There is a consensus among observers of the Russo-Ukrainian War that it should end as soon as possible. Most Ukrainians couldn’t agree more. Furthermore, many Russians would not mind ceasing the carnage. Why, then, is there still no negotiated finale to the war?

Many reasons hamper the potential for compromise between Kyiv and Moscow. The Ukrainian and Russian constitutions, both country’s domestic politics, Crimea’s peculiar needs, and Eastern European historical memory all present obstacles to a diplomatic settlement. Each of these is a formidable barrier, and their combined challenge for decisionmakers in Moscow and Kyiv will likely prolong the war through 2024.

Pushing for a negotiated ceasefire of some durability—not to mention sustainable peace—between Ukraine and Russia is futile. Following this strategy would not only be inconclusive but also absorb the energy needed to pursue more promising paths toward resolving the conflict.

Ukraine’s and Russia’s Constitutions

The foundations of international law (i.e., the inviolability of borders and territorial integrity of states) are frequently mentioned obstacles to compromise between Kyiv and Moscow. While this is doubtlessly valid, global norms are not the highest legal hindrance to successful Russian-Ukrainian negotiations. In the past, post-Soviet Russia had been engaged in creating or supporting separatist movements, sparking or fanning civil wars, as well as establishing so-called “republics” in its backyard. 

However, ten years ago, Moscow went beyond this informal strategy of destroying independent states emerging from its former empire. In March 2014, Russia formally annexed Crimea and made it an official part of its pseudo-federation. In September 2022, Moscow repeated this move and declared four southeast Ukrainian mainland regions part of the Russian Federation. Russia’s Constitution was altered to incorporate them fully. As a result, there are now five administrative units of Ukraine claimed by Russia’s Constitution and scores of lower Russian legal acts, including laws, decrees, resolutions, etc.

According to Ukrainian and international law, Moscow’s claim is null and void. Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, Russia’s self-announced entitlement to the five occupied Ukrainian regions is also historically dubious. These territories were colonized by the Tsarist and Soviet empires rather than owned by a primordial Muscovite state. Nevertheless, Moscow’s illegal and ahistorical pretense to the five Ukrainian regions is now fully enshrined in Russian law, federal legislation, and state structure. This has already had deep material and psychological effects on the citizens’ daily economic, social, cultural, and private lives in the annexed regions, especially in Crimea.

Neither Ukraine’s nor Russia’s constitutions can be easily changed. Theoretically, the Ukrainian Constitution can be quickly amended by a two-thirds majority of Ukraine’s unicameral parliament, the Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council). Yet, such a constitutional reform will never pass. In August 2015, under pressure from Berlin and Paris, former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko attempted to temporarily and marginally change Ukraine’s Constitution to fulfill the infamous Minsk Agreements. Yet, scheduling a parliamentary vote on this minor and arguably inconsequential constitutional reform led to a violent clash in front of the Verkhovna Rada. Several people died, and dozens were injured in Kyiv’s city center. The proposed temporary special status for the Russian-occupied parts of the Donbas did not pass parliament. Against this background, and given other factors, a Ukrainian renunciation of its legitimate state territory will never happen.

In contrast, the prospect of a Russian reversal of the 2014 and 2022 constitutional reforms implementing the annexations is somewhat more likely than a Ukrainian cessation of its temporarily occupied territories. Yet, if and when such an intention emerges, a Russian fulfilling its obligations under international law will not be easy to implement. Not only is it politically more feasible to annex territories than cede them, but Russia’s procedure of constitutional revision is also more complicated than Ukraine’s.

A hypothetical de-annexation vote by the Russian parliament would only be the first of several steps in enacting new constitutional reform. Moreover, for such a revision process to start, the regime in Moscow and the situation in Ukraine would first have to change fundamentally. In other words, a formal Russian reversion of Putin’s expansionist adventure will only come after, not before its material end. The hope that Ukraine and Russia can enact even a temporary abrogation of their currently valid constitutions is unrealistic.

Two Hawkish Domestic Constituencies

Both Ukraine and Russia contain significant social and political groups that strictly oppose any territorial or political compromise with the enemy. Due to the war’s high human and political toll on both countries, even symbolic concessions to the other side would generate domestic political challenges for both governments. Conciliatory steps toward the other side, as a result of hypothetical negotiations, will be regarded by large sections of both societies as acts of national treason. Many citizens and entire parties would oppose them, making their voices heard and becoming politically as well as physically active.

