Why Putin Can't Sign a Peace Deal
Settling the will he / won't he debate once and for all
In the best of all worlds, Russia and Ukraine would both immediately stop fighting. This would lead to a durable peace that lasts past anyone’s lifetime. The negotiations going forward would be tough and long, but ultimately: Russia and Ukraine’s disputes are settled at the negotiating table, not the battlefield. Clausewitz alas remains correct: that war is the continuation of politics. It’s easy to see and say from both the Ukrainian and Russian perspective that the whole reason we are in this situation is because the political negotiations failed, because only war can achieve a satisfactory outcome.
We can wax philosophical about why states go to war, or get more specific and psychoanalyze the character of this leader or that, but I’m far more interested today in doing an honest, realistic assessment of the war, how the moves and countermoves of each nation are leading others to react in predictable ways, such that we can reasonably predict certain outcomes.
I do want to caution that prediction is a dangerous business in war and politics. Warfare after all, is literally mankind’s chaos unleashed on a mass scale. But there is real data here, real science. After all, each side is materially constrained on manpower and equipment; neither side has an unlimited supply of either for either side. And to assemble both requires time and resources, all of which are things that can be observed through a scientific lens. After all, science is the art of observation and making educated guesses on what will come next in an observed environment.
And so, I feel perfectly fine in predicting that absent any change, Europe is on a glide-path to some form of war with Russia in the next five years. That resulting war, likely non-nuclear, will still kill tens of millions of people and drag the rest of the world into a bloody quagmire.
I do want to stress that I am not Pro-Russia or Pro-Ukraine. I am for the side that wants to prevent all that from happening. And I think we can. It won’t be easy or cheap or guaranteed to work. But we have to try. We owe it to the millions of people in the 30s who will otherwise all die in the absence of action.
Before we get there though, let’s settle the debate: why won’t Putin sign a peace deal? Frankly, he can’t. The Russian state and army may broadly desire a peace with Ukraine so they can pause and regroup, but that doesn’t mean they want a full end to the war. Not right now, not while they are on the cusp of victory. He may very well sign a 30-day truce with Zelensky but even that is highly doubtful, and even if it is signed, it is clear that it would just be a tactical pause to rearm and refit damaged units.
The truth is, Russia is indeed about to win the war. I don’t say this as a Putin or Russia fan or apologist, I am not. This, again, is just an honest assessment of how the war is progressing for both sides. On the Ukrainian side: they are out of men. They are not running out, they are not ‘struggling on the manpower front’, they are simply just out of manpower wholesale.
That is the nearest and largest causal reason why they are losing this war. They have been forced to deploy press gangs to conscript men into the Army, and even that is churning out less than stunning results.
Even when they attempt to entice volunteers with money and other gifts, people are turning up their noses at such requests.
Russia, meanwhile, has no such problems finding men for the meatgrinder.
And Ukraine doesn’t have a lot of people to begin with. Millions have fled since 2014 or have come under Russian suzerainty.
My honest assessment is that Ukraine needs something in the range of at least 500,000 men immediately; otherwise, it will continue to lose land, time, and space until the Ukrainian state is totally erased from the map. After all, if no one is left to man the front, Russian tanks will just plow forward, taking town after town.
That’s not the only thing Ukraine is lacking.
As seen in the above, Ukraine is out of electricity, it is incapable of producing shells, and even if America were willing to step in and cover the deficit, it still won’t be able to bridge the gap in time to save Ukraine. After all, if the US can only produce 100,000 shells per month by 2026 and yet the battlefield need is six times that, and if Ukraine only domestically produces 200,000 shells per month (which will decrease due to a lack of electricity to power factories), that’s still a 300,000 shell per month gap that I doubt Europe can fill, not unless both Europe and America massively change how shells get produced, focusing more on immediate production over domestic economic growth.
And keep in mind, all of this is happening while more men are dying, as defenses get weakened, as Russia is advancing. It doesn’t take a war psychologist to know what this is doing to Ukrainian morale: the low recruitment numbers paint the accurate story.
