On June 3, 2022, Russia's special military operation in Ukraine entered its 100th day. In his speech to Luxembourg politicians and public, the Ukrainian President Zelensky said that Russia now controls one fifth of Ukraine's territory, but Ukraine still has the strength to turn the situation around. According to UN statistics, some 7 million people have left Ukraine since the outbreak of the conflict, and the World Food Programme estimates that 49 million people are at emergency levels of hunger. In the meantime, the hope of both sides returning to the negotiating table is increasingly slim.

1. The development of the Russia-Ukraine conflict has gone beyond expectations

Overall, the development of the Russia-Ukraine conflict has completely gone beyond the expectations of all parties, as mainly reflected in the following three aspects.

Firstly, the duration of the conflict has gone beyond expectations. In the first week of the conflict, many politicians and pundits believed that due to the big strength gap between the two sides, Russia was very likely to "fight a quick battle" to achieve its set goal. There were even rumors that Britain, the United States and other countries had formulated an "exile plan" for the Zelensky government. However, as Russia's "lightening attack on Kiev" and deep penetration tactics from multiple directions met with obstacles, its strategic focus gradually shifted from "forcing a surrender through war" to "promoting negotiations by war", and the phased objectives of the military operation then became clear. At the same time, Zelensky also gradually stabilized his position. Through patriotic mobilization and sympathetic publicity, he has bound himself with European security and the survival of Western values. He has not only received large-scale military and economic aids from NATO countries, but also prompted the United States and Europe to impose unprecedented comprehensive sanctions against Russia. So far, the form of the conflict has gradually fallen into a "protracted war" from the initial "Blitzkrieg", and the variables that determine when and how the conflict ends have gone beyond the control of the direct parties involved in the conflict.

Secondly, the state of stalemate of the conflict has gone beyond expectations. The conflict has lasted for more than 100 days and Russia has controlled more than 20% of Ukraine's territory, but the war has not yet shown any sign of "one-sidedness". The offensives and defensives between the two sides around Mariupol lasted for more than two months, and the current battles for key places like northern Donetsk have also entered a white-hot stage. As a result of the need to stage information warfare and launch psychological offensives, there are big differences in the respective war reports and war damage assessments released by Russia and Ukraine. But, what is certain is that Russia and Ukraine will launch more frequent attacks and counterattacks around key cities and strategic positions from the periphery of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, to the Donbas region, which will extend to the 1000km-long battle front in Nikolayev in the south. Seesaw battles may well become the norm.

Thirdly, the scope of the impact has gone beyond expectations. At the global level, the food crisis, the refugee crisis and other "secondary disasters" have deepened. At the same time, the current international system and multilateral governance mechanisms are under "stress test", and a cognitive gap between countries on security, order and values has become prominent. "Quasi-block" restructuring marked by exclusive security is gradually taking shape. At the security level, as "neutral countries" Finland and Sweden apply to join NATO, a new strategic vertical axis of confrontation with Russia will form, stretching from the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea to the Arctic Sea. NATO's impulse to enhance its global role and "enter Asia" will also cause chain reactions in the regional security landscape. At the economic level, some countries are trying to "weaponize" finance, technology and energy and accelerating the "friend-shoring" of the global industrial, supply and value chains, which has stimulated the needs of various countries to establish trade "firewalls" and industrial "separation zones". The above trend will continue to ferment as the Russia-Ukraine conflict persists.

2. The "War of attrition" vs the "War of Anti-attrition"

Besides evolving into a "protracted war" on the battlefield, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has also become a "war of attrition" between Russia and the United States and Europe in terms of strategic will and arms supply. At the beginning of the conflict, NATO countries continuously raised the weaponry level and scale of their military assistance to Ukraine according to the developments on the battlefield, and tried to narrow the military hardware gap between Russia and Ukraine, so as to use the persistence of the conflict to consume Russia and avoid Ukraine being forced to sign a "treaty of surrender". Recently, as the Russian army comes close to taking full control of the whole territory of Lugansk, the United States and Britain have successively announced that they will provide Ukraine with long-range strike systems such as M142 HIMARS and M270 MLRS multiple launch rocket systems to beef up its confidence in resisting to the end and planning counterattacks. The United States proposed to limit the striking range of the relevant weapons it provides and would not provide Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) which have a maximum striking range of 300Km, claiming that it has received a commitment from Ukraine not to use the system to attack targets in Russia. However, in the rapidly changing battlefield, it is doubtful whether the front-line soldiers can strictly honor the relevant commitment. This move may also change the established "rules of the game" on both sides. For example, Putin has warned that Russia may take various destructive means to strike targets that have not been hit so far. The escalation of war intensity will not only cause more casualties, but also make the prospect of the two sides returning to the negotiating table more remote in the short term.

