What does ‘lose’ look like for the Russia-Ukraine war? We need room to discuss how this ends

It was Emmanuel Macron who first invited a storm of criticism by saying the West should avoid humiliating Russia in a peace deal. 

Then came the turn of former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who in May said Kyiv should cede territory to Russia and that pushing Moscow’s forces beyond the lines they held before February 23rd would lead to catastrophe. 

In September, the Conservative MP and former defence minister Andrew Murrison waded in, arguing that defeating Russia on the battlefield would be undesirable and Putin should be allowed to save face. 

The current Minister for the Armed Forces, James Heappey, quickly slapped him down. 

All of which makes a toxic background for the letter this week sent to President Biden from a group of Democratic congressional members urging, among other requests, greater diplomatic efforts for a negotiated settlement and direct talks with Russia. 

Public discourse about the war’s end currently has no room for talk of ‘negotiation’. Any such suggestion is immediately snuffed out and labelled appeasement.

Similarly, calls for direct talks are castigated, despite the fact phone calls this week by Russia's defence minister and armed forces chief to their opposite numbers in the US, UK and France were generally welcomed.

There is currently no prospect of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia; neither side wants, nor has the domestic appetite, for talks.

But we, the international communities outside Ukraine, are not just idle, even if disgusted, bystanders. We have a direct and personal interest in what happens in the war, how it ends and what comes next.

This conflict has the potential to escalate past the nuclear threshold. That impacts us all and while it is correct to hold Biden to his line “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” there has to be room to discuss these issues if mistakes, with potentially global impact, are not to be made when the end arrives.

Very few wars end with an outright winner on the battlefield. 

Nato, leading the international military support for Ukraine, wants Russia to lose this war. Given Russia’s woeful performance so far there is every possibility this conflict could buck the historical trend. 

If not though, what does ‘lose’ look like? Is there a military limit at which point weapon deliveries give way to some future security model? If so, where? The lines as they were on Feb 23? Or 2014? If Kyiv’s troops do not eject Russian forces from their country entirely and Nato is not prepared to put boots on the ground and jets in the air, what happens then? 

There has to be room to discuss the mucky stuff in the space between peace and war, victory and defeat. Shutting down such debates as accommodating Putin only gifts him the diplomatic initiative.  

To be clear, the letter from the Congressional caucus made clear that Ukraine must end this war sovereign and independent. It said there is no place for the US to pressure President Zelensky's government regarding sovereign decisions.

Even though it has been withdrawn, it will undoubtedly be used by the Kremlin to highlight imaginary cracks in the international consensus against this vile and illegitimate war.

Sensible observers will see through that of course, but perhaps it would have been better had the contents not been made public.

However, if the letter does nothing more than encourage serious discussion on how we - Ukraine and the international community together - want this war to end, with all the messy detail that entails, it will have served a common good.