Ukraine is more than exhausted, its people are beaten and they know it. Everyone who can desert and flee is doing so. Most are finding age-old ways to avoid combat, to simply fall back in the face of relentless assaults. There is a risk here of a total front collapse. It’s happened a few times in history, most recently in Syria with the fall of the Assadist government. When you break a people’s will to resist, you have won the war. Or, as Sun Tzu said: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”.
Russia is not under similar constraints. They have men and shells to spare. And with Trump nuking the US economy, while his aircraft carriers tuck tail and run from the poorest nation on Earth (Yemen), they more crucially have time. They can spend another year, another eighteen months, another however much longer it will take because any reasonable person looking at this can conclude that it won’t actually take that much longer.
And even if reasonable people can disagree, Putin clearly thinks his side is winning. That’s why he’s not bothering with negotiations right now. He instead is repositioning his forces for another major advance through Ukraine. “Maybe this time, the front will break,” is what is on his mind. If it breaks, then he gets to seize all or most of Ukraine. If it doesn’t: well, he can just try again in the fall campaigning season. On and on again and again until he’s snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.
There’s also an immediate reason why peace isn’t coming tomorrow: these siege-battles on the Donetsk (South Ukrainian) front are about to culminate in a Russian victory:
These are tiny settlements, to be sure, not worth the blood and treasure Russia has expended. But they are literally right there, ripe for the taking, ready to fall. Of course, if Russia does take those settlements in the next 2-3 months, then why would they stop there? North of that line is empty, open space, sparsely populated. They could, and likely will, advance dozens if not hundreds of kilometers before Ukraine is able to throw up enough reserves to stop them. And that’s not the only front Ukraine is getting pushed back on.
In the North, around Kupiansk, Russia is already preparing another encirclement siege.
And around the former Kursk front, Russia still has enough units to make a reconnaissance in depth assault around Sumy.
These are all fires that are raging right now, and keep in mind that these fires rage as there is little hope of men, materiel, or resources being added to the front. Just as Bakhmut fell, all of these advances are plainly obvious, as is Ukraine’s tactical defeat at each of those places, absent a sudden flood of everything Ukraine needs to stay in the fight.
There is a temptation on both the Left and the Right to throw our hands up in the air and say, as Trump has been saying, “Fine! Not our problem anymore.” I get the temptation. The odds seem insurmountable, and in a large way, they are. I think both perspectives are wrong though, and I think many are missing the real risk.
The dangerous turning point isn’t ‘what if Russia takes this settlement or that settlement’, it is ‘are there Russian tanks on the Polish border’. To be clear: Putin I think will not want another war with Europe in his lifetime. Ukraine will take a long time for the Russian state to digest, and that’s saying nothing of the mess Belarus is, or the fact that Russia’s Central Asian alliance has totally collapsed. The only stable front Russia actually has is in the far East, where they are just bordered by allies (China and Korea).
So it’s not about how Putin reacts. Putin will react like he always does, only making bets that in the worst case he can grind down to a bloody stalemate, same as ever. The problem is Europe, specifically Central European governments. They will not and cannot abide Russian forces on their border, and indeed, they are already acting as if that is going to be the case. They’ve already begun to transform their armies from mere brigades on paper to actual fighting forces.
Just look at Germany. For the first time since WW2, they are rearming, creating a massive budget deficit to do so. In the absence of US NATO leadership, Europe has made the decision that they will defend themselves, despite the rather plain consequences of doing so.
I wish I could tell them ‘trust Putin’, and I wish they could all believe that. Trust Putin, not because he is a good man or anything, but because peace is the only possible card he could play. But, I know it won’t end there. Europe will not be able to stand by and watch as Ukraine faces the Russian whip, as populations are internally displaced, as mass arrests and purges occur, as labor camps begin to dot the countryside. Raw emotion will win out, and therefore: Clausewitz.