The hawkish constituencies of Ukraine and Russia are, to be sure, neither normatively nor politically comparable. They are fundamentally different in numerous ways—morally, historically, and culturally. On one side, the Ukrainian constituency merely demands restoring law, order, and justice. This hawkish camp includes most of the country’s population and elite.

On the other side are Russians who insist that at least some territorial and political gains from Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine since 2014 should remain permanent. The radical wing, including Vladimir Putin himself, thinks the already achieved territorial expansion is insufficient. To them, certain regions not yet annexed by Russia, like Odesa and Mykolaiv, are also part of Russia. Moreover, the Ukrainian state’s current non-membership in the EU and NATO should, in this view, become permanent. They also think Ukraine’s sovereignty should be limited in several other regards—from language to defense policies.

The depth and width of hawkishness in Russia’s population are less than that of Ukraine’s citizenry. A future Russian acceptance of the loss of most of the relative gains for Russia from the war is more likely and can become more widespread than Ukrainian acceptance of a written acknowledgment of losses of territory and sovereignty. However, Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea continues to have overwhelming support in Russia. This sentiment reaches far beyond the outspoken imperialist sections of Russian society.

Such an outlook creates a peculiar strategic problem for the Kremlin, the Russian population, and outside actors. For geographic reasons, Crimea is the most distant and least defensible for Russia out of the five Ukrainian regions annexed since 2014. It is thus the war booty most unlikely to remain in permanent Russian hands. At the same time, Crimea is, and will stay, the most popular of Putin’s territorial achievements in the war.

To be sure, the aims, sentiments, and visions of ordinary Ukrainians and Russians regarding the war, as measured in opinion polls, have been shifting in content and intensity since 2021. Nevertheless, today, a clear majority of Ukrainians continue to support a complete restoration of territorial integrity before peace. In Russia, polls continue to show strong support for the “special military operation.” Both countries contain, moreover, vocal maximalist hawkish groups who are strictly against even minor concessions. Some of these particularly intransigent parts of society include members who are experienced in using arms and have access to them.

A double domestic political challenge for successful negotiations would remain even after a hypothetical agreement to change the Russian or Ukrainian Constitution (or both). The Russian and Ukrainian governments may, for one reason or another, become inclined to achieve a negotiated end to the war. Yet, it remains to be seen what compromise they could sell to the less dovish parts of their domestic audiences. Given more or less widespread hawkish sentiments in the Ukrainian and Russian populations, Moscow and Kyiv would both risk civil war at home.

In fact, Moscow has always tried to upgrade its initially furtive—and later open—inter-state war against Ukraine into a civil war within the Ukrainian political nation itself since 2014. For eight years, the West oddly supported this Kremlin strategy with its pressure on Kyiv to implement the infamous Minsk Agreements. This shameful policy, mainly promoted by Berlin and Paris, only ended in February 2022.

As the Prigozhin mutiny last June illustrated, the prospect of domestic civil unrest has also become an issue for the Russian leadership. Prigozhin’s armed uprising was motivated, it may be worth reminding, by the insurgents’ perception of insufficient bellicosity from Moscow, not by any pacifism. Given precarious political situations in both the Russian and Ukrainian hinterland, it is unlikely that Kyiv or Moscow will be able to make sufficient concessions to achieve a lasting ceasefire, let alone a peace deal.

The Crimean Conundrum

Another hindrance to reaching a negotiated end to the war is the role of Crimea in the Russian national mind and military expansion since 2014. As mentioned, Crimea was the most popular territorial achievement that Putin presented to the Russian nation. It is a far more appreciated Russian geographic acquisition than Transnistria in Moldova, Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region (“South Ossetia”) in Georgia, or the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, or Kherson regions in mainland Ukraine. However, the 2014 annexation was based on a profoundly flawed historical narrative about an allegedly Russian Crimea.

For only thirty-two years in history, from 1922 to 1954, Crimea had been administratively linked to the territory of today’s Russian Federation. Before that, it was connected via the Crimean Khanate (until 1783) and the Tsarist Empire’s Taurida Governorate (1802–1917) to the territory of today’s southern Ukrainian mainland. After its subsequent brief period in the so-called Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, it was linked, via the Ukrainian Soviet Republic (1954–1991) and independent Ukraine (since 1991), to the territory of today’s entire Ukrainian state.

The Russian character of Crimea is partly historical fiction and partly the result of ruthless demographic engineering by pre-Soviet, Soviet, and post-Soviet governments in Moscow. Over the last 240 years, according to Russian official statistics, St. Petersburg/Moscow brought down the percentage of indigenous Crimean Tatars in Crimea’s population from over 84 percent in 1785 to 12 percent in 2014. The Tsars, Bolsheviks, and Putin engaged in violent repression, deportation, and expulsion to permanently displace hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars from their native lands.