In his televised speech on February 24, 2022, Russian President Putin made it clear that he decided to carry out a special military operation in the Donbas region. As far as the war situation itself is concerned, the goal of the Russian military operation is to get the Donbas region back to Russia, an “aspiration” which Russia has had for a long time. Whether it is the strategic shift in the Kiev and Chernihiv directions, or the clear establishment of complete control over the Donbas region and southern Ukraine, opening up the land bridge connecting Crimea, and gaining the exit to the areas along the Dniester River, all these tasks of the second stage of the Russian military operation show that Russia hopes to consolidate its achievements as much as possible and win more bargain chips for the ultimate ceasefire and peace talks.

It is worth noting that in the face of the US attempt to use the war of attrition to bring it down, Russia seems to be also planning a corresponding war of "anti-attrition". Some analysts have pointed out that as the Russian military operation costs an average of US$900 million a day, by its 2021 miliary budget, Russia can only sustain the war by merely 73 days. But in fact, as Russia narrows the war front and focuses on its operational targets, the relevant expenses have been reduced. At the same time, Russia has a large stockpile of weapons and equipment required for positional warfare, and the proportion of its military funds available for spending under the "wartime state" has also increased significantly. Moreover, even though the sixth round of EU sanctions has taken a huge step in the embargo on Russian maritime oil, Russian energy exports have actually realized the reversal of "reduced volume but higher price", thanks to the constantly high international energy prices. According to figures released by the International Energy Agency, since the beginning of 2022, Russia has earned a revenue of US$20 billion a month from its export of crude oil and related products, with a year-on-year increase of more than 50%. Some forecasts say that the persistently high natural gas price this year will bring about US$80 billion in revenue to Russia. In other words, at the initial stage of the energy sanctions and embargoes imposed on it, Russia can still enjoy the energy price dividends resulting from a "shortage panic", and take this as an important asset to press ahead with its military operation.

In addition, Russia is also creating the expectation of a "bottomless pit" for U.S. and European assistance to Ukraine, intensifying the contradiction between strategic coordination and domestic priorities within the United States and Europe, which in turn consumes the cohesion and patience of the West. The inflationary pressure and livelihood predicament caused by the sanctions against Russia, as well as the differentiated perceptions of energy, food and refugee crises may lead to another discord among the positions towards Russia within Europe and between the United States and Europe. This will become an important factor that affects the final direction of development in the situation between Russia and Ukraine.

3. With insufficient subjective willingness for mutual compromise, there is limited possibility for both sides to resume negotiations

Although Russia blames Ukraine's unwillingness to return to the negotiating table entirely on NATO's continuous military assistance, the crux of the negotiation stalemate actually lies in the lack of room for compromise on core issues between the two sides. Previously, the focus of Russia-Ukraine negotiations was on Ukraine's neutral status and the form of security safeguard for Ukraine, with no obvious breakthrough on the status of Crimea, Lugansk and Donetsk. For Zelensky, if he recognizes the Crimea as belonging to Russia or the sovereign independence of the two "republics" of Lugansk and Donetsk, it is bound to break his image as a "wartime president" who internally unites forces in Ukraine and externally binds with Europe and the United States, and even bear the stigma of "ceding territory for peace and humiliating the country", thus losing the legitimacy of his governance. As far as Russia is concerned, it does not have the capital to force Ukraine to return to the negotiating table until it has achieved the military goal of fully controlling the Donbas region and southern Ukraine.

For the time being, because no clear turning point has emerged in the battlefield, both sides hope to consolidate their negotiating positions by achieving visible results. As such, they do not have subjective willingness to compromise. At the same time, against the background of the synchronous upgrading of the scale and level of NATO's military assistance, Ukraine does have the impulse to turn from defense to attack and recover its lost territory, so as to use negotiations as a regulator to resolve the pressure on the front line of war. In the face of the comprehensive ''isolationist'' sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe and the formation of an embryonic new confrontation front with NATO, Russia is in more need of building internal consensus on achieving the set goal "at any cost" and using the final outcome to prove the rationality and necessity of the military operation. Zelensky recently proposed that negotiations could only resume after Russia has withdrawn to its border positions held before February 24, 2022. In this atmosphere, the possibility of the two sides resuming negotiations is extremely small. Even if their contact resumes, relevant dialogues will only be a mere formality and can hardly produce any substantive results.

In the final analysis, any military conflict or war will end with the signing of a peace agreement. For Russia and Ukraine to make breakthroughs in their future negotiations, it therefore remains a feasible solution for them to handle a "phased ceasefire agreement" and a "comprehensive peace agreement" separately, set up an additional "negotiation period" for the issue of territorial sovereignty, and explore a non-NATO-type multilateral security guarantee mechanism on the premise that Ukraine maintains a neutral status under the framework of the Istanbul Communiqué previously reached between Russia and Ukraine.





Source: Zhao Long, Research Professor, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies