Changing contours of Ukraine war

The Ukraine war is dragging on even as Turkish President Recep Tyap Erdogan and United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres went through complicated rounds of talks with Ukraine and Russia separately to facilitate the export of Ukrainian wheat from the port of Odessa on the Black Sea. Now, Erdogan and Guterres have moved on to the next difficult issue of negotiation, demilitarize the Ukrainian nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia. Russian troops had captured the place in March, weeks after the war began on February 24 this year. Ukrainian leaders say that the plan of the Russians was to cut off the power supply from the plant to Ukraine. Ukraine’s nuclear power company Energoatom says that Russia is planning a provocative action and the Russians too say that Ukrainians are preparing to provoke. There is also the suggestion that the International Atomic Agency (IAA) should examine the situation at Zaporizhzhia. The Russians are opposed to it and they say their troops are preventing any untoward incident at the crucial power plant.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden is rolling out a $800 million arms package for Ukraine. Ukrainian leaders seem to feel that the American arms supply is helping them to stay in the war, though they are not sure whether it will help them win the war. While Erdogan and Guterres want the Ukrainians and Russian to move to the negotiating table about the war, the Ukrainians are taking the maximalist position that the Russians must vacate Ukrainian territory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky must be referring to all the territory, including Crimea which was taken over by Russia in 2014. But he knows well enough that at the negotiation table he might have to accept something much less, and quite likely he would not be averse to making the compromise.

The war is going to intensify in spurts and make it is global news headlines, but it will slowly meander its way to negotiations. Nato and European Union (EU) leaders, who took an aggressive position against Russia and its president Vladimir Putin have fallen silent. It is the peacemakers like Erdogan and Guterres who are talking, and they are being heard. The Americans too are not averse to some sort of negotiated peace, and the economic sanctions against Russia are every slowly being whittled away. It can be expected that sometime in 2023, there would be an untidy peace between Ukraine and Russia, and leaders in the two countries would remain unhappy.

It would be futile to ask whether Russian President Putin could have avoided this precipitate war, and everyone took a rhetorical position against Russia, and it seemed that the old Cold War has returned. The Americans, it looks like, are more focused on the situation in Taiwan, and China’s hardened position, than Ukraine. President Biden has the India-Pacific on mind and not Europe.

Putin had hoped to replace Zelensky who became much too assertive to the liking of the big neighbours. But America and Nato have made it clear that they would not approve a regime change in Kyiv. Of course, the crucial question is whether Putin strengthened his position in Kremlin through this war. He may have gained a temporary advantage, but nothing more than that. The trade balance between Russia and Europe will be restored though it will take much longer than establishing peace. The most likely heroes of the Ukraine war would be the peacemakers, Erdogan and Guterres. The Ukraine war is much more than a storm in the European teacup. It has unleashed a local storm. And there are as yet no great changes in the European balance of power.