Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been putting in the hard yards. Immediately after taking over the presidency of the Council of the European Union, which will last from July 1st to the end of the year, the conservative leader shocked the Western establishment by flying to Kyiv, where he met Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky, to Moscow for a short summit with President Vladimir V. Putin and, from there, to China and the U.S. This dramatic rebuttal of Europe’s pro-war consensus has earned Budapest few praises. Instead of applauding Orbán for working to end the bloody Ukrainian conflict, some have accused Hungary of breaking ‘Western unity.’ But unity in error is no virtue. When it comes to a war indirectly involving the world’s leading nuclear powers, the stakes are simply too high for indifference to be allowed to take hold.
Talking sense
The Ukraine war, Europe’s largest conflict since 1945, is now halfway through its third year. The cost has been extraordinary. Casualty estimates for both parties are now nearing the million mark. Ukraine, of course, has been the conflict’s primary victim. Never having quite recovered, economically or demographically, from the shock inflicted to it in the roaring ’90s—when the traumatic collapse of the Soviet Union led the country down the road of ineptly-conducted privatisations, immense social disruption, mass emigration, and the rise of a new oligarchic class—the nation has long been Europe’s poorest.
The war made things even worse, and disastrously so. Rosy scenarios about Ukraine’s post-war recovery notwithstanding, the truth is that well over half of the nation’s power production facilities have now been obliterated by Russian missiles. Ukraine’s demographic situation, already dire even before the war, is now genuinely calamitous, as millions of young Ukrainians saw no alternative but to flee to their wealthier European neighbours, likely never to return. With hundreds of thousands dead or maimed, reasonable estimates now suggest that the population under Kyiv’s control stands somewhere between 25 and 30 million souls, many of them aged. According to a recent study, the ravaged nation will require a net yearly immigration rate of 300,000 in order to keep its population at 30 million. Worse still, the data refers to the population residing within Ukraine’s 1991 borders, including Crimea and the southeastern regions Russia has annexed. Predictable losses—either to conquest as Russia makes further battlefield gains, or to deaths in combat—are similarly disregarded by the calculations.
Together with Ukraine itself, Europe has been the other major loser of this foolish war. Mutually beneficial trade between Russia and the member states of the European Union has declined precipitously, with dire consequences for our industries, purchasing power, and economic strength. Energy prices have boomed, with no return to pre-war levels in sight. Germany, the continent’s manufacturing powerhouse, is expected to grow between 0.1% and 0.3% this year. Meanwhile, and sanctions notwithstanding, Russia’s own economy has been experiencing a golden era: GDP has boomed almost 4% last year, and the IMF expects it to grow faster than any other advanced economy in 2024. Despite all the bravado about Western economic measures crippling Russia into submission, with U.S. President Joe Biden once boasting that “the ruble had been reduced to rubble” and that “Russia’s economy is on track to be cut in half,” Moscow has, in fact, substantially benefited from sanctions. Indeed, it was as recently as this month that the World Bank upgraded Moscow to the rank of a ‘high-income’ economy. In 2022, when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, President Putin commanded the world’s sixth largest economy. He now leads the fourth, according to the same financial institution.
Ukraine is headed to defeat
Russia’s strategy is based on the view that the evolution of the global balance of power does not presently favour the West. It was this idea that led Vladimir Putin to implement his pivot to Asia, a policy that saw Moscow successfully replace its Western trade with lucrative exports to regional behemoths such as India and China. Russia’s sheer economic size, abundance of natural resources, and industrial prowess, give it an autarkic potential that few—if any—other countries can match. The irresistible rise of alternative centres of economic and financial power—summarised by the BRICS grouping of developing countries—has, for all intents and purposes, heralded a new, post-liberal, and multipolar world order that the Kremlin has proved apt at exploiting. Intelligent, honest analysts predicted as much while Western blobbists merrily assured their credulous listeners that all it took to crush Russia was a strong enough ‘kick in the pants.’ As repeatedly foreseen by realist-minded scholars and observers such as John J. Mearsheimer, Emmanuel Todd, and Gray Connolly, as well as leading political figures including Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance, and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, the Kremlin bet on its superior will and resources as the crucial factors of victory. As of today, the bet appears to be paying off.
If there were ever room to argue that the conflict might be resolved manu militari and in ways amenable to Kyiv’s interests, then surely that door was dramatically closed well over a year ago. Correctly understanding that Kyiv could not, given its much weaker intrinsic strength, prevail in a war of attrition, its Western allies furnished it with irreplaceable and unrepeatable mass military aid for an all-or-nothing ‘counter-offensive.’ The operation ended as one of the biggest military fiascos since the 1854 Charge of the Light Brigade, as battle hardened, well-entrenched Russian units destroyed Ukraine’s NATO-supplied armour at the cost of a few villages that have since been retaken. It was Kyiv’s sole window of opportunity to achieve peace on its own terms, and President Zelensky’s troops failed to secure it.