What is impossible at the negotiating table can always become possible on the battlefield. And that’s exactly what Europe is marching towards, a massive war against the Russian Federation. And with the fact that in five years all of Europe will indeed have an army perhaps numbering as many as 500,000 (if they truly go all-in), they will have the ability, the want, the need to settle their dispute with Russia on the battlefield.
Again: I am not arguing for war with Russia. I am simply stating the fact that European governments and elites are extremely hostile to Russia, and that a Ukrainian defeat that puts Russian forces on the border with Romania, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary will see a hyper-violent reaction from those governments (save the ones who may choose capitulation and collaboration, like Hungary or Romania). As for the rest of the European alliance: they have the space, men, and materials to wage a non-nuclear war on parity with the Russians by 2030.
That is obviously the worst case scenario outside a nuclear war. It would be a total, all-out war. One side is going to dominate Europe again, from Portugal to Moscow, and it is impossible to know which side would win (it would all depend on how China and the US react; if China backs Russia and US backs Europe, as is likely, it would result in an even more uncertain outcome). All we do know, and can say for certain, is that tens of millions will die, between starvation, disease, and murder.
I want to avoid that future more than anything, and I have an idea how to get there. It’s a combination of the classic carrot-and-stick model. The war could indeed just end if Putin decided to, as many people constantly say (‘if Putin wants peace he should leave Ukraine’). But saying something is not the same thing as making it happen.
It’s a political argument, one that needs to be won on both the diplomatic and military fronts. I don’t think it’s an impossible argument, and I think we can craft a material reality that forces Putin into actually accepting a peace deal, instead of merely using it to further destabilize Ukraine. As stated before: the best case scenario is a permanent peace that stops the killing, forever. Russia will only do that if they are convinced that no matter how much they fight, Ukraine will never fall, and that there is a simple, easy, and perhaps better way out.
First then, the carrot. Imagine a future where both Russia and Ukraine are in the EU and NATO. This time, we mean it. This time, it’s serious and it’s real. Russia and Ukraine both join Europe and America’s defense umbrella, absent any sanctions or disparagements, and both treated as equal partners the same as any other constituent member. Russia just needs to stop the war, commit to negotiations, and accept that Ukraine will retain its sovereignty, same as Russia, alongside limited political and economic reforms.
Putin, it must be remembered, is a violent brute who speaks only in the language of violence. It’s why he went to war, even despite knowing it could lead to a destructive world war. The securocrat who helped secure the Yeltsin regime under a hail of bullets in 1993 does not turn his nose up at seeking his gains through violence. As nice as it would be to give this offer to Putin and see the war end tomorrow, I know that instead, he will smirk and pocket that promise. Then, once the war ends with a total Russian victory, he will put it out of his pocket just as Poland protests the massing of Russian armor on the border. He’s a total troll, with a sick sense of humor. It doesn’t fool anyone but the most gullible.
So for the promise to be real, there needs to be a consequence to Russia not accepting this gracious turn of events. In other words, we need to make the Russian victory impossible, or at least make it seem so. I’ve laid out a pretty brutal assessment of how Russia is about to win, so how can I flip that on its head? Simple: the Western alliance is going to have to stoop to Putin’s level if they stand a chance.
Ukraine needs men and Ukraine needs shells. Absent those two, any discussion of an actual peace is moot. Ukraine cannot source the men themselves. If they could, they would. But as Russia has demonstrated by utilizing North Korean troops, there always exists a global manpower reserve that you can tap into, if you’re willing to get a little dirty when it comes to the spirit of international law.
Here’s how I would do it: the West shall provide the funding, and the world will provide the men. Of course, this isn’t to say that the West won’t provide men. They can and will. America alone is filled with thousands of young, overeager, underemployed, and ambitious men, who would be dumb enough to join up and fight in a war.
