Peace in Ukraine in 2025
As summer turns to fall, the news from Ukraine is pretty much the same each week. Across the country, Russia is attacking civilian and military targets, destroying the energy grid and infrastructure, and making marginal but steady advances. Given the degraded Ukrainian energy infrastructure, it seems that Ukrainians will have a hard winter ahead of them. In the next few months, fresh waves of refugees could well be pouring into Europe. Things are not going well for Ukraine despite the billions of dollars coming from the west, in particular the U.S. Ukraine has not had a positive military moment since the summer of 2023.
Back then, Ukraine’s counteroffensive petered out, yielding to some basic Russian advantages in manpower and material. Russia is currently lurching forward in Donbas in eastern Ukraine and making small advances. The U.S. government is still adamant that Ukraine should join NATO and they keep sending money. So far, there has been no or limited attempts to end the conflict and to find a peace agreement. Ukraine has stated that they need the borders to go back to January 2022 and they also want Crimea. This is clearly totally unacceptable for Russia.
The overall U.S. strategy is still somewhat unclear. Biden wants to expand NATO and grow the revenue base for the U.S. military-industrial complex and maybe weaken Russia. At the same time, the U.S. is limiting efforts despite all the billions. The U.S. is withholding adequate military equipment or putting restrains on the use of certain equipment and weapons systems. The idea is more containment than offensive of nature, which will lead to steady Russian advances the longer the conflict continues. It is a weak U.S. strategy as there is no hope for victory for Ukraine.
There are basically three fundamental mistakes in the Biden administration’s Ukraine strategy on top of the endless NATO talk. The first one is to furnish Ukraine with weapons, intelligence, money, but not the ability to fully use them, not sending the best available systems and limit offensive use. Overall, a total waste of money and lives. The second strategic mistake has been to tighten ties to Ukraine in the hope of getting Ukraine to join NATO. Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world and will not add much to the European or U.S. economy and by constantly pushing for eastward NATO expansion, the west has clearly unnerved Russia. NATO has been fine without Ukraine and will be so even going forward. The third strategic mistake is to think the Ukraine is part of western Europe. It is not and the country will be a burden rather than an asset for the EU. Ukraine has a long way to develop a functioning democracy and an honest, robust economic system. It is corrupt to the core. The U.S. strategy for Ukraine has been an utter failure with devasting results.
With the upcoming presidential election in the U.S., the key difference between the candidates Harris and Trump seems to be that Harris wants to continue the failed Biden strategy and Trump wants to end the conflict. It will not be easy either way, but the hope of the international community is that the conflict will come to an end in 2025.
In order to move forward and find a peaceful solution, there are two key starting point. Number one is Ukraine cannot join NATO, and number two is Crimea belongs to Russia. As Russia has around 20% of Ukraine’s territory, they likely want to hold on to at least the Russian-speaking eastern parts of Ukraine. That seems fair. Ukraine can then have the remaining part of 80%, the Ukrainian speaking part, and can work on developing their democracy, build closer ties to the EU and try to end corruption and build up a functioning economy. The west will certainly support Ukraine with money and help them build a peaceful existence instead of conducting a wasteful proxy war against Russia. Finally, the U.S. and the west should end all sanctions against Russia. These actions will lead to peace and prosperity and can be a new fresh start in 2025.