Speaking on 9 October at the Ukraine-South-East Europe Summit in Croatia, Ukrainian President Zelensky said that Ukraine has an opportunity to “promote peace and lasting stability” in the next three months and that the situation on the battlefield creates an opportunity to take decisive steps to end the conflict with Russia by 2025 at the latest. He then launched efforts to lobby for help and support from the four main members of NATO and the EU, namely Britain, France, Italy and Germany.
This was Zelenski’s most optimistic message of peace since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, and with the clearest timeframe. It clearly shows that he is not only pinning his hopes on the planned second “peace summit” on the Ukrainian conflict, but also trying to prepare public opinion for the Kiev leadership to make major concessions. Many recent indications suggest that the two-year and eight-month-long direct Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the war with the indirect involvement of 32 members of NATO, in relation to the fundamental interests of the great powers and the ambiguity of US policy, are beginning to give way to the prospect of a peaceful settlement. This situation seems to be tending towards a rapid transformation from “Afghanization” to “Palestinianization” in order to prevent the war from getting completely out of control and turning into a real “Third World War”.
At the military level, the balance of victory in the war seems to have tipped even more clearly in favor of Russia. On October 3, the Russian army took control of Ugledar, Ukraine’s major military base in the Donbas, which it had operated and defended for nearly 10 years. This area was Ukraine’s major logistical support and supply center, the junction point of the Ukrainian army on the southern and eastern fronts, and had become the site of a two-year ‘meat grinder’ struggle between the two armies. The loss of Ugledar was strategically equivalent to the loss of key battle points such as Mariupol and Bakhmut.
After taking Ugledar, Russia was able not only to facilitate its advance in the Donbas region, but also to strengthen its southern land connections and railroad security to the Kerch Strait. Ukraine, on the other hand, lost important maneuvering space and strong bridgeheads in the east and south, while the Kiev leadership and its people had to feel a series of psychological, public and diplomatic defeats.
At the diplomatic level, the US elections are starting to send negative signals for Ukraine. The Biden administration is gradually reducing military aid to Ukraine, shifting from an initial approach of “do what Ukraine needs” to “do what the US can do”. Republicans, who have a 50-50 chance of winning the election, are openly saying that they are tired of supporting Ukraine and that if Trump is elected, he may reverse Biden’s policies and abandon Ukraine. Under Harris, the Democrats may even be forced to accelerate the Russia-Ukraine war by the internal divisions in America and the need to rally public opinion. In the NATO-Europe camp, discomfort with prolonging the war is growing; stocks of military equipment and ammunition are running out, the economic situation is difficult, and it is becoming a binary choice: To switch to wartime or to continue with a normal time economy?
Under the influence of this situation, the authorities in Kiev are moving towards an increasingly pessimistic picture. On the one hand, while trying to hold on to the battlefield, they have mobilized strategic reserves in a futile attempt to strike against the Russian mainland in a last ditch effort, and are even being accused by Russia of “covert use of chemical weapons disguised as smoke bombs”. On the other hand, the Ukrainian government has started to give peace signals, willing to negotiate with Russia.
On October 7, the Financial Times reported that Kiev was holding secret talks about ceding part of its territory to Russia in exchange for Ukraine joining NATO or obtaining other security guarantees. The report read as follows: “The talks are taking place behind closed doors. Under the deal, Moscow would retain de facto control over about a fifth of the Ukrainian territory it occupies, while the rest would be allowed to join NATO or receive similar security guarantees.”
At the end of March this year, Zelensky, always a hardliner, clearly weakened his position, backtracking and saying that he would accept negotiations for peace even if they could not restore the 1991 borders. In fact, the latest Financial Times report is not new information; it is perhaps the outline of an agreement generally agreed by the two sides at the beginning of the war, or perhaps the essence of the US withdrawal plan.
In August 2023, Danish media revealed that US CIA Director Burns made a secret visit to Kiev to test the possibility of getting Ukraine to give up 16 percent of its territory in exchange for an end to the war, and on August 15, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s chief of staff publicly suggested that Ukraine cede some of its territory to Russia in exchange for a license to join NATO.
These and other developments show that the games of the great powers are getting more complicated and that the new strategies for ending the Russian-Ukrainian war are accelerating the transition from “Afghanization” to “Palestinianization”. The terms “Afghanization” and “Palestinianization” are academic conceptual approaches that I adopted after the outbreak of the war, and they have been confirmed by developments on the battlefield.
First of all, the US is forcing Ukraine to become the “European version of Afghanistan”, trying to make Russia relive the historic tragedy of the Soviet Union, which for a decade was buried in Afghanistan and accelerated its collapse; while Russia is using its overwhelming comprehensive power and geographical advantage over Ukraine to make Ukraine the “European version of Afghanistan”, thus trying to make its rivals relive the strategic nightmare. In Afghanistan, they failed to conquer the Taliban for 20 years and eventually had to withdraw their troops in distress. While both sides are building a “European version of Afghanistan”, if the Russian-Ukrainian war takes the path of “Afghanization”, it will be a brutal war of consumption and stagnation. It could last three to five years in the short term and eight to ten years in the long term. This scenario is similar to what the Soviet Union and the United States and NATO experienced in two successive Afghan wars.
