Ukraine peace talks alternative to inevitable battlefield defeat, says senior general
Ukraine is preparing for peace talks with Russia as there is “no way to win on the battlefield alone”, Kyiv’s deputy spy chief has said.
Maj Gen Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency, said both sides were currently vying for “the most favourable position” ahead of possible negotiations in 2025.
As with virtually all wars, negotiations will likely be the final stage of the conflict, he told the Economist.
The prospect of a peace deal with Russia has re-emerged as Ukraine’s forces – running low on manpower and ammunition – suffer setback after setback on the battlefield.
According to the Economist, Maj Gen Skibitsky said he did not see a way for Ukraine to win the war on the battlefield alone. If Ukraine was able to push Russian forces back to the border, it is unlikely to end the war, adding that such wars “can only end with treaties”.
Maj Gen Skibitsky predicted that peace talks could happen in late 2025, as he expects Russian arms production to plateau early the following year due to a shortage of engineers and supplies.
Russian counter-offensives in the northwestern regions of Kharkiv and Sumy are also anticipated, he said.
Ukraine and its Western partners are racing to distribute weapons into the hands of Kyiv’s soldiers in the coming weeks in order to prevent Russia from seizing more territory.
Maj Gen Skibitsky said Russia was trying to exploit its current advantage in weapons and manpower and is planning a major offensive this summer.
“Our problem is very simple: We have no weapons,” he said.
He went on to paint a somewhat gloomy picture of Ukraine’s battlefield prospects, with particular concern for Chasiv Yar, a town occupying high-ground near Bakhmut, which Russia could soon capture.
Seizing Chasiv Yar would allow Russian forces to advance through other towns and cities in the Donetsk region.
He said it was probably a matter of time until the fall of Chasiv Yar, “not today or tomorrow, of course, but all depending on our reserves and supplies”.
Maj Gen Skibitsky warned that Russia’s army is no longer the disorganised rabble that Ukraine repelled from some regions with such success in the early stages of the war.
Now, it is a “single body, with a clear plan, and under a single command,” he said.
It came as Lord Cameron, the foreign secretary, met Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, in Kyiv, where he assured him that his forces have a right to use British-supplied weapons to strike inside Russian territory.
While Ukraine initially attempted peace talks with Russia, such as in Turkey and on the Belarusian border, Moscow has been much less eager to do so since the annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts in 2022.
Mr Zelensky has since declared peace talks with Russia under its current leadership are “impossible” and in November 2023 said he was “not ready” for talks with Moscow unless its troops withdrew from Ukraine.
Behind the scenes, Ukrainian and Western leaders accept that eventually the war will most likely end in a negotiated settlement. The crucial question is which side will have performed the strongest on the battlefield at that point, providing the most leverage.
A special Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland is due to be held in June, which Mr Zelensky has hailed as the “first real chance to start restoring a just peace” but Russia has signalled it will not attend.
Switzerland has stressed that “a peace process without Russia is not possible”.
On Friday, Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and a staunch Putin ally, posted an expletive-laden rant on social media calling Mr Zelensky a “bastard”, “halfwit” and a “c---” over the peace conference plans.
Mr Medvedev dismissed the Swiss talks as the product of “impotent” Western elites who have “performed painful self-castration of their own potential to stop the military conflict”.
The US election this November, which could see Donald Trump return to the White House, is also a major factor in a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia being achieved.
A source close to the Trump campaign has told The Telegraph that a detailed Ukraine-Russia peace plan has been drawn up but will not yet be disclosed in any detail before his in an effort to maintain leverage.
Mr Trump will style himself as the only candidate who can end the war, with a simple “bumper sticker” slogan, they said.
“He wants to stop the killing,” said the source. “That’s the bumper sticker: Trump will stop the killing.”
