Years are out of the question because Putin’s days are limited, and he obviously wants to personally revive the [Russian] empire,” Oleschuk said.

The significance of this war for Moscow has already become evident in the scale of Russia’s involvement, he added.

“They haven’t had such a scale of mobilization since 1945. This is no longer ‘another colonial war.’ And they obviously commit huge resources not to simply ‘freeze’ it. Moreover, once they have begun a large-scale mobilization, they have no alternatives to a ‘decisive victory,’ because the alternative can only be a catastrophic defeat. If Russia, having fully demobilized, doesn’t defeat Ukraine, it will be an indicator of Russia’s weakness for everyone. First of all, for the Russians themselves. And any empire is based on fear,” Oleshchuk noted.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in the same interview with El Pais that “those proposing a frozen conflict claim to be acting in the interests of Ukraine and peace, but in fact they’re helping Putin and ignoring what Russia is today.”

“We held almost 200 rounds of negotiations with Russia from 2014 to 2022, it was already a de facto frozen conflict. We announced and established 20 ceasefire agreements, all of which were violated by Russia, while endless negotiations turned into Putin’s large-scale invasion,” Kuleba said, adding that further similar agreements with Moscow are unacceptable.

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine