Peace before winter?

Zelensky is betting Ukraine can force Russia to negotiate by November

Dear readers,

Before we jump to the news, I want to announce that I’ll be hosting a community call this Saturday, at 10 a.m. ET, with Chris Powers—a Brussels-based correspondent who’s spent years covering European politics. We’ll chat about the recent drama in Ukraine’s accession talks and the feud between the EU’s top diplomats, plus whatever questions you guys will have. These twice-a-month calls are a benefit only available to paid subscribers to Yours Ukrainian, so make sure you’re subscribed to receive access, and look out for an email on Saturday!

Now, onto this week’s developments.

In late May, during a closed-door meeting with Ukrainian lawmakers, President Zelensky said he believed “the hot phase” of the war could end by November. Given the demise of the US-led peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, the date seemed a bit random.

Yet subsequent diplomatic moves by Zelensky, and the Ukrainian drone campaign, suggest that there is, indeed, a plan to apply maximum pressure on Russia this summer. “The president has tasked us with trying to end this war as quickly as possible… preferably before winter,” Zelensky’s chief-of-staff, Kyrylo Budanov, said on June 1.

Exhausting Russia before winter makes sense. Come fall, Ukraine will have to deal with renewed Russian attacks against energy infrastructure, and authorities haven’t done much to prepare.

And a lot is now going in Ukraine’s favour. The country started gaining more territory than it’s losing, and killing more soldiers than the Russians recruit. Ukrainian drone campaigns have matured enough to inflict unprecedented damage all across Russia. A recent analysis by The Economist shows Ukrainian drone attacks expanding in both rate and geography; the outlet argues the real number of attacks can be three times larger than previously assumed. Ukraine’s middle-strike campaign against Russian logistics is bearing fruit, particularly in occupied Crimea.

Ukraine has been systematically hitting Crimea’s air defences, as well as energy sites in southern Russia that power it. Kyiv is also pummeling the key highways in southern Ukraine that connect Russia to the peninsula. As a result, Crimea is now rationing both food and fuel. The ultimate goal is to make it impossible for Russia to use Crimea, which they’ve turned into an enormous military base, to support its operations in southern Ukraine. “We will isolate Crimea in the near future,” Commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces told Reuters this week.

Recognizing these trends, the Ukrainian president is trying to inject fresh momentum into the peace process.

Last Sunday, President Zelensky met with leaders of the UK, France, and Germany to discuss European support for Ukraine and Europe’s role in the peace process. The statement published after the meeting laid out five conditions for peace, which included all of Ukraine’s usual demands, like an immediate ceasefire and negotiations that start from the line of contact.

On the same day, the Financial Times reported that Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich had a secret meeting with Zelensky in May. According to the FT, Zelensky invited Abramovich to Kyiv to pass a message to Putin that he was ready to meet with him at any time to discuss ending the war. Zelensky confirmed that the meeting took place but seemed to suggest that the Russians reached out first. “(Abramovich) came, and he wanted to give me a message that they want to understand what we’re ready to do,” Zelensky told Sky News. He also said he told the oligarch that Ukraine won’t give up Donbas—a key Russian demand—nor will the Russians be able to get it militarily.

This followed Zelensky’s open letter, which he addressed to Putin during Russia’s flagship economic conference (the absurdity of which I discussed in last week’s issue). In that letter, the Ukrainian president also proposed a bilateral meeting, and argued that the Russian military was losing. The letter’s bold tone, however, shows that it was a performance, designed to signal Ukraine’s peace efforts to the Americans rather than bring about a diplomatic breakthrough. Predictably, Putin rebuffed the letter as “rude” and said there was “no point” in meeting yet.

This reaction from Putin highlights a dilemma.

The Ukrainian government’s logic is straightforward—capitalize on battlefield gains and use this window of opportunity, while the Russians haven’t yet adapted to new Ukrainian drone threats, to gain more leverage for future talks. More broadly, Ukraine wants to increase the cost of war for Moscow so much that Putin can no longer ignore it.

But what if that hope is a dead end? What if Putin will ignore reality no matter how many drones pummel his army and his cities? What if he finally enacts a general mobilization, throws a few hundred thousand more bodies at the problem, or drags in another state into the war?

Ukraine’s approach to ending the war rests on the assumption that there is a threshold at which Putin must concede that the status quo is unsustainable. But the truth is, nobody—not Ukraine, not Europe, not likely Putin himself—knows where that threshold is, or whether it exists at all.

Other stories I’m folllowing…

From the Wall Street Journal, U.K. Defense Secretary Quits Over Lack of Military Spending

From the New York Times, ‘Operation Pushkin’: Paris Trial Puts Spotlight on Rare-Book Heists

See you at 10 a.m. ET tomorrow!

Yours,

Ukrainian