On the other hand, it is clear that the United States and NATO do not intend to fight a World War I and World War II-style conventional world war with Russia, because nuclear weapons and long-range delivery vehicles are sufficient to allow both sides to annihilate each other and destroy the world. The Russians, from Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union, have a long history of warfare and have only accepted to cede territory in defeat. Small countries in Europe have always been allies or victims at the table of the great powers. Based on this general judgment, an outcome in which Russia will win with a huge costs but Ukraine would lose totally. Most of Ukraine seems to have been foreseeable from the beginning of the war: Russia would permanently annex Crimea and parts of southeastern Ukraine, while losing the West, and the remaining western Ukraine would perhaps join NATO. Russia would then do everything to “Russify” the annexed territories, while Ukrainian nationalist insurgents would harass Russia for a long time and try to regain the lost territories. This picture could eventually turn Ukraine into a “European version of Palestine”: First it will be divided by great power interests, then it may be dragged into a perpetual conflict of division, counter-division, occupation and counter-occupation, annexation and counter-annexation. Just like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that has been going on for more than 70 years.
Initially defending the alliance strategy and trying to rebuild the transatlantic relationship severely damaged by the Trump administration, by the end of 2021 the Biden administration rejected Russia’s demand to halt NATO’s eastward expansion and withdraw the defense line to the 1999 position, and openly declared that it would not deal with Russia’s troops by military means, encouraging desperate Moscow officials to penetrate the US undercurrents and categorically launch a “special military operation”. Subsequently, the Biden administration, through Britain, pressured Ukraine to break the ceasefire that was about to be reached between Russia and Ukraine and promised to provide support to Ukraine through NATO members. This support was reinforced by the promise to “continue to support for as long as it takes”.
Based on thousands of years of “Russophobia” and the “chilling effect” of reality, Western European countries, driven by the need to help each other, resolutely supported Ukraine in order to block Russia’s attempt to annex Ukraine. By supporting Ukraine to thwart Russia’s annexation attempts, it has made this war of comparable overall strength increasingly permanent and turned it into a proxy war. The dual strategic goals of the Biden administration are to exhaust Russia, a long-time strategic competitor, and to contain the European Union, which is trying to break free from long-term US control and realize strategic autonomy, diplomatic independence and even military self-improvement in order to maintain “Pax Americana”, i.e. US-style world hegemony.
However, politicians are often quick and forgetful, the war has started and has reached a stalemate, whether the US or the European partners are deeply aware that there is no possibility of defeating Russia on the battlefield, with its vast territory, population, strong and comprehensive national character. Moreover, it is undesirable for Europe and the United States that both the United States and Europe suffer heavily from this war and that it ultimately paves the way for a new great power game with China’s “beautiful landscape”. If the new model of the great power game avoids the ‘Afghanization’ of the Russia-Ukraine war, then this conflict will end up in ‘Palestinianization’.
Russia in particular, having learned the lessons of the war after the first half a year of failure and hardship, is rapidly seizing strategic control for victory. By 2025, it plans to increase its defense spending by 25%, launch a military mobilization plan for 133 thousands people, increase the number of active military personnel to 1.5 million and significantly increase its military production capacity. It has also reached the capacity to fire around 10,000 artillery shells per day, increased drone production six-fold and greatly expanded its inventory of hypersonic missiles.
In short, three and a half years after the Russia-Ukraine war, NATO continues to violate Russia’s “red line” to supply Ukraine with offensive weapons and even condones Ukrainian counter-attacks on Russia’s mainland; Russia is increasingly using military and even nuclear weapons to deter its rivals; and the war situation is spiraling upwards. If the war continues, even if it does not spiral out of control and trigger a ‘Third World War’, it will reopen similar wounds for the US and NATO, such as the Vietnam War, the war in Afghanistan and ultimately the blood money.
War is the mortal enemy of peace, but he who has not been through war cannot appreciate peace, and the closer the death and destruction, the easier it is to achieve peace, echoing the Chinese saying that “refuse to admit defeat until faced with overwhelming evidence; only when death is staring one in the face.”
‘Afghanization’ is certainly a tragedy for all parties to the conflict, but can ‘Palestinianization’ bring peace to Europe and the world? Shouldn’t those who caused these crises and conflicts bear their historical responsibility and public criticism?
Prof. Ma is Dean of the Institute of Mediterranean Studies (ISMR) at Zhejiang International Studies University (Hangzhou). He specialises in international politics, particularly Islam and Middle East politics. He worked for many years as a senior Xinhua correspondent in Kuwait, Palestine and Iraq.
