By Mariana Budjeryn, April 7, 2022
President Volodymyr Zelensky met with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, in the Mariinskyi Palace, Kyiv on February 2, 2022. Credit: President of Ukraine. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
Russia demanded that Ukraine reject NATO aspirations and commit to “neutrality.” Ukraine’s unwillingness to do so served for Putin as a pretext for invasion. If and when the time comes to negotiate peace in Ukraine in earnest, neutrality might be on the table. What might neutrality in Ukraine look like?
The first and most important point to note is that Ukrainians are fighting and dying for their survival and the survival of their state. No Western armchair pundit should indulge in telling Ukrainians what they should and should not do. The Ukrainian people have already resolved to pay the highest price imaginable to live in a country whose destiny they alone can shape. Pontificating about some form of imposed Finlandization (as here, here, and here) is as historically anachronistic and geopolitically skewed as it is offensive to the dignity of the Ukrainian struggle.
The second point is that neutrality should not be the goal in and of itself. The term, if it’s used, might prove useful as a face-saving measure for Russian President Vladimir Putin who can brandish it to his domestic audiences. In substance, however, neutrality must be a solution that provides long-term sustainable security for Ukraine and, by extension, peace in Europe.
The third point is to allow that the Ukrainian leadership might consider a form of neutrality on their own accord. They could, for example, realize that Ukraine is better off that way, that NATO is too bureaucratic and risk averse, its consensus-based decision-making process too uncertain, encumbered as it is with veto voices (such as Hungary’s) to effectively provide for Ukraine’s security. Indeed, on March 28, in the lead up to the last round of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations in Istanbul, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine is prepared to discuss neutrality. This, however, would have to be confirmed in a referendum.
If so, the neutrality arrangement would contain Ukraine’s pledge not to join any military alliances, presumably for a specified time, with the option to review and extend. In return, Russia would withdraw troops from Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory and commit not to violate Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The problem, of course, is that Russia had already pledged that much in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on security assurance in connection with Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament. The fatal flaw of the memorandum was that it contained no enforcement mechanisms and no effective provision that would deter its breach. It was a gentlemen’s agreement. And Russia’s behavior proved far from gentlemanly.
So, for any Ukrainian neutrality arrangement to be enduring and effective, it must include a set of provisions that spell out consequences for its violation in such a way as to make a violation undesirable and unlikely. That raises several questions: What should the consequences be? Who should threaten them? Who should enforce them? There is no other way but for the West to step into this role. Some combination of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Poland, and perhaps others might form a coalition to become parties to Ukraine’s neutrality agreement. These countries might pledge, in no uncertain terms, a formidable set of political, economic, and military consequences should Russia violate the deal. The military part could be conventional only—to take the nuclear dimension out the equation.
We now understand better than six weeks ago that Russia’s goal was never to just keep Ukraine out of NATO, as it might have been with Finland or Austria. Russia’s goal is to demolish Ukraine as a nation and as a state. If Ukraine agrees to anything termed “neutrality,” it must be neutrality that’s guaranteed in a most concrete and palpable way. Otherwise, the specter of war, refugee flows, and Bucha-like massacres will continue haunting Europe as a distinct and ever-present possibility as long as Russia, as the world knows it now, exists.
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Ukraine did not negotiate in good faith the independent status of the eastern regions of Ukraine. This resulted in an effective nullification of the Minsk accords, even though they had been ratified by the UN security council. Russia detected a significant uptick in violence against the eastern regions by the Kiev regime. As a result, Russia felt that it must take action, unlike its undue restraint in, say, the NATO intervention in Libya, where it remained on the sidelines. Some 14,000 people, it has been estimated, lost their lives in shelling of the eastern region by the Kiev regime. So while the current Russian intervention in Ukraine is often described as "unprovoked," as in this article, it would appear that there was ample provocation. Furthermore, once Russia recognized the two regions of Lugansk and Donetsk as independent countries, which had been the aim of the regions since 2014, then Russia was also obligated to defend them, as NATO would have been obligated to defend a NATO member. We must also remember that the US had trained and armed Ukraine. Although this action had been promoted by the US as defensive, in the real world, we know that there is often a thin line between what is defensive and what is offensive, and such is the circumstance in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. If we examine even further the roots of the conflict, one can easily conclude that there was ample provocation, and/or cause, for Russia to intervene in Ukraine. Had not the causes occurred, I have little doubt Russia would have been happy to have Ukraine as a productive neighbor. Rather, it was the US, which, not content to leave Russia to grow and prosper, worked to stem its development by creating friction between Russia and Ukraine. Whichever one accepts, it is easy to see that there are a variety of interpretations of events that seem to be consistent with the facts on the ground. Russia has underscored its intent to use nuclear arms under certain circumstances, and this should help end belligerent and haughty talk on the part of the United States and NATO, and perhaps even to end to their incessant harassment and provocation of Russia that has taken place over the past fifteen or twenty years.