Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine
The 2014 and 2015 Minsk Agreements are a cautionary tale of the need to ensure Ukrainian interests are not sidelined and to include Ukraine in any peace negotiations.
Next week will mark the third anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Three years on, the chances of either side achieving an outright military victory that would realise their respective stated aims continue to appear slim.
Since initial negotiations several weeks after the full-scale Russian invasion, public diplomatic exchanges between Ukraine and Russia have been limited, focusing on grain exports and prisoner exchanges. Publicly acknowledged diplomatic activity towards negotiations over the past two years has comprised the Ukrainian government’s 10-point peace formula, and other exploratory initiatives involving actors like Türkiye, Brazil, China, seven African states, the Vatican, and Saudi Arabia. The flurry of diplomatic activity over the past week has brought negotiations to end the war squarely into view. Despite some (how to put this diplomatically…) mixed messaging from the new U.S. administration about their intentions for the composition of peace negotiations, Donald Trump and Keith Kellog have stated that peace talks would involve Ukraine, and Marco Rubio confirmed last Sunday during a visit to Jerusalem that Ukraine and European states would be involved in any “real” negotiations.
Amid all the bloviation, false claims, and empty self-aggrandising rhetoric, this provided a measure of reassurance – at least temporarily – to everyone who is deeply invested in a just and sustainable end to the war. But any repetition of the message that Ukraine and Europe would have to be involved in any substantive talks and that a durable settlement would have to respect Ukrainian sovereignty were conspicuous by its absence during the U.S.-Russia talks in Riyadh on Tuesday.
Beyond the fairly intuitive proposition that any agreement to end the war is unlikely to be just or sustainable if it excludes the party that was invaded, the very recent history of the Russia-Ukraine armed conflict in the form of the 2014 and 2015 Minsk Agreements also provides a cautionary example of the need to ensure Ukrainian interests are not sidelined and to include Ukraine in any negotiation format both in the spirit, and to the letter, of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”
Both Agreements presented a settlement that was acceptable to Russia (at the time) and Ukraine’s patrons in France and Germany, but side-lined Ukrainian interests. This led to a lack of both elite and popular support in Ukraine for either agreement. An absence of confidence-building measures also perpetuated the low level of trust between Ukraine and Russia. All of this – along with other shortcomings of the Agreements, including the lack of clarity in the sequencing of implementation, the unclear obligations and roles of states in implementation, and the ensuing room for markedly different interpretations of the agreements by different parties – meant that the Minsk Agreements neither constituted a viable compromise nor managed to end the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Bilateral talks between Ukraine and Russia are the default format option for ceasefire and peace negotiations. But given the multidimensional nature of the war and the need to integrate a regional security dimension, involving additional parties in the talks will be a key consideration.
The war in Ukraine is a multidimensional conflict encompassing two levels: a “hot” inter-state war between Russia and Ukraine and a “cold” war between NATO and Russia. The fact that the Trump Administration is seemingly in the process of reversing anywhere between four years and four generations of U.S. foreign policy orthodoxy towards the USSR/Russia doesn’t automatically mean that the NATO-Russia “cold” war has entirely thawed let alone already being on a path to resolution.
With the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the centre of contested geopolitical gravity in Europe shifted east. During the Cold War, the two Germanies (and particularly the division of Berlin, physically manifested in the form of the Berlin Wall) came to symbolise the two competing blocks. However, with the enlargement of NATO and EU expansion following the Cold War, Ukraine became the front line of the competing spheres of regional influence. Diplomatic initiatives like the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons arsenal in exchange for territorial integrity and independence assurances by Russia, the US, and the UK, or the Minsk I and II Agreements failed to promote enduring stability in the region. As such, one of the main underlying causes of the current war can be seen in the unresolved renegotiations of the post-Cold War political and security order between Ukraine and Russia and between Russia and the combination of NATO and the EU. Negotiations to end the war in Ukraine will de facto involve a discussion of regional security, and can thus be taken as an opportunity to proactively address new terms for the regional security architecture and also its global dimensions. A more comprehensive negotiation format could help to address these related but distinct conflict dimensions.
Our report “Negotiating an End to the War in Ukraine” draws on comparative evidence to develop ideas and options for a negotiation process design that can maximise the chances of producing a sustainable and just settlement. It also discusses entry points for other stakeholders’ direct or indirect involvement in the talks, including European/NATO states – and potentially non-aligned states from the Global South – and representatives from civil society, business, and faith organisations.
A small group of states could be given official roles in Ukraine-Russia talks short of full participation; or a multi-party format could be used to foster a more cooperative dynamic by giving a degree of representation to a larger number of actors. Both these options could also include a small group of third-party states, and actors from civil society, business or faith organisations as participants or guarantors or in other roles. External intermediaries, including state and non-state actors, could play different roles including as mediators, facilitators, and guarantors.
The way the talks are structured can also help Ukraine, Russia, and any other actors involved to manage the complexity of issues and parties. Different thematic components of the negotiation process can take place in parallel or sequentially, and different negotiation tracks can feature different compositions of parties. A multi-party format typically involves specialised working groups or commissions that support the work of the respective thematic tracks. This allows for flexibility in the sequencing of negotiations in relation to questions that might be unanswerable when negotiations begin, such as whether a ceasefire can be reached while other issues remain unresolved.
Whenever negotiations ultimately materialise and whatever the process design that is adopted, one thing is patently clear: for any agreement to end the war to have a chance of being just and sustainable Ukraine must be involved in negotiating it. The sooner that is universally and irrevocably recognized, the sooner the important business of planning and preparing for negotiations can begin in earnest.
Alex Bramble | Head of Research, Inclusive Peace
For the key insights have a look at our briefing note.
Ready for a deep dive? Read the full report.