Beijing’s and other non-Western capitals’ calls for a ceasefire and negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv have acquired a new meaning after the Ukrainian occupation of western Russian lands. A Chinese or other non-Western push for Russo-Ukrainian accommodation could now lead to meaningful peace talks. 

Ukraine’s unexpectedly successful and deep incursion into Russian territory on August 6, 2024, has changed the conversation about the Russo-Ukrainian War. The most important international impact that the Ukrainian surprise action may eventually have is on officially neutral non-Western countries such as China, India, or Brazil. The West was and will be supportive of Ukraine—irrespective of the Kursk operation and its outcome. In contrast, a prolonged Ukrainian occupation of legitimate Russian state territory introduces a new dimension into non-Western approaches to the war.

If Moscow does not reverse the Ukrainian offensive soon and fully, it will change Kyiv’s position and leverage in hypothetical negotiations, which many third actors have officially promoted since the war started in 2014. So far, Kyiv has had to rely solely on moral and legal arguments referring to the rules-based world order in its communication with foreign partners. Now, in contrast, a less normatively driven, more transactional, and more straightforward “land-for-land” deal between Russia and Ukraine has become theoretically feasible.

Ukrainian-Russian Negotiations Before the Kursk Offensive

The pre-Kursk military-political reality meant any ceasefire or negotiations would likely have proved highly unfavorable to Kyiv—whether in bilateral or multilateral settings. The 2014 Minsk-I and 2015 Minsk-II Accords, signed by Kyiv at gunpoint, as well as the following talks, happened largely under the unofficial motto of “peace for sovereignty.” The Minsk agreements, to be sure, foresaw that Kyiv could have indeed secured a settlement for mainland Ukraine and eventually returned its control over the de facto Russia-occupied parts of the Donets Basin (Donbas). Yet, this would have been, under the Minsk deals, only possible if Kyiv had allowed Moscow’s local proxies in Eastern Ukraine to become legitimate players within the Ukrainian polity.

The Kremlin’s neocolonial scheme, foreseen in the Minsk Accords, to dominate Ukraine once more meant pseudo-elections in the Donbas. Kyiv would have had to conduct local and regional polls on East Ukrainian territories under Moscow's effective control. Obviously, the Kremlin would have manipulated such contests just like Russian elections at home. Ukraine’s sovereignty would have been limited by Russian proxies installed as veto players in Kyiv and the Donbas. Meanwhile, the annexed Crimean Peninsula was kept altogether out of the Minsk discussions.

The 2022 Istanbul talks went under the unofficial motto of “peace for security.” This meant that Moscow was only ready to end the so-called “special military operation” that had begun on February 24, 2022, if Kyiv limited its defenses and international cooperation. The Kremlin’s obvious intention was to fundamentally weaken the Ukrainian state and isolate it from foreign partners. The draft Istanbul agreement included security guarantees for Ukraine but with a Russian veto. As a result, Ukraine would have become either a new post-war Finland, a satellite state akin to the Soviet bloc’s “peoples republics,” or a second Belarus—and, above all, easy prey for another Russian invasion. The failure of the Istanbul talks led to Russia’s illegal annexations of four additional southeast Ukrainian regions in September 2022.

In the next stage, Russia switched to an even more legally nihilistic “peace in exchange for land” strategy vis-à-vis Ukraine. According to a recently circulated Kremlin settlement proposal, Ukraine would have to not only limit its sovereignty but also agree to Russia’s annexation of the occupied Ukrainian territories. Moreover, the Kremlin demanded Kyiv hand over the non-occupied parts of the four Russia-annexed Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. The Kremlin has officially and unofficially warned that the alternative to this proposal is the continuation of its genocidal war until Ukraine’s full annihilation—with or without weapons of mass destruction.

The Approaching Minsk-III

For ten years, the Kremlin has continuously promoted these narratives in the media and international organizations. As a result, they have been implicitly or even explicitly adopted by third parties. The supporters of Russian legal and normative nihilism vis-à-vis Ukraine range from Western pacifist groups and self-professed “realists” to the international radical right as well as various representatives of the so-called Global South.

