WAR IN UKRAINEAll Wars Eventually End – Here Are 3 Situations That Will Lead Russia and Ukraine to Make Peace
All wars end, however, and research shows that almost half end in some type of agreement to stop the fighting. The others end in victory for one side or when, for a variety of reasons, the fighting simply peters out. As Ukraine readies to enter its second year of a widespread war with Russia, it would be useful to consider how wars end and what conditions need to be in place before the war between Russia and Ukraine might draw to a close.
It’s been a year since Russia first launched a full invasion of Ukraine, and, right now, peace seems impossible.
Peace talks between the two countries have launched, and then faltered, multiple times.
In February 2023, a senior Ukrainian official said that peace talks are “out of the question” – without Ukraine’s reclaiming its territory that Russia overtook 2022.
All wars end, however, and research shows that almost half end in some type of agreement to stop the fighting. The others end in victory for one side or when, for a variety of reasons, the fighting simply peters out.
As a scholar of peace and conflict, I have 20 years of experience working to help people establish and maintain peace after conflict.
As Ukraine readies to enter its second year of a widespread war with Russia, I think it is useful to consider how wars end and what conditions need to be in place before the war between Russia and Ukraine might draw to a close.
Here are three key points that help assess the possibility of whether a war might end.
1. A Shared Idea of the Future
The first question is whether opposing groups at war agree about what it will take for war to end – be it land, money or political control.
Fighting in a war is part of a wider bargaining process. Victories on the battlefield allow the winning aggressor to demand more, while defeats may mean those losing ground have to settle for less.
Once both sides have a clear sense of the fighting’s likely outcome, additional negotiations – or more fighting – become less important. And because war is so costly, it is normally better to accept even part of an envisioned peace agreement than continue to fight.
At the moment, Russian and Ukraine appear to have differing opinions about the war’s likely outcome. Ukrainian forces made progress in September 2022 when they retook two Ukrainian regions – Kharkiv and Kherson – that Russia had occupied. So Ukraine is likely to believe that it can make more advances if it keeps on fighting.
Conversely, Russia successfully halted a wider collapse of its forces and appears to be in a stronger position militarily heading into the spring than it was in the fall of 2022.
