Why Vladimir Putin’s in no hurry for peace

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The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, believes that Russia’s strategy is to outlast Ukraine and its allies in a war of attrition. Rubio told Fox News host Sean Hannity this week that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had made it clear that he is determined to achieve his war aims even though it may “cost more and take longer” than Russia wants it to.

Rubio’s words appear to be borne out by the most recent negotiations in the Kremlin this week. Rubio wasn’t there this time. Instead the US president sent special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner (Trump’s son-in-law). As Alexandros Koutsoukis of the University of Lancaster notes, replacing diplomats with dealmakers has been a feature of the way the US has approached this peace process.

A detailed account of their meeting with the Russian president and his aides has yet to be published, but the takeaway from that meeting was that Putin was not in the mood for compromise. While acknowledging the talks had been “useful, constructive and meaningful”, Putin’s aide, Yuri Ushakov, concluded that: “We are no closer to resolving the crisis in Ukraine.”

But it’s well worth noting a comment of Putin’s, delivered shortly before the meeting, which may shed some valuable light on what appears to be Russia’s long game, something becoming clearer as the conflict gets closer to its fourth anniversary. Putin accused Kyiv’s European allies of trying to scupper a peace deal with “absolutely unacceptable” demands. Ushakov meanwhile commented that “some American proposals appear more or less acceptable”.

This, writes Intigam Mamedov – an expert in conflict and security at Leiden University – appears to be a direct reference to the draft deal developed jointly between Russia and the US over a few days in Miami in late November. That 28-point proposal was viewed by Ukraine and its European allies as a non-starter, hanging as it did on Kyiv giving up the whole of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, including territory that Russia has not been able to take by force. It also called for Ukraine to give up all hope of ever joining Nato and accept a limit on the size of its armed forces.

Mamedov sees a longer-term project here. Whatever Putin hopes to gain from the war in Ukraine itself, the more protracted and bloody the war in Ukraine becomes, the bigger a wedge it drives between the US and Europe. Hence all the talk of US proposals being constructive and Europe’s being unacceptable.

The conflict is also exposing deep divisions within Europe over the plan to raise €90 billion (£78 billion) to help Ukraine sustain its resistance, either by leveraging frozen Russian assets or by borrowing on the international markets. Belgium is very unhappy about the former plan, as the bulk of Russia’s frozen assets are held there potentially exposing it to liability if the loan is not repaid.

Meanwhile Hungary and Slovakia oppose funding Ukrainian defence and are also planning a legal challenge to an EU plan to halt imports of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) by the end of 2026 and shut off pipeline supplies by the end of the following year.

Whatever the outcome of talks, writes Roman Birke, it’s appearing increasingly likely that Ukraine will be forced to give up territory in return for peace. This is a denial of core principles of international law and the United Nations charter, which forbids “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.

Birke, an expert in modern European history at Dublin City University, believes rewarding Russian aggression with territory will “confirm that, in the 21st century, European borders can be redrawn by military force once more”. Birke recalls the work of Hugo Grotius, a Dutch lawyer born in 1583, who was one of the most influential thinkers of his time on the laws of warfare.

Grotius put forward the idea that only just wars where a state is defending itself against aggression or to enforce its legitimate property rights, should be legal. But eventually, disillusioned, by the violent world around him, he concluded that all states making war would simply claim theirs was a just war (a little like Putin is doing now in Ukraine) and that this risked other countries feeling obliged to back the side they believed was right. In that way, wars can quickly spread, be concluded.

Birke is concerned that rewarding Russia for its aggression by handing over bits of Ukraine would return the world to a Grotian state, in which less powerful states can be attacked with impunity. Might would become right, in other words.

We recently marked the 30th anniversary of the signing, in an air force base in Ohio, of a treaty to bring an end to the appalling conflict in the former Yugoslavia. The Dayton accords was signed on November 21 1995 and again, in a public ceremony in Paris on December 14, by the presidents of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia, bringing to an end three years of bloodshed and ethnic cleansing.

Two rows of men in suits clapping, including Bill Clinton and John Major — The Dayton accords, signed in December 1995, ended three years of bitter conflict in the Balkans.

International security experts Stefan Wolff of the University of Birmingham and Argyro Kartsonaki of the University of Hamburg see some useful parallels between the peace process in the Balkans and the attempts to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. The first, and arguably most vital, factor at play there was US leadership in Nato, which intervened with bombing missions to force Serbia to the table. There were robust security guarantees put in place and the treaty was a detailed (if imperfect) plan which aimed to ensure hostilities would not resume.

Thirty years on peace has largely held, although it remains tentative and the increasing confidence of Serbian separatists could still cause Bosnia and Herzegovina to disintegrate into its constituent parts, which possible horrific consequences.

But, as Wolff and Kartsonaki conclude, for all Dayton’s imperfections, “even an imperfect agreement may be preferable to an unending, and likely unwinnable, war”.

Death in the Caribbean

To Washington, where the focus is on the sequence of events leading up to the first of the US attacks on so-called Venezuelan drug boats in the Caribbean. It was recently alleged in the Washington Post that the US secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, had given an order that there were to be no survivors of the attack on September 2, which killed 11 people – nine in the initial strike on the boat and, we’re told, the remaining two, reportedly as they clung on to the boat radioing for assistance.

The full details of the incident have yet to emerge and, as Hegseth himself has claimed, there is always a lot of confusion in “the fog of war”. That said, the secretary of war has been quick to pass responsibility for the second strike on to the ranking military officer present in the situation room, Admiral Frank M. (Mitch) Bradley.

But in a political climate in which high-ranking former US officers such as Mark Kelly, a former US navy officer and astronaut who is now a Democrat senator, could face prosecution for urging members of the US military not to obey orders that are clearly illegal, this episode is a potential flashpoint.

But in the end this incident should not obscure an arguably more important issue with the US strikes on these Venezuelan boats: international law forbids extrajudicial killing. Andrew Bell and Thomas Gift explain the issues at stake.

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