Military intervention in Ukraine is now essential

Negotiations cannot solve the war’s cause: Russia’s ‘Great Power’ ambitions. This can only be denied through military power

Despite the strong show of support for Ukraine at recent summits – including at the 75th NATO summit in Washington DC earlier this month – Western leaders continue to be unable to articulate a strategy that would enable Kyiv to win and reestablish European security. The shortcoming must be seen alongside growing calls for a “negotiated peace”.
This is the wrong approach: Nato should instead reintroduce the ambitions of its Strategic Concept from 2010. Only military intervention will secure peace and the rule-based world order.
Already, more than 200 negotiations have been held in futile attempts to end the war. They were all futile because Russia was never negotiating in good faith.
Russia sees negotiations as a means to defeat its opponents. More importantly, Putin promotes negotiations because it offers Nato an alternative to doing what the Alliance was supposed to do in the first place: use all available means to stop a war that threatens the security of the Alliance.
Russia seeks “peace” on its terms to undermine the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. This was instituted during the first eight years of the war and was reaffirmed on 14 June, when President Putin reiterated his terms for “negotiations”, when he demanded Ukraine cede the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson regions to him, as well as Crimea; withdraw its forces from territory Ukraine controls in the four regions; abandon its goal to join Nato; agree to “denazification” and full demilitarisation.
Putin’s terms are tantamount to a call for capitulation and show that he upholds Russia’s aim to destroy Ukrainian statehood and identity.
Knowing this, it is shocking that Nato members call for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been demanding greater autonomy for the Hungarian minority in Zakarpattia Oblast, using a rhetoric that has been aligned with the Kremlin since 2014. He has argued against Ukrainian EU and Nato membership, stressing that it should be left as a “buffer zone” between Russia and the West. Orban has also stated that Ukraine is a financially “non-existent” and “no longer sovereign” state due to its “dependence” on international support. On 2 July, he asked President Zelensky to “take a break, cease fire and then start, continue the negotiations.”
Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister, has also praised Orbán’s advocacy for “peace talks”. In January, he argued that the only way to end the war was for Ukraine to give up some of its territory to Russia. Like Orban (and Putin), he is firmly opposed a Ukrainian Nato membership, sharing the false perception that Ukraine is not an independent and sovereign country.
On 3 July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met with Putin and offered to mediate a “just peace” between Ukraine and Russia, implying that the latter has legitimate claims.
All three have conspicuously ignored the Swiss Summit on Peace in Ukraine, President Zelensky’s 10-point peace plan based on international law, and not least, the international effort to establish unity of efforts to enforce a just peace.
The calls for negotiations – ignoring the fundamental nature of the war, the more than 200 negotiations to resolve it, the Russian terms and calls for capitulation and its use of negotiations as an instrument to achieve its strategic goals – are nothing but an attempt to manipulate the US and Europe to believe that the war can be solved through diplomacy. It cannot.
For a negotiation to be successful, it must solve the cause of the war: Russia’s ‘Great Power’ ambitions. Until this is repressed, there will be no peace. These ambitions are not negotiable; they can only be denied through military power.
The full-scale war did not start for any of the reasons Putin claimed. It started because negotiations failed to deliver a Ukrainian defeat and the West failed to deter him.
Orban, Fico and Erdoğan are pursuing their own national interests. They might seek to strengthen their bilateral relations with Russia, support Russian “values” and expansionism, or secure economic advantages. They might even be trying to align their policy with that of former President Trump. His “peace plan” – as pieced together by his statements and interviews of his close associates – is, after all, a blueprint for Russian victory over Ukraine and the West.
Whatever the reason, they are attempting to shift Western focus from conflict resolution to unviable diplomacy to undermine European newfound resolve and its continued support for Ukraine.
They are trying to derail a recent and crucial debate: the role of military power in crisis management.
In 2022, several countries argued publicly in favour of greater Nato involvement. Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia put forward a 10-point plan to save Ukraine. Poland argued that if this did not stop the war, then Nato should go further and protect the people of Ukraine. Their call for Nato to do more continues relentlessly.
Nato members are even discussing sending troops to train soldiers in Ukraine. They are contemplating shooting down Russian missiles and drones within Ukrainian airspace. Some argue in favour of closing the sky over the Western part of Ukraine. Some consider delivering weapons and ammunition not only to the borders of Ukraine but also closer to the front line. Nato members have just agreed to expand the Alliance’s support to Ukraine, taking on the responsibility for coordination of security assistance and training for Ukraine.
They are right to do so. Ukraine is fighting for its existence; Russia for its “greatness”. Russia will continue the war until victorious or it risks being defeated. As stressed in my report for the Centre for Defence Strategies Why the West cannot let Russia win, the consequence of a Russian victory would be devastating.
Unfortunately, the Nato Summit failed to deliver hope for an end to the war. The member states ignored the nine compelling reasons given for inviting Ukraine to join. Additionally, describing Russia’s multidomain aggressions against Nato members as “hybrid actions” is a flagrant failure to acknowledge it as a part of a broader campaign – a hybrid war – to undermine and destabilise the Euro-Atlantic area.
Fundamentally, Nato’s credibility is being undermined by its constant failure to act according to its Strategic Concept from 2010: to defend itself in Ukraine. A failure to engage in a war that only can be resolved through intervention implies a hope for peace through negotiations.
Hans Petter Midttun is the former Norwegian Defence Attache to Ukraine