With every year that Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian lands continues, the idea of some Ukrainian cessation of territory and/or sovereignty in the interest of peace has become more popular across the world. To be sure, earlier concessions made by Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine in the past have not led to the restoration of control over their state territories, as agreed by Russia. Nor did these past deals between Moscow and its former colonies lead to peace in Europe. Nevertheless, many, if not most, Western and non-Western political and intellectual elites saw Ukrainian “compromises” as a road to end the war and achieve a lasting settlement.

Before the Kursk Offensive, a Minsk-III deal with new limitations on Ukrainian territorial integrity and political independence was looming on the horizon. This happened against the background of continuing international ignorance about Russia’s irredentist and imperial ambitions. Many observers believe that throwing yet another piece of land into the Russian crocodile’s mouth will finally please the insatiable reptile’s appetite.

Reformatting the War’s Perception

Since August 6, Kyiv has been trying to change this conversation by creating entirely new facts on the ground. With the Kursk operation, Ukraine has reversed dubious “sovereignty/security/land-for-peace” arguments. According to this idea, Ukraine is ready to return its now captured legitimate Russian lands in exchange for the end of Russia’s occupation.

This puts Vladimir Putin in a difficult situation. On the one hand, the continued loss of control over Russian territory is now and will be an enormous embarrassment for the Kremlin. On the other hand, the annexed east and south Ukrainian lands are, according to the Russian Constitution, the official territory of the Russian Federation.

For most of the Russian elite and population, restoring Russian control is more important than the permanent occupation of illegally acquired lands that the rest of the world regards as Ukrainian anyway. Integrating the annexed territories into the Russian state and economy is costly and will remain so in the future. The illegal annexations of Ukrainian regions will continue to hamper Russian development and keep Western sanctions intact.

The Non-Western Factor

The new Ukrainian strategy since August 6 could provide an additional avenue of influence not only for doves in the Russian leadership but also for Russian partners on the international scene—above all, China. Moderates can now argue that the Ukrainian annexations should be reversed in exchange for the restoration of Russia’s territorial integrity. The idea of such a land-for-land deal will become more popular with each additional week that Ukraine holds its captured territories in Russia. At least, there will be increasing pressure on Putin to finally return the lost lands under Moscow’s control—whether by military or diplomatic means.

If Russia cannot reverse the Ukrainian incursion with conventional arms, to be sure, it could try to do so by deploying nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. Such a dire escalation would, however, reverberate throughout the international community and fundamentally change the war’s nature. The eventual outcome of the 2022 “special military operation” would become entirely unpredictable not only for Kyiv but also for Moscow. Even Russian partners like China and India may reposition themselves vis-à-vis an unpredictable Moscow—a development that could spell disaster for the Russian economy.

For Putin’s regime, either scenario—continued humiliation in Kursk or hazardous nuclear escalation—is a risky path. Both may also be seen as undesirable in Beijing and other non-Western capitals. Against this background, a “land-for-land” deal—currently rejected by Moscow—could become salient. If Ukraine’s capture of Russian territories continues, a diplomatic solution could become an increasingly preferable outcome not only for parts of the Russian elite but also for foreign governments.

Over the last two and a half years, a number of officially neutral nations around the world have been advocating an immediate and unconditioned end to fighting and negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv. For instance, China’s twelve-point peace plan of February 2023 mentions a ceasefire and “start of peace talks.” The joint Brazilian-Chinese six-point peace plan of May 2024 suggests, among others, that “[a]ll parties should create conditions for the resumption of direct dialogue and push for the de-escalation of the situation until the realization of a comprehensive ceasefire. China and Brazil support an international peace conference held at a proper time that is recognized by both Russia and Ukraine, with equal participation of all parties as well as fair discussion of all peace plans.”

In late September 2024, under China’s leadership, a so-called “Friends for Peace” group on the Russo-Ukrainian War was established at the last session of the UN General Assembly. The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced, in this connection, that “China hopes that the parties involved will consider resuming peace talks at an appropriate time, meet each other halfway in their dialogue, and seek common ground while shelving differences in their negotiations, fairly discuss all peace plans, and promote the establishment of a new security architecture.” The main question is whether the members of the “Friends for Peace” group or other neutral non-Western countries will—by their deeds and not just their words—become supporters of a lasting Russo-Ukrainian just peace rather than an unjust Russian victory over Ukraine.

Conflicting Interests

Until recently, various non-Western peace plans and similar proposals implied more or less far-reaching Ukrainian satisfaction with Russian territorial and political appetