Ukraine between war and peace: a new power without a secure anchor

“We are incredibly close to the end,” said Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine, at a recent conference in Kiev. As Russia struggles to complete its conquest of southeastern Donbas, both countries are approaching the limits of what can be achieved militarily. Public sentiment in each shows little enthusiasm for continued fighting. Desertion rates are high on both sides. About 58 percent of Russians would accept a ceasefire without any preconditions, according to a Russian Field poll. Similarly, 59 percent of Ukrainians, according to the Ukraine Rating Group, would be willing to compromise with the de facto loss of territory if it led to a ceasefire. Few believe a formal peace will ever come; but many expect a pause that could last anywhere from six months to six years.

So the increasingly interesting question is not so much when the fighting will stop, but what will happen after that. The perception of success or failure depends less on territory and more on the ability to prevent a new attack and on the stability of Ukraine’s internal politics. “It’s not just where the (ceasefire) line is, it’s what’s behind that line and what’s in people’s minds,” says Valery Zaluzhny, a former commander of the Ukrainian armed forces and now ambassador to London.

From the moment Vladimir Putin first struck at Ukraine in 2014, his goal was to prevent a fellow Slavic nation from seceding and joining the West. For the West, drawing Ukraine into its fold was a test of its own superiority. As Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, wrote a week after Russia annexed Crimea: “Too often the Ukrainian question is framed as a showdown: will Ukraine join the East or the West?” The only way for Ukraine to survive and prosper, he argued, was to join neither, but to serve as a bridge between the two; he cited Finland, a prosperous and at the time still neutral country, as an example.

In February 2022, Putin blew up that bridge, hoping to eliminate the possibility of Ukraine ever leaving the Russian sphere. In May 2023, Kissinger, who had strongly opposed Ukraine’s invitation to join NATO, told The Economist that the West, having armed it to the teeth, now had no choice but to admit Ukraine into the Alliance—because leaving Ukraine as the best-armed country in Europe, without support or constraints, would be dangerous.

He predicted that the war would end with both sides dissatisfied with the outcome. “So, for the sake of Europe's security, it is better for Ukraine to be in NATO, where it cannot make national decisions about territorial claims.” He envisioned an improved, independent Ukraine, closely tied to Europe.

But two years later, the prospects of Ukraine being anchored in Western security and economic structures seem much less certain. Membership in NATO is all but out of the question. President Donald Trump has shifted responsibility for Ukraine to Europe. “It’s still hard for people to grasp,” says Neil Ferguson, a historian at the Hoover Institution, “but Trump has taken the United States out of the picture. This is a European war.”

Although European economies are ten times larger than Russia's, "you don't win wars with GDP, but by turning GDP into (military) things, and we are only at the beginning of that process," says Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland's foreign minister.

The prospects for Ukraine joining the European Union in the foreseeable future also look increasingly uncertain, as politics and public opinion in key member states turn from enthusiasm to weariness. At the start of the war, 75 percent of Poles supported Ukraine's membership in NATO. Now 53 percent oppose it, while the proportion of supporters has fallen to 34 percent.

The mood is also changing in Ukraine. Four years of war have given it more self-confidence and confirmed its identity, giving impetus to the idea of ​​Ukraine as a new middle power - oriented towards the West, but non-aligned. The majority of Ukrainians (52 percent) would prefer stable financing and arming of Ukrainian forces to the deployment of foreign troops on their territory (35 percent), according to the Ukraine Rating Group. “As alliances change, we should not be anyone’s border, but look after our own interests, not as an anti-Russian project, but as a project of Ukraine,” says Yulia Mostovaya, editor of the ZN.ua portal.

As Yaroslav Hrytsak, a historian in Lviv, explains, Ukraine has long been a democracy more by inertia than by institutional design. Its freedoms have been based not on independent courts or parliament, but on the pragmatism of interest groups, the diversity of its regions, the weakness of the central state, and, perhaps above all, on the ability of its people to unite in times of crisis. Ukraine’s tradition of militarized democracy has served it well in times of war, but it leaves it vulnerable in times of peace.

So there are many risks along the way. The country’s most effective units are semi-autonomous armies with their own financial, media and political resources and loyalties. In times of war, they are all aligned to fight an external enemy. But when the fighting stops, and in the absence of a functioning political process, they could turn back to their own interests. Feelings of betrayal by allies are already fueling resentment toward the West. Disagreements over language and identity could fuel nationalism. Questions about the conduct of the war, corruption and inequality could lead to a reckoning. The hard work of real reform, Hricak says, is yet to come.

Translation: A. Š.