A View From Ukraine

A useful perspective on the current situation in Ukraine, from Michael Froman, President of the Council on Foreign Relations. T

Council on Foreign Relations

The World This Week

September 20, 2024 

By Michael Froman
President, Council on Foreign Relations

When my overnight train pulled into Kyiv last Thursday, the city was relatively quiet. The air raid alarms went off only once while I was there. Indeed, it was remarkable how normal life in Kyiv can seem. I was able to drink tea with reporters in one of the many street cafes that dot the boulevards across the city.

I was in the capital to meet with Ukrainian politicians, military officials, diplomats, and executives. Two somewhat contradictory observations struck me while speaking with them. First, the Ukrainians—whether frontline soldiers or senior officials—are fully committed to fighting this war until they achieve victory. Second, at the same time, there is a growing sense that the war needs to end, and in the next year, while recognizing that it may well be settled on less-than-ideal terms.

It became clear that several factors will determine what that settlement will look like:

• How much support Ukraine receives from the West—both in terms of military equipment and the flexibility to use it. The Ukrainians desperately want to strike the sites from which the Russians are launching attacks on Ukraine’s civilian targets, energy assets, and other infrastructure.
  
  
  

• Whether Ukraine can stop the Russian advance in the province of Donetsk and regain control of Ukrainian territory that is currently occupied. Most imminently at risk is Pokrovsk, a key logistical hub in the east.
  
  
  

• Whether and when Ukraine will receive a meaningful influx of financial resources. The Ukrainians are waiting for the $50 billion loan promised by the G7 in June, which draws on the hundreds of billions of dollars of frozen assets from the Russian central bank.
  
  
  

• Perhaps most important, what sort of security guarantees Ukraine will be promised. According to the Ukrainians I spoke with, any settlement that includes acquiescing to Russia’s control of Crimea and territory in the eastern provinces will be politically possible under only one condition: if Kyiv receives sufficient security guarantees to prevent Russia from launching a third invasion. For the Ukrainians, that means an invitation to join NATO in a relatively short period of time.

No one in the Ukrainian government can talk about a settlement publicly, and foreigners who do are deemed insufficiently supportive. But Ukrainians know from their intensive fighting on the frontlines just how hard it will be to reestablish their country’s post-Soviet borders by force alone.

One could envisage a settlement akin to the one that halted the fighting in the Korean War, when the two Koreas agreed to an armistice but not a peace agreement. In the Russian-Ukrainian version, Ukraine would never recognize the occupied territories as Russian but would keep open the possibility that they might be returned to Ukrainian control at some point in the future—perhaps in negotiation with a post-Putin Russia. A certain and relatively near-term path to NATO membership will be key, in the Ukrainians’ eyes, in making this work.

In the meantime, the human losses of the conflict—the dead and the wounded—continue to mount, as do the emotional costs. After two and a half years of fighting, Ukrainians are tired of this war. And yet they remain fiercely determined to win it.

For a deeper dive on Ukraine, please see the Council Special Initiative on Securing Ukraine’s Future.