Commentary

Putin’s nuclear sabre-rattling has a clear eye on future talks, and an increasingly war-weary Ukraine may be ready to sit down too

Mark Urban

Saturday November 23 2024, 6.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times

It’s felt like a week on the brink. But of what exactly? It ended with warlike noises from Moscow, but every major party to the Ukraine war is now jockeying for advantage, trying to end that conflict on the best terms for itself.  “So, that’s what you wanted?” Russia’s former president and a noted hawk, Dmitry Medvedev, posted on social media, with video of Russian missile warheads raining down on a Ukrainian city. “Well, you’ve damn well got it!” This, and a more temperate TV address on Thursday night by Vladimir Putin, sought to drive home a forceful response to Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets earlier in the week, after President Biden’s agreement to allow the use of western-supplied weapons in that way.

In truth, after Putin saw America breach a red line that he had very publicly set in September, he had to do something. But firing an expensive prototype ballistic missile that is not the most accurate of weapons (because it’s designed to cause massive destruction with nuclear warheads) ranks as a gesture rather than marking the opening of a more destructive phase of the war.

Similarly, the recent change in Russia’s nuclear doctrine, allowing a recourse to such weapons even in response to conventional attacks that threaten Russia’s territorial integrity, is about signalling determination to set the terms for security arrangements that will follow this conflict. The new doctrine suggests that nukes could be used to counter moves “aimed at isolating part of the territory of the Russian Federation”, a possible reference to Crimea, which the Kremlin is evidently determined to keep.

For as we have also seen in recent public statements, Putin now expects peace overtures from Donald Trump, and says he will engage seriously. As if underscoring that reality, Michael Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security adviser, told Fox News last week that the president-elect’s focus is now: “How do we get both sides to the table to end this war? What’s the framework for a deal? And who’s sitting at that table?”  As the search for answers to those questions continues, each side tries to use force to improve its position. The defence secretary, John Healey, told MPs on Thursday that “the front line is now less stable than at any time since the early days of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022”, due to a “very clear escalation from Putin”.

Ukraine’s attempt to secure a bargaining chip by launching an offensive three and a half months ago into Russia’s Kursk region has failed to change the war’s dynamics. They’ve already lost about half of the ground gained in that push, while Russian forces have not been stopped in their advances in Donbas. Ukrainian troops are now expecting to be hit by a new offensive in the Zaporizhzhia area to the south.

The sense that Russia is gaining, albeit slowly, on the battlefield, combined with Putin’s commitment to discussing peace with Trump and the absence of any deployment of nuclear warheads, have all led western intelligence analysts to doubt the seriousness of the Kremlin’s nuclear sabre-rattling. No change is therefore likely in the new policy of allowing the Ukrainians to fire advanced western weapons into Russia.

Last week’s deep strikes by Atacms and Storm Shadow missiles need to be seen in the context of this generally dire battlefield picture for Ukraine, with western leaders trying to do something to help.

Jean-Noël Barrot, the French foreign minister, yesterday confirmed that his country “did not set or express red lines” on the Ukrainian use of weapons they had supplied, apparently clearing the way for Scalp, their equivalent of Storm Shadow, to be used for deep strikes.

With the stocks of available Atacms believed to be in the dozens — and of Scalp/Storm Shadow several score respectively — nobody, though, is expecting miracles.

 Little wonder that many Ukrainians are weary of a war that passed its 1,000-day mark on Tuesday. Polling by Gallup last week showed for the first time a majority, 52 per cent, of Ukrainians agreeing with the proposition that the country should enter negotiations to end the war as soon as possible, whereas the counter-proposition, of fighting on until victory, was supported by 38 per cent, having tumbled from 63 per cent when a similar survey was done at the start of 2023.

There are many who fear that Putin will not stop fighting because he knows these changed realities only too well. However, the notion that he could go for all-out victory ignores how slow and costly Russia’s advances have been this year.

Along with enormous casualties have come the financial costs of having to pay ever higher salaries to attract soldiers, as well as providing benefits for hundreds of thousands who have lost a relative or suffered severe wounds. That adds to wider economic woes for the Kremlin, which longs for some easing of the sanctions regime.

If that isn’t enough to nudge Putin into talks, some members of Team Trump have speculated about keeping arms supplies to Ukraine going or placing further sanctions on the Russian economy. And if Putin does come along while President Zelensky holds back, Poland and some other Nato nations have discussed the viability of keeping the war going without US aid, though the Ukrainian president himself predicted last week that his country would lose the war without American help.

Such is the expectation of a Trump administration-led negotiation now that many wily old diplomats are saying that none of Putin or Zelensky’s public statements  can  be  taken at face value.

But perhaps a certain amount can be gleaned about what will greet those who start the scoping talks in Turkey, India, Qatar or the other places that are offering their good offices, by reading between the lines of presidential statements and hearing what officials are telling people off the record.

When Putin and other Kremlin officials talk about stopping Ukraine from joining Nato, that’s easy because it isn’t seriously on the agenda. The president-elect has said the idea of it happening soon is “unhinged” and German officials express similar sentiments in less Trumpian language.

As for territory, on Wednesday Zelensky told Fox News: “We acknowledge that we do not have the strength, by military means, to push Putin back to the 1991 line.” Crimea will remain Russian, and probably much of eastern Ukraine too, though Kyiv will not concede its sovereignty.

In return, a report from Reuters last week noted the Kremlin appears ready to pull back in certain areas near Kharkiv and Mykolaiv. This chimes with past comments by Zelensky about buffer or “disengagement” zones needed to secure citizens in those Ukrainian cities from Russian artillery attacks.

Zelensky will face considerable difficulties convincing his people that accepting such a freezing of the conflict, locking in many Russian gains, is any better than the Minsk agreements of 2014/15, an outcome he has long said was unacceptable. So instead of territory, his “Plan for Victory” now emphasises strong security guarantees from western countries and the build-up of a substantial arms industry in Ukraine.

It is around these questions — speaking to the country’s ability to maintain armed forces strong enough to deter future Russian aggression, and the possibility of some western countries sending troops to buttress any disengagement — that the biggest gaps remain with the Kremlin’s publicly declared positions. Putin will try to insist that Ukraine maintains a small military and limit its connection with Nato armies.

All kinds of ideas are circulating about how to square this circle; from allowing large numbers of Ukrainian troops to be based in Nato countries so they are not, strictly speaking, part of their country’s deployed forces, to pre-positioning weapons in Ukraine for emergency deployment of western forces.

However, we do not yet know that any formal negotiations are under way. It’s likely that some exploratory discussions are going on through intermediaries, but the thing about confidential channels is they have to remain just that, secret. In the coming weeks we will be scrutinising Putin and Zelensky’s words as much for what is not said as what is, waiting to see if this moment of opportunity ripens into something that ends the war.