To be clear: this would not be a mercenary scheme, not specifically. Again: you’re going to have to get cute with it, as cute as Putin sometimes gets. These will be men given money for themselves and their families, alongside various additional perks and other benefits, to emigrate to Ukraine and become Ukrainian civilians. They will then immediately join the Ukrainian army and reinforce the fronts that are flagging and flailing. They will do so under Ukrainian commanders and force deployments, not under any volunteer force. This also means that Ukraine needs to reform its army doctrine, as while it is expected that these citizens will learn Ukrainian and Russian as a condition of making the move, there is no way Ukraine has a chance of victory if it does not centralize army command and create actual corps. A decentralized command where every unit speaks 32 different languages to its subordinate components is assuredly going to fail.
Ukraine doesn’t even need a lot of men at the end of the day. In a world of around 4 billion men, Ukraine only needs 100,000 men to stave off defeat by this Fall, and 500,000 to stave it off for good, at least until 2027.
As for shells, Ukraine doesn’t need shells produced on US soil or EU soil. It just needs shells. With the US and the EU funding, everyone should be building shells, and I mean everyone. If your country, your city, your prefecture has some component of shells it can build, the US and the EU will airlift supervisors armed with billions of dollars to set up shell production and distribution lines. They will pay wages way outside the standard norm, to entice everyone nearby into this productive labor. Everyone will build shells, and the goal is to build as many shells as possible, as fast as possible, with no mind paid to the cost. I’m sure the EU is capable of issuing a war bond, as America is of raising its taxes, if they knew the alternative is the bloodiest war in human history.
And that’s the game. Putin’s entire reason for starting and then grinding this war out is because Ukraine has always been weaker in terms of both men and industrial capacity. If the world can turn around and deliver both in endless quantities, only then that Putin might be forced into the negotiation room, and sign a deal that sticks not only through his Presidency, but his successors’ Presidency. The alternative is to wage a literal forever war, one where Russia will be slowly but surely ground to dust under the weight of global resources and manpower. Why do that, when he can be in NATO (outsourcing your defense leads to domestic superprofits!), when his country can enjoy the fruits of the European trade market?
And sure, I could be wrong about all of this. And having written all of this, it does sound like a NAFO’s wet dream. Again, though, I don’t support Ukraine’s war aims. I definitely don’t support Russia’s. I do know that absent a peace deal that actually holds, the Western Europeans will and are reacting to that, drawing themselves ever closer to an actual war with Russia.
Some other questions and reactions I am anticipating:
What about nuclear war, won’t your idea cause that?
No. The West would not be threatening core Russian strategic interests, and even then, like we saw in Kursk and in the Moscow drone attacks, Putin has a very loose interpretation of Russia’s core interests. A nuclear response would be insane to do in the context of Ukraine stabilizing their frontline over the course of a year, and then maybe be in a position to do a small counteroffensive within three years after that.
It sounds like you’re buying CIA propaganda that Putin is lying.
Please, I would love to be wrong. If he does sign a peace deal and it actually holds: congratulations, I was wrong, and you were right. But I’d rather hedge my bets, personally.
Won’t this be expensive?
Not as expensive as rebuilding after a European total war would be.
No. Nothing ever happens.
You are a literal baby.
Did you know Ukraine has Nazi formations? Do you support that?
Of course I don’t. Part of the citizenship scheme is to unbalance their power centers by simply creating new Ukrainian voters who would be disgusted at the Nazi sentimentalities.
Do you condemn Putin?
Personally? Sure, I don’t like him. But no, I don’t condemn anything at all, because as a serious analyst, I can’t afford to render my opinions under any bias. This is not a work of propaganda. It is a serious analysis of the Russian and Ukrainian states and their capacity to wage war. If I actually condemned Putin, then anything I write about him will just be seen, quite rightly, as a bias against him. You can hate the man and still embody his mentality with cold detachment. I wouldn’t be able to do so if I condemned him or anyone else.
Can I scream at you really loudly?
Sure thing. Just make sure you subscribe too.