Conflicting Interests

Until recently, various non-Western peace plans and similar proposals implied more or less far-reaching Ukrainian satisfaction with Russian territorial and political appetite. Since early August 2024, however, Ukraine has, with its capture of Russian state territory, supplied the basis for a transactional agreement instead of the hitherto suggested unjust peace between the two states. The million-dollar question is now whether and how officially pro-truce, pro-negotiation, and pro-peace non-Western countries, above all China, will react to and act on this novel situation.

To be sure, Putin and other representatives of the Russian regime have made it clear that Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has made negotiations impossible. This shift of the Kremlin’s ten-year public advocacy of Russo-Ukrainian peace talks is of little surprise. In the current situation, a ceasefire does not imply a de facto Ukrainian capitulation under the guise of a diplomatic settlement. Now, negotiations between Russia and Ukraine would make real sense, as both countries have territories to gain and lose. Thereby, peace talks have, however, also lost their function for the Kremlin. Moscow’s only envisaged way to end the war is via a military or diplomatic victory over Kyiv—and not through a mutually acceptable settlement.

Yet, Russia is economically and technologically dependent on foreign support, most of all on China’s. Some of Russia’s crucial political and economic allies, like North Korea, Iran, and Syria, are unequivocally interested in Moscow’s full victory. They will support the Russian aggression as far as they can. Other countries friendly to Russia, like China, India, or Brazil, may, in contrast, possess conflicting internal and foreign interests in their governments, parliaments, economies, and societies. Some domestic factions may favor a continuation of the war and Russian victory. In contrast, others might prefer peace now rather than a less favorable peace later.

Beijing has profited from the Russo-Ukrainian War so far, both economically and geopolitically. The war has created many new business opportunities for China and other countries around the world that do not participate in the Western sanctions regime against Russia. Beijing has acquired a valuable junior partner in Moscow in its geopolitical confrontation with Washington. 

Since February 2022, the Russo-Ukrainian War has distracted the attention of the United States and the entire West from the Indo-Pacific realm, as well as diverting more and more Western financial, military as well and other resources to Eastern Europe. On the other hand, the war’s continuation is generating, with every additional month, more risks and after-effects not only for the West. Some of the transcontinental repercussions of Russia’s military aggression are not in China’s economic or political interests.

Nuclear Scenarios

For instance, in late September 2024, Putin announced plans to loosen Russia’s nuclear doctrine. Putin’s declaration may be merely a continuation of the Kremlin’s nuclear bluffing that had already begun with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. Nevertheless, Russia’s ever-more aggressive war and continued threats of nuclear escalation are eroding the normative as well as psychological foundations of the worldwide non-proliferation regime.

As the war continues, the likelihood increases, moreover, that an escalation with grave implications not only for Eastern Europe but also for the wider world could happen. Harvard’s nuclear historian Mariana Budjeryn has recently pointed out that a Russia that is winning in Ukraine may actually be more likely to use nuclear weapons to complete its victory than a Russia that is losing. Such behavior would follow the pattern of the first and only deployment of nuclear weapons by the United States in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the worst case, the Kremlin’s continued public intimidation of Western countries supporting Ukraine with World War III could, even if not intended, become a self-fulfilling prophecy. One wonders whether China, Brazil, or India are interested in such a development.

A very different scenario of instability is also looming: The war could end with Russia’s crushing military defeat in Ukraine. This, in turn, could result not only in a regime change in Moscow but also in a partial or even complete break-up of the Russian Federation into several smaller states. The latter prospect is a possible outcome proposed by Professor Alexander Etkind of Central European University in Vienna. Etkind compares the actions of late Austria-Hungary with Russia’s behavior 100 years later. In 1914, the Habsburg dual monarchy had paradoxically started a world war that led to the disintegration of the empire four years later. In 2014, the Russian Federation started the Russo-Ukrainian War, which may eventually fracture Moscow’s post-Soviet rump empire.

Some observers suspect that this scenario may be one of the reasons why Beijing is cynically fueling the Russo-Ukrainian War through intensified economic cooperation with Moscow. According to this logic, The longer the war lasts, the more likely a break-up of the Russian Federation and the potential for Chinese territorial gains. This includes lands conquered by the Russian Empire from the Qing Dynasty throughout the nineteenth century, which are generally referred to as “Outer Manchuria.” In September 2024, Taiwanese president William Lai suggested that the People’s Republic should, if it takes its irredentism seriously, also be concerned about the northeastern territories that had been lost to Russia during China’s so-called “century of humiliation.”

If Beijing is indeed secretly promoting the corrosion of the Russian state through the continuation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, this would constitute a profoundly cynical strategy with uncertain benefits. It would not only create a zone of instability to the north of China but also create multiple nuclear-armed states on its northern border. Ethnic Russians would populate the post-Russian states, statelets, and territories at any rate and would certainly resent Chinese incursions. 

Will the Global South Help Ukraine?

Whether Russia wins or loses its war against Ukraine, the international repercussions of either scenario will be considerable. A total Russian victory would unsettle the UN system as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. It might even involve, as Mariana Budjeryn has written, the explosion of one or more nuclear warheads.

If Russia loses in a humiliating way in Ukraine, the resulting political instability in Moscow will have wider repercussions. In one way or another, it will spill over into the realm of international security. The Russo-Ukrainian War has created many political and economic opportunities for China and the Global South. However, its negative after-effects and global risks are also accumulating not only for Ukraine and the West but also beyond.

The coming weeks and months will show the strength of either pacifist or bellicist, risk-prone or risk-averse inclinations in various non-Western nations. Will Beijing and other powerful non-Western capitals be willing and able to seize the opportunity to persuade Moscow to cease its fire along the entire frontline and within Russia, too? Are countries like China, India, and Brazil interested in peace enough to use their international clout to force Russia into serious negotiations?

Will the major non-Western countries recognize their common interest with the West in a just peace between Ukraine and Russia and reject a total Ukrainian capitulation? Will Beijing and other non-Western countries be willing and able to force the Kremlin to leave the war? Ukraine's incursion into the Kursk Region since early August 2024, could be the last chance to prevent further escalation and expansion of the conflict beyond the Russo-Ukrainian frontline.

Dr. Andreas Umland is an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for East European Studies (SCEEUS) at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI).

Image: miss.cabul / Shutterstock.com.