Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky holds a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine on Aug. 27.Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters
Russia carried out one of its single biggest air assaults on Ukraine on Monday, sending more than 200 missiles and drones to damage and destroy the country’s energy infrastructure. Among the targets struck was a hydroelectric dam near Kyiv, raising fears of deadly flooding should the dam fail. Ukraine officials said at least eight civilians were killed, and 20 people injured. At least one missile hit an apartment building, they said.
It was a typically callous attack by Russia, one of countless such outrages since President Vladimir Putin launched his illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine two-and-a-half years ago.
It punctuated the absurdity of a war that will only be resolved through diplomatic negotiation, and the compromises that such talks would involve, involving a dictator who bargains only in bad faith.
Two weeks ago, after Ukraine launched an unexpected strike onto Russian soil in the Kursk region – the first foreign incursion into the country since the Second World War – Mr. Putin ruled out the possibility of peace talks.
“What kind of negotiations can we talk about with people who indiscriminately attack the civilian population and civilian infrastructure, or try to create threats to nuclear power facilities,” Mr. Putin said. “What can we even talk about with them?”
Mr. Putin’s forces have murdered, tortured and raped civilians. They have kidnapped Ukrainian children. They have targetted apartment buildings and schools, and used 1,300-pound bombs to raze entire towns. They attacked and held hostage a nuclear power station at the start of the war.
And now the Russian President says that his delicate sensibilities have been so offended by Ukraine’s counterattack that he can’t even contemplate discussing an end to the war. It’s enough to make you tear your hair out.
But before you do, it’s worth remembering that diplomacy is always done away from the glare of public posturing, and that Mr. Putin has long been looking for a way out of a war that is not going as he planned.
That is why it is now more important than ever that Ukraine’s allies maintain, and even increase, their financial and military support for the beleaguered country. The next few months could be a critical period in the war.
Russia and Ukraine actually began holding peace talks within weeks after Mr. Putin’s troops poured across the border in February, 2022. Those talks failed after Mr. Putin discovered that neither Ukraine nor the West would allow him to invade a sovereign country with impunity – and that the terms he was demanding wouldn’t be so easy to get.
The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and other allies have sent billions of dollars in aid and weapons to Ukraine, and have imposed financial, travel and technological sanctions on Russian officials and businesses.
The sanctions haven’t brought Russia to its knees, but they are hurting. Removing the sanctions the West had imposed after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 was one of the very first things Mr. Putin demanded in the 2022 peace talks, and they’ve only gotten worse.
As well, Russian casualties are mounting. Estimates vary, but the number of Russian soldiers killed may have surpassed 100,000 this year, according to some sources. Russia has also lost some of the Ukrainian territory it took in 2022. And now it has Ukrainian troops on its own soil.
At the moment, the two sides are in something of a stalemate. Each is working to gain an advantage at the negotiation table: Russia by focusing its resources on the bloody village-by-village ground battle in the eastern provinces; Ukraine by invading the Kursk region and bombarding Russian war infrastructure across the border.
If Russia prevails, it would be in a position to force Ukraine to give up some of its eastern territory, recognize Crimea as Russian land and limit the size of its military in the future in exchange for an end to the war, among other concessions.
Such a capitulation should be unacceptable to Ukraine’s allies. But the clock is ticking. A victory by Donald Trump in the U.S. election in November could choke off critical American aid to Ukraine. Now is the moment for Ukraine’s allies to give it the money and arms it needs to keep making Mr. Putin pay for his aggression, and to get his diplomats to the negotiating table on terms that are favourable to everyone’s interests but his own.