How will it ever end? This has been one of the questions hanging over the war in Ukraine since Vladimir Putin launched his all-out invasion, aimed at taking Kyiv and subjugating the entire nation, in February 2022.
Sir Bill Browder has a plausible answer. In an exclusive interview with The Independent’s Sam Kiley on the World of Trouble podcast, President Putin’s great enemy said: “I don’t believe you are ever going to have Putin signing a peace treaty. I don’t think the war is ever going to end officially, but I can imagine it is going to grind down to a low level, potentially even totally quiet front, in the same way as North and South Korea did.”
Sir Bill, an anti-corruption campaigner who has fought to tighten Western sanctions against Putin’s regime for two decades, said he understands the Russian ruler’s psychology. “I know him from my own struggle pretty well, and I know that he never does what would be the rational thing to do. His entire modus operandi is to escalate, no matter what,” he said.
“If he does a peace deal, he’ll lose power. If he loses power, then he’ll get strung up from a lamppost.” For that reason, Sir Bill believes that Mr Putin will keep the war going, even if the Ukrainians gain the decisive upper hand, and regardless of the mounting casualties and the suffering of the Russian people.
While this may seem a depressing prospect for a conflict that has already lasted longer than the First World War, it may be that it is the least bad of the possible scenarios. One way in which the war could end would be for Ukraine to be defeated. That would be a disaster for the Ukrainian people and for the principle of self-determination everywhere. Fortunately, thanks to the bravery and fortitude of the Ukrainians, the leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky and the support of Ukraine’s allies, including Britain, this outcome does not seem likely.
Another way would be for the Russian regime to collapse. The miles-long queues for petrol suggest that the economic cost of the war is now beginning to hit Russians hard. “There are members of the Russian elite who are clearly anxious to find a way out of the war,” as Professor Lawrence Freedman, formerly of the war studies department at King’s College London, observes. “Then there are the hardliners who also believe that the war is going badly and blame Putin for not responding robustly enough to European interference.”
Ukraine’s gravitation towards the European Union could also provide an opportunity for Britain to join a larger, more defence-oriented union.
The problem is that the implosion of the nuclear-armed regime would be unpredictable. For all his supposed irrationality, Mr Putin has shown no sign of threatening to use nuclear weapons, but he could be replaced by more unstable leaders who might.
It may be, therefore, that the conflict devolving into a permanent standoff is the best that can be hoped for. It is not an end that can be either sought or welcomed, but it is possible to see how it could be compatible with a brighter future for the Ukrainian people.
It must also be remembered that Mr Putin is 73 and will not be around for ever. Sir Bill imagined what could happen in 20 years’ time: “Ukraine is the South Korea – booming, democratic vibrant economy – and Russia is the North Korea, isolated from everybody.”
He pointed out that Ukraine’s war-fighting capacity could make it the heart of a “new Nato” in Europe, which “doesn’t include the United States”, and which could in turn be leveraged into economic success.
And it may be that, as Sir Nick Clegg suggested in an interview with The Independent this week, that Ukraine’s gravitating towards the European Union could also provide an opportunity for Britain to join a larger, more defence-oriented union.
It may be, therefore, that there are scenarios in which the war between Russia and Ukraine never formally ends, but in which it fossilises in such a way as to allow Ukraine to be part of a united, prosperous and secure Europe. We can but dream.