Furthermore, Russia’s colonial policies on the Black Sea peninsula meant the replacement of indigenous people with Eastern Slavs. Until 1991, this included Ukrainians, who comprised about a fourth of Crimea’s population. Since the 1940s, most of Crimea’s population has been ethnically Russian. Only after Stalin’s violent mass deportation of almost all of Crimea’s indigenous people to the Asian part of the Soviet Union in 1944, with many of them dying during their enforced exile, did the Russians become an absolute majority on the peninsula. The ethnic Russian demographic dominance in Crimea—achieved via a horrendous mass crime—is less than eighty years old. 

Notwithstanding, most Russians and some outside observers believe that Crimea has belonged to Russia since ancient times. This popular mythology is driven more by the peninsula’s beauty, long Black Sea beaches, and partly subtropical climate than by Crimea’s largely non-Russian history. When Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, many Russians became so ecstatic that Russia’s corruption perception index, measured by Transparency International, went down temporarily. In 2014, the sky was bluer and the grass greener for most Russians, making the likelihood of Russia returning Crimea to Ukraine due to negotiations unlikely.

This creates a peculiar strategic dilemma for the Kremlin. Moscow may, at some point, become interested in ending the war. A new Russian leadership may perhaps be ready to officially “sacrifice” some of the mainland Russian territories annexed in 2022 and even reverse the constitutional reform of that year. Yet, Crimea always needed these same Ukrainian mainland territories to its north for its development.

The close geographical and historical connection between Crimea and Ukraine’s mainland was the primary reason that the Soviet government collectively (rather than Nikita Khrushchev personally) decided to transfer Crimea from the Russian to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954. In 2022, a somewhat similar consideration prompted Putin to attack Ukraine’s east and south. Having successfully captured the peninsula in 2014, Moscow realized that Russia also needed to occupy the Ukrainian mainland territories to Crimea’s north to sustain the Black Sea pearl’s economic development. Between 2014 and 2021, illegally annexed Crimea was the Russian Federation’s most heavily subsidized region, with—among other transfers from Moscow— $10 billion worth of Russian investment pouring in between 2014 and 2020.

Crimea was always and remains today part of a larger geo-economic area that also embraces Ukraine’s southern mainland. In a hypothetical Russian-Ukrainian negotiation on the future of the currently occupied territories, it is thus all or nothing not only for Kyiv but also for Moscow. This is especially so once the Kerch Bridge is destroyed by Ukraine’s armed forces—an action likely to happen sooner or later. A partial Russian acceptance of Ukraine regaining its mainland territories, yet leaving Crimea as a consolation prize to Moscow, would not only be unacceptable for Kyiv. It would also be an unsustainable solution for the Kremlin. Keeping Crimea as an isolated occupied exclave far away from other Russian-controlled lands would make neither economic nor strategic sense for Moscow.

Nevertheless, many non-Ukrainian observers see Crimea as an object of negotiation and a potential compromise instrument. However, the peninsula is neither. A simple glance at the map and consultation of Crimea’s history should clarify that the peninsula would be more of a problem than a means to its solution in negotiations. Crimea’s need for a close connection to the Ukrainian mainland in the north, i.e., a link to the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Donbas regions, decreases the likelihood of compromise between Kyiv and Moscow.

East-Central European Skepticism Towards Moscow

The most important factor holding Kyiv from premature negotiations with Moscow is its historical experience with Russia and comparative interpretation of its current dilemma. Ukrainian national history and the past of other east-central European nations suggest that Russia will not uphold an agreement reached via diplomatic compromise. Independent Ukraine has, over the last thirty years, signed hundreds of agreements with Russia—most of which are void today.

Among them were political memoranda and accords such as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum or 2014/2015 Minsk Agreements, and fully ratified deals like the 1991 trilateral Belovezha Pact signed by Boris Yeltsin or the 2003 bilateral Russian-Ukrainian Border Treaty signed by Vladimir Putin. Several documents explicitly acknowledge Ukraine’s borders, integrity, and sovereignty. Yet even those with the signature of Russia’s president and ratified by the Russian parliament became invalid in 2014 and 2022.