One year after, it is evident to every reasonable, bona fide observer of the war that Ukraine is headed to inevitable defeat. This need not be a controversial statement. With the scenario of a Russian economic collapse now entirely put to bed, so too have foolish delusions of a collapse of the present Russian government. Indeed, not only is the war popular with most Russians, the economic bonanza it has caused has especially benefited the working class, driving it further into President Putin’s embrace. With last year’s Prigozhin coup crushed—and its main instigators killed in an improbable ‘accident’—the Russian leader is arguably navigating quieter political waters than at any point since his first inauguration, in 1999. Vladimir Putin is in the Kremlin to stay, and any policy counting on the opposite is foolish in the extreme.
On the military front, Ukraine’s predicament seems equally desperate, and bound to worsen. Kyiv’s decimated economy—now less than one tenth of Russia’s—cannot fund or sustain the war effort in any way. Kyiv’s reliance on its NATO sponsors is complete. Its shattered demographic base means that, even if Western leaders feel no qualms about fueling the conflict with incessant dollars and weapons, there will not be enough Ukrainian men to hold back Russia’s vastly more numerous, better equipped, and technologically superior assaults. Ukraine’s latest gamble, an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, seems more like a desperate attempt to gain valuable bargaining chips before peace talks commence than a sustainable, serious military effort. The reckless move risks, however, further overextending Kyiv’s limited forces, thus accelerating attrition in ways that will not benefit it in the long-term. Emmanuel Todd’s appraisal that the Kursk effort is Ukraine’s Ardennes Offensive—a desperate, hopeless gamble to win back the initiative put in place by a losing power—might well be prescient.
For Ukraine, manpower is the axis on which all other concerns turn. Insufficient troop numbers have now led President Zelensky’s government to engage in increasingly desperate and highly unpopular attempts at mass mobilisation. The draconian measures that have been put in place, however, are deeply destabilising. War exhaustion is making itself increasingly visible, as young Ukrainian men are shot dead by their own government for attempting to evade conscription, while women burn themselves alive in protest at the president’s total war policy. Rising intra-military intrigue, evidenced by the now constant replacement of Ukrainian commanders, is yet another sign that something is seriously wrong with the country. Having taken over the leadership of the Armed Forces as recently as February, General Oleksandr Syrskyi has been rumoured for weeks to be close to getting sacked, with prominent MP Mariana Bezuglaya accusing Syrsky of plotting the ‘capitulation’ of the country.
The writing is on the wall: as things stand, and as Ukraine’s military, economy, and internal political situation continue to erode, the country is well on its way to defeat at the front and upheaval in the rearguard. The choice facing Ukraine and the West is between a peace treaty that is grounded on reality and which reflects the balance of power, even if that means accepting painful concessions—or the growing danger of Ukrainian implosion.
The balance of interests
Wars are not decided on the grounds of morality, but on the existing balance of power between parties. Whatever one might think of the legitimacy of Russia’s, Ukraine’s, and NATO’s respective claims and objectives in the current war, any attempt at peace that does not recognise these facts will be fundamentally unserious.
Ukraine’s goal of joining the European Union and NATO with its 1991 borders intact will not be achieved. Neither Kyiv nor its backers have the strength to impose it by force of arms, as last year’s failed counter-offensive made clear. Indeed, the collective effort already implemented by the United States and its European allies towards this goal vastly surpasses its strained industrial capabilities. Furthermore, a new path that focuses on the far more important strategic threat represented by China’s expansionism in the Pacific is likely to be taken by the U.S., should Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump be elected this coming November. This change of focus in the allocation of America’s limited military and diplomatic resources has long been demanded by thinkers such as Elbridge Colby. Viktor Orbán has also alluded to its inevitability in a recently-published report to European Council President Charles Michel on his peace mission. As President Obama noted, correctly, while in office, Russia will always care more about Ukraine than the West will.
While it is understandable and legitimate for Kyiv to seek NATO and EU membership, neither outcome would necessarily correspond to the West’s own interest—the sole concern Western policymakers ought to have. Instead, it is hard to see how assuming the gigantic costs of rebuilding Ukraine—currently estimated by the World Bank at half a trillion dollars—would be beneficial for Western taxpayers. A permanently hostile relation between the West and Russia will, crucially, lead that great country, together with its vast pool of resources, deeper and deeper into China’s arms. Such a deepening alliance between Moscow and Beijing is profoundly contrary to Western economic, political, and security concerns.
This foolhardy policy is the reversal of President Richard Nixon’s and Henry Kissinger’s highly successful attempts to guarantee that both countries’ relations with the West remain better than between themselves. Worst yet, it enables a Russo-Chinese partnership that will supply China with advanced, highly important military technologies while reducing its dependence on the sea for access to crucial raw materials. From a geostrategic point of view, this means the unification of the Eurasian Heartland under a single, adversarial power bloc. This would be eerily reminiscent of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s warning that “Potentially, the most dangerous scenario [to the West] would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances.”
