After three years of slaughter it appears possible that the Ukraine-Russia conflict may be brought to a halt, or at least a pause, this year.
President Trump has long made it an objective to attain a ceasefire. Both he and much of his support base resent the vast sums spent on propping up the Ukraine war effort, and they seem indifferent to the Biden strategy of prolonging the war indefinitely to bleed Russia white.
Trump seems to be looking for some sort of grand bargain with President Putin. The moves towards a settlement also rest on the fact that Ukraine is on the back foot militarily, and has been since its failed, NATO-directed offensive of summer 2023.
There is no realistic prospect of Ukraine regaining the territory currently under Russian military control. It is moreover uncertain whether the population of those areas would welcome such ‘liberation’.
At the same time Russia’s army has been unable to translate numerous bloody and hard-won tactical victories into a strategic breakthrough. The front line has been bent and incrementally pushed back but not broken. The Ukrainian state seems certain to survive the war, intact if diminished, which was moot in February 2022.
Russia’s economy has not collapsed, as NATO strategists initially expected, but there are surely sections of the Moscow elite that covert re-entry to western markets, not to mention their Knightsbridge mansions and Mediterranean yachts.
Putin has indicated a willingness to negotiate an end to the war, but his military upper hand means it may prove hard to convince his regime that it will gain more thereby than through continuing fighting.
Ukraine’s Zelensky has no realistic option other than do US bidding. He is entirely dependent on US support – despite all the bluster. European politicians, including Starmer, could offer no more than a partial and temporary substitute, only postponing the inevitable.
Stop the War would welcome any ceasefire. We opposed Russia’s 2022 invasion from the beginning, while also recognising the dangerous provocation inherent in plans to extend membership of NATO – a military bloc with a history of aggression – to include Ukraine, a position which earned us the loathing of the Starmer leadership in the Labour Party.
We have further opposed the cynical efforts of both Tory and Labour governments to prolong the war and sabotage any initiative towards peace, as well as the continued pouring of arms and money, better spent at home, into the conflict.
In supporting a ceasefire, it must be recognised that this can only be on the basis of existing military lines, with perhaps minor adjustments. No other position is realistic.
Stop the War will continue to reject any extension of NATO to Ukraine. Nothing is more likely to make renewed conflict unavoidable. We oppose any deployment of British troops to Ukraine as any part of any deal, unless as part of a multilateral European security architecture supported by all. That is not in sight.
It would be wrong to go further than that in our demands. The terms of a ceasefire, and still more so of a lasting peace, are for the parties concerned to negotiate. Undoubtedly, there are serious issues around the treatment of minorities in Ukraine, as there are regarding Putin’s attitude towards an independent Ukrainian state of any description. Both have been factors underlying the war.
It is unwise and unnecessary for Stop the War to take a position on those issues, and others that will likely arise. It is not part of our mandate to write settlements for every conflict across the earth, a traditional temptation on sections of the British left which can mask a certain chauvinism. Rather it is to challenge the bellicose policies of the British government and the alliances to which it adheres.
It would be a significant diversion from our proper task: rejecting the bipartisan war drive which subordinates Britain to Washington’s confrontation with China, challenging any new cold war and the associated immense rise in military spending projected, and opposing bellicose British diplomacy in eastern Europe and elsewhere.
In relation to Ukraine we work for a peace settlement. We do not seek to write it. We do demand that Britain’s politicians support, rather than obstruct it.