How to end the war in Ukraine / “Try to open negotiations, involve the Chinese and put the gun on the table”

Washington is counting on the arrival of military aid to keep the Russians in check, while Kiev admits that the war cannot end with a victory. The Paris strategy and pressure on Xi will matter before the conference in Switzerland, according to an analysis by Corriere della Sera about the war in Ukraine.

The decisive factor remains time. The US government is starting to deliver military assets funded by the $61 billion measure that was just approved by Congress. According to US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, these should allow Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s army to hold out until the end of 2024.

But news coming from the front seems to cast doubt on American security. Especially now, when Ukrainian general Vadim Skibitskyia told TheEconomist: “There is no way to win the war on the battlefield. The conflict can only end with treaties”. A phrase that shifted, as has happened cyclically in the last two years, the focus on the possibility of a negotiation with Vladimir Putin, all the more so that on June 15 and 16 the “High-level Conference for Peace” organized in the city is scheduled Swiss Lucerne by the President of the Swiss Confederation, Viola Amherd.

Western diplomats have been working on this event for months, in close coordination with Kiev. President Amherd invited about 160 countries: practically the whole world, except Russia.

The idea is to gather as broad a consensus as possible on a scheme to start negotiations from, involving China as well. So far, Xi Jinping has produced only words for peace in the context of the war in Ukraine. For months, the Americans have been trying to bring him to light, to convince him to put pressure on Putin.

Therefore, Xi Jinping’s attitude remains crucial. But in the weeks leading up to the conference, the signs are mixed. On April 16, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, visiting Beijing, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that Xi Jinping “agreed to promote the high-level conference in Switzerland.”

Until today, however, it is not yet known whether the Chinese will be present in Lucerne. Xi Jinping had set the condition that the Russians would also be admitted.

The topic will be at the heart of the summit between French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission number one Ursula von der Leyen and Xi himself, scheduled to take place in Paris on Monday. At the moment, the most widely cited hypothesis is that the Chinese leader will send a lower-ranking diplomatic delegation to Switzerland.

But the path to negotiation is obstructed by a political problem that the Western side has not yet resolved, although it has been discussing it since the beginning of the war. Everyone agrees on one thing: Putin is an unreliable interlocutor who will only agree to negotiate when forced to do so by military upheavals on the ground. But now the scenario could be different: what to do if the Russian army, as Ukrainian general Skibitski says, cannot be defeated?

The question divides Zelenskiy’s allies. The White House believes, not really today, that the Ukrainian military should be put in a position to hold out as long as possible. So more weapons, more training, more intelligence. And with the greatest urgency. However, the conflict must remain local and must not involve American soldiers.

The strategy is shared by Germany and many European countries, including Italy. At the Pentagon, as at NATO headquarters in Brussels, it is imagined that there will be no chance of negotiation in the near future.

The American strategy is considered insufficient by a large group of countries. And again, not starting now. We have to go back to the NATO summit on March 23, 2022, that is, one month after the invasion of Ukraine. On this occasion, Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, but also Great Britain and Norway, asked to send an ambiguous signal to Putin: the Atlantic Alliance does not rule out emergency intervention.

At the time, it was feared that Moscow might use tactical nuclear weapons. Today, the danger is the penetration of the defenses by the Russians. Macron’s exit goes in this direction: we are ready to send our soldiers, we will not wait for Russian troops to enter Ukraine.

The French president, therefore, is not as isolated as he seems. His theorem is part of a classic repertoire: try to open negotiations, get the Chinese involved and put the gun on the table. For now, the two strategies, the American one and the Franco-Polish one, coexisted. But in the event of a Ukrainian defeat, the time would come for the most difficult choice: to reach an agreement, even to surrender, or to extend the confrontation. A crossroads that Biden tries to avoid at all costs.