One of the earliest and most instructive post-Soviet examples of how Moscow behaves vis-à-vis its former colonies was its intervention in Moldova in the early 1990s when Putin was still a secondary bureaucrat in St. Petersburg. In 1992, the commander of the Fourteenth Russian Army, the late Aleksandr Lebed, justified his troops’ intervention in an intra-Moldovan conflict by alleging that Moldova’s new government was behaving worse than SS men fifty years prior. Lebed provided the explanation that Putin would later use for his invasions into Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. The Russian military supported pro-Russian separatists in Moldova, leading to the consolidation of a separatist pseudo-state, the so-called “Transnistrian-Moldovan Republic.” This oddly shaped entity stretches hundreds of kilometers between the eastern shore of the Nistru River and Moldova’s border with Ukraine.

To solve the issue, Chisinau entered negotiations with Moscow and involved international organizations like the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) in conflict resolution. The West did not economically sanction Russia or support Moldova with weapons. In 1994, Chisinau signed a treaty with Moscow on the withdrawal of Russia’s troops from Moldova. Moreover, in its new Constitution, adopted the same year and still valid today, Moldova defined itself as a bloc-free country, thus preventing a potential future in NATO. During the following years, multiple negotiations were held between Chisinau and Tiraspol—with and without Western participation. Economic exchange, person-to-person contact, and other confidence-building measures, including international organizations and other instruments of conflict mediation and resolution, were applied in a textbook manner.

Yet, the remnants of Lebed’s Fourteenth Army, now called the Operational Group of the Russian Forces, are still in Transnistria. They continue to uphold the separatist quasi-regime. After over three decades, the Moscow-supported pseudo-state on Moldova’s internationally acknowledged territory is alive and well. Since 2014, the Transnistrian “republic” has created, for the Kremlin, an additional security threat for Ukraine from the West.

For thirty years, Moldova has been one of the poorest countries in Europe and a permanently failed state. The fate of Moldova, the success of Moscow’s Transnistrian experiment, and the behavior of the West became instructive experiences for the Kremlin. They informed Russia’s behavior and strategies in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. The model of the Transnistrian blueprint went so far that some of the Moscow-installed functionaries of the pseudo-state’s government in Tiraspol were transferred to the Donbas region in 2014. There, they helped create the so-called “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, which Russia annexed in September 2022.

This and similar adventures by Moscow in the post-Soviet space do not bode well, from a Ukrainian standpoint, for negotiations with the Kremlin. Ukrainians, as well as other nations and ethnicities of the former Tsarist and Soviet empires, have, over the centuries, accumulated many bitter experiences with Russian imperialism, which is—once again—Moscow’s barely disguised ideology. These historical lessons advise not only Kyiv but also Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw, or Prague that Ukraine must reach, at least, partial victory before entering meaningful negotiations with Russia. Only when facing military disaster will Moscow engage in a genuine search for a diplomatic solution that may be acceptable to Kyiv and have the potential to hold.

Conclusions

Negotiations will, at some point, start to play a role. Yet they must wait until the situation on the ground and in Moscow changes to a degree that such talks make sense for Kyiv. An agreement signed before Ukraine has achieved a salient military advantage and a stronger negotiation position will likely be a charade. At most, it will accomplish a postponement rather than an end of armed conflict.

A quick ceasefire agreement today could eventually even help prolong the overall length of high-intensity warfare. Such a result would counter the security concerns that led to the start of negotiations in the first place. The Minsk Agreements did soothe the armed confrontation in 2014 and 2015. Yet they did not prevent the massive 2022 escalation and have arguably co-prepared it.

Once a meaningful agreement between Kyiv and Moscow is signed, its functioning must be ensured. Against the background of Russia’s behavior in the post-Soviet space during the last thirty years, securing future peace will only be possible with plausible military deterrence against further escalation. Providing substantial military support to Kyiv is thus the right strategy in three ways. It will, firstly, help to prepare meaningful negotiations now. Secondly, it will ensure a sustainable accord between Kyiv and Moscow at some point in the future. Lastly, it will keep the peace, once it is reached, intact.

In 2014, Kyiv tried to implement some popular pacifist formulas such as “Imagine there is war, but nobody attends” (in German: “Stell Dir vor, es ist Krieg und keiner geht hin”) or “Building peace without weapons” (in German: “Frieden schaffen ohne Waffen”) in Crimea. This Ukrainian behavior occurred ten years ago with the West’s explicit approval, if not under active Western pressure. The result has been the largest European war since World War II. A lesson learned from this disaster is that Kyiv’s and Western behavior should be guided by empirical analysis of actual challenges rather than well-motivated but futile intentions and irrelevant historical references.

Dr. Andreas Umland is an Analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies in the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. The article summarizes the results of a policy advice series project implemented within four separate reports throughout 2023. See: https://sceeus.se/en/publications/.

Image: Shutterstock.com.