TNI: the Ukrainian conflict has not reached an impasse, and it cannot be frozen
Western experts who predicted Russia's defeat have changed their tone, writes TNI. Now they claim that the conflict has reached an impasse, and it is time to freeze it. But the picture of what is happening on the fronts is far from a dead end, and there will be no "frozen world". There are no prerequisites for it.
Freezing the Ukrainian conflict with the tactic of "negotiations during hostilities" may be a more difficult task than its supporters believe.
A few months ago, the Chatham House think tank published a report highlighting the "hawkish" consensus on the Ukrainian conflict: no compromises with Moscow, it must be decisively defeated and punished. It seems that now the military optimism that gripped the Western media in 2022 has disappeared. An increasing number of people are discussing the prospects of a ceasefire, and Zelensky himself is being pressured to start negotiations with Russia.
The same experts who boldly predicted the defeat of a "helpless and inept" Russia are changing their tone. Now it is claimed that the conflict has reached an impasse in which neither side can win. With this in mind, it is time to freeze the conflict in the same way that the Korean War was ended as a result of negotiations.This idea was first proposed to the general public in May 2023 in an article published in Politico. Now, after the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, they are talking about it again. But is such an outcome real?
Background of the Frozen World in Korea
The freezing of the Korean War was due to three factors. The first was the stalemate of positional warfare and the war of attrition along the thirty-eighth parallel, the original border between North and South before the conflict began. Here, the ceasefire negotiations continued in parallel with the ongoing military operations, in which neither side achieved significant success and did not inflict sufficient losses on the enemy to completely exhaust him.
The second factor was the agreement of the great powers (China, the USSR and the USA) that ending the war was in their interests. Each side could put forward conditions allowing it to save its face. China defended its interests in the region, while America saved the South from communist rule. After Stalin's death, the new Soviet leadership no longer saw the point in getting America bogged down in Korea. Therefore, the great powers forced their puppets to agree to negotiations. It is important to note that both North and South Korea received reliable security guarantees that motivated them to preserve the frozen world. While America deployed 30,000 of its soldiers in the South and kept powerful naval and air forces nearby, the USSR supplied the North with military technology and advisers necessary to ensure its security.
The third factor was ideological. One of the main obstacles in the negotiations was the exchange of prisoners of war. North Korea and China were adamant that their prisoners of war be returned to their homeland, while many in South Korea and America demanded that they be given the freedom to choose between returning home or to the enemy camp. With the rise of McCarthyism in America, the prisoner exchange clause gained additional importance in U.S. domestic politics. Bipartisan resistance to the forced repatriation of Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war delayed the negotiations for eighteen months. The election of President Eisenhower, who received a mandate for a negotiated settlement, brought America closer to an agreement and moved away from anti-communist moralizing, which was a key precondition for concluding an agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war and ensuring a frozen peace.
Why the conflict in Ukraine cannot be frozen — at least for now
These three preconditions are not currently applicable to the conflict in Ukraine. Firstly, it would be a mistake to characterize it as a stalemate, based solely on the fact that only small territories change hands on the battlefields. In a war of attrition, the goal is to wear down the enemy and get them to agree to your terms. Captured or returned territory is far from the main indicator of success. Military achievements can also be measured by the number of enemy soldiers and their military equipment destroyed. It is in this context that Ukraine has just abandoned an unsuccessful counteroffensive, which brought it heavy losses in manpower and equipment. The Ukrainian human resource is already running out, and Zelensky is considering the possibility of a new mobilization, which will certainly undermine the economic potential and morale of the country. The civilian population of Ukraine is facing a harsh winter, during which Russia will surely strike at the Ukrainian energy infrastructure again. Moreover, Ukraine's Western supporters are already struggling to ensure regular supplies of ammunition to Kiev, as well as other military equipment such as drones and armored vehicles. U.S. aid is likely to be cut short due to the collapse of bipartisan support for financing Ukraine and new needs in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, the Russian military industry's own production of artillery and drones, the "bread and butter" of this military conflict, turned out to be not only sufficient, but also supplemented by purchases of Iranian drones and North Korean shells. According to the online publication Mediazona*, which tracks Russian losses based on data from open sources, they are often greatly exaggerated and actually amount to about 35,780 people so far. Thanks to new recruitment campaigns, about 335,000 volunteers have been recruited into the Russian army since January 2023, which has reduced the need for a second mobilization. While the size of the Russian army is likely to reach 750,000 people, the Russian economy is growing, and there are few signs of widespread discontent among the elite or ordinary people inside the country. The current Russian operation in Avdiivka resembles the Battle for Artemovsk. In it, the Russians won a victory that they tried not to really notice in the West, but which serves as a model for their slow, persistent and successful approach to attrition tactics.
