Military situation and negotiations

The Kremlin’s original expectation of a rapid victory has failed. Moscow therefore is counting on generating more human and material resources for the protracted war of attrition and on demoralising the Ukrainian population through the permanent shelling of civilian infrastructure and residential buildings. At the same time, the military’s needs have raised domestic political risks for the Kremlin, such as the unpopular partial mobilisation of September 2022 and the Wagner mutiny of June 2023. Due to the reduced manpower, Kyiv is focusing on procuring Western weapons, expanding its own arms industry, promoting innovations in warfare, and securing the resilience of the population. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has also intensified Russia’s confrontational course against the West. An indication of this is Moscow’s plan to increase the target strength of the Russian armed forces to 1.5 million troops, to expand the military in the west of the country, and to launch nuclear threats and hybrid attacks against Western states.

Since the start of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, negotiations and diplomatic initiatives have been underway to bring the military conflict to an end. In 2022, bilateral ceasefire talks failed. Since then, Ukraine has been seeking international support with a 10-point plan, the so-called peace formula, put forward by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who also presented a so-called victory plan in 2024. Russia has been building up diplomatic counter-pressure through its relations with China and others, as well as through multilateral forums such as BRICS+. Peace initiatives and proposals by third countries have failed because the positions of the war parties remain irreconcilable. The military dynamics of the conflict have not yet produced an opportune moment for negotiations on a ceasefire.