Rather, Western interests reside in limiting tensions with Russia and guaranteeing that the country does not side with China in the turbulent times ahead. This can only be achieved by understanding that Russia has reasonable interests in preventing Ukraine’s accession to NATO, for which any sovereign Russian government would fight. These certainly include, but go beyond, security. As the cradle of Kievan Russia and the longtime border of the Romanov world, Russia and Ukraine share a common history to which no imaginable Russian leader would be indifferent. Indeed, polls have consistently suggested an absolute majority of Russians view their neighbours as the same people as themselves, while over 40% of Ukrainians have thought the same until as recently as 2021. While one may agree or disagree with these notions, the complexities of the Russian-Ukrainian relationship are obviously a central factor of Russian foreign policy, regardless of who leads or may come to lead the country. William J. Burns, then U.S. ambassador to Russia, and now the director of the CIA, said as much in a sadly underdiscussed diplomatic cable from 2008:
Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In my more than two-and-a-half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russia’s interests … Today’s Russia will respond.
If Burns’ and George F. Kennan’s prescient, long forgotten warnings had shaped Western policy, there is good reason to believe that Europe would be much different today. It will be for future historians to fully unveil the many factors that led to the current conundrum, but there is no doubt that the Western elites’ arrogant disregard of history and the laws of geopolitics have played a critical role in the tragedy.
Peace through balance
While Russia cannot accept a NATO-aligned Kyiv, and while the West would gain little from it joining the alliance, the two parties share a strong common interest in keeping Ukraine as a neutral buffer state. At the Congress of Vienna, one of the most decisive events in diplomatic history, Austrian Prince Klemens von Metternich wisely decided against annexing the Duchy of Savoy, located between the Habsburg Empire and France, out of a desire to reduce potential points of friction with the restored Bourbon Monarchy of Louis XVIII. Current statesmen from both sides would be wise to learn from the great prince’s example, refrain from maximalist ambition, and focus on a peace settlement that limits, rather than increases, the probability of catastrophic conflict between nuclear powers. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has clearly articulated this very goal by stating that “not to share a border with Russia … is [our] country’s most important national security concern.”
At the same time, although a post-war Ukraine that serves as a buffer between Russia and NATO is a goal that the West should pursue, there can be little doubt that Ukraine’s future borders will be much different from what they were before 2022. The sooner Kyiv understands and accepts this objective, inescapable reality, the sooner it will be possible to achieve peace and cease the pointless destruction of lives, finance, and Ukraine’s national potential. The Ukrainian territories that were formally, constitutionally integrated into the Russian State in 2022 will not be returned to Kyiv’s control, either through military or diplomatic means: Moscow will not surrender in peace what it could secure in war, and to think otherwise is the height of folly. Thus, the West’s approach to ending the war should not only seek the preservation of a geopolitically unaligned, neutral Ukrainian state outside both NATO and the EU; it must accept that significant Ukrainian territories will have to be ceded to Moscow in exchange for a permanent settlement. This is a reality an increasing number of Ukrainian officials are ready to get to grips with. Kyiv’s politically influential mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, recently told Italy’s Corriere della Sera that putting an end to the war will likely require a “territorial compromise with Putin” followed by a “referendum” that grants it the necessary political legitimacy.
If Ukraine is to survive the current conflict as an independent state at all, however, time is of the essence. Just as the balance of power has shifted immeasurably against Kyiv since the early months of the war, when negotiations were last held, so too will Moscow’s posture harden even further with time. Back then, surprised by ferocious resistance, it is now known Moscow agreed to a generous treaty that would have seen Ukraine commit to neutrality and demilitarisation in exchange for retaking all territory occupied after February 2022. Ukrainian officials were reportedly overjoyed and “opened bottles of champagne” to celebrate the deal, but Kyiv later rejected it—apparently at the insistence of then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. This was a tragic, historic mistake for which Ukraine has since paid bitterly. Today, the price of peace has increased greatly, with the loss of two further oblasts—Zaporizhzhia and Kherson—inevitable, in part or in full. Should hostilities continue, even Elon Musk’s prophecy that Russia will eventually take Odessa may seem rosy for Ukraine.
In 1939, exhausted and facing an increasingly hopeless situation, the Army of the Second Spanish Republic rose against the pro-Communist government of Prime Minister Juan Negrín. The coup’s leader, Colonel Segismundo Casado, was a committed opponent of the victorious Nationalist forces of General Francisco Franco. Yet, Casado saw the war as lost, its continuation as a senseless waste of life, and a negotiated surrender as the Republic’s last hope. As it happened, it was too late—the Nacionales would accept nothing short of a complete, unconditional surrender. While this is not yet Ukraine’s situation, the country’s position is rapidly worsening. For it to persist as an independent state, as is in its own as well as Europe’s best interest, silencing the cannons is a matter of urgency. That is why Viktor Orbán’s peace crusade must be supported—for the sake of Ukraine, Europe, and the world.