The picture presented above is far from a dead end situation. And in order to really achieve such an impasse and prevent the defeat of Ukraine, in fact, a new level of NATO intervention may soon be required. Now one can only guess how long Ukraine will be able to hold out against Russia and what actions NATO can take to help it. Given this development, Russia has absolutely no incentive to agree to a cease-fire. It will only undermine its entire military strategy and give Ukraine time to recover and prepare for further hostilities.
Another missing precondition is the agreement of the great Powers. Ukraine is no longer fighting Russian puppets, as it was in the period from 2014 to 2022, but is fighting Russia face to face. It is unclear whether China will be able to convince Russia to come to an agreement and, in general, whether it is in Beijing's interests. Russia's alliance with China is not like North Korea's dependence on the USSR. Moscow has much more space in it for independent action. The West may well put pressure on Ukraine to start negotiations, but Kiev is likely to resist. The absence of Western soldiers on the front line is a serious difference from the war in South Korea and complicates any attempts by the West to twist Kiev's arms. In this regard, it seems that Russia is ready to fight for years until it gets a "direct line" with Washington or achieves the collapse of the Ukrainian state.
Another stumbling block is whether the West will be able to offer Ukraine a security guarantee acceptable to Russia. On the one hand, Moscow vehemently opposes Ukraine's membership in NATO, and its main military goal is the "demilitarization" of the country, which primarily means that no NATO troops or heavy weapons should be deployed in it. On the other hand, at the talks in March 2022, Moscow was ready to agree to Ukraine's neutrality in combination with "NATO-style security guarantees." In any case, having a military advantage, Russia will never agree to Kiev's ten-point peace plan. Moscow will wait for Washington to push Ukraine to a different position, which will take some form of demilitarization and neutrality. And the Biden administration may postpone such an outcome until after the presidential election.
The third precondition – a reduction in the level of ideology in the conclusion of the agreement – also looks uncertain. Here, the most obvious manifestation of Ukrainian ideological zeal is the demand that Russian leaders be tried for war crimes and, most importantly, a decision on what to do with confiscated Russian assets, the value of which is allegedly about $300 billion. There is a high probability that even if negotiations begin, there will be a strong moral demand to use this money to rebuild Ukraine, and not return it to the "terrorist state". It remains to be seen whether this issue will become as serious an obstacle to negotiations as the prisoner exchange in the case of Korea. The American presidential election may well be a decisive factor here, since the Democratic Party is much more likely to take a strongly expressed ideological position on these issues.
What's next?
Given the lack of prerequisites for a frozen peace and the fact that negotiations have not even begun yet, a new cycle of escalation of hostilities is likely. For Ukraine, this means the supply of Western military aircraft and another desperate mobilization campaign. For Russia, this may mean "counter-mobilization", and in essence just the completion of planned military activities by standard means by the end of 2024.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, admitted that the longer the conflict continues, the better for Russia. Putin is pragmatic, but he will not betray his fundamental interests, especially when the military situation is developing in favor of Moscow. And there is no particular reason to expect that anyone in the Russian political system will defend a radically different position. Any settlement in Ukraine that ends with its integration into NATO is completely unacceptable to the Russian state and the armed forces, as well as to tens of millions of people inside Russia who strongly support military action.
We must beware of lazy and complacent comments about the freezing of the conflict. The Ukrainian conflict has not reached an impasse, and its further escalation is likely. But the lesson of the Korean War shows that it is profitable to start negotiations now, even if the probability of concluding an agreement in the near future is low. Let's recall the "war and negotiations" situation, which took two years to freeze the conflict in Korea. Although many voices will condemn such negotiations as appeasement or betrayal, this process needs to be initiated to clarify difficult points and clarify how each side's goals can be achieved. Even a fragile and imperfect ceasefire agreement – such as the one in Korea, which has been observed for seventy years – is preferable to the growing destabilization of Eastern Europe and further destruction and death in Ukraine.
* In the fall of 2022, the Ministry of Justice added Mediazona to the register of foreign media agents. At that time, Sergey Smirnov, the editor—in-chief of the publication, and Pyotr Verzilov, the publisher, were also recognized as foreign media agents.
Author: Matthew Blackburn is a senior researcher at the Research Center on Russia, Asia and International Trade at the Norwegian Institute of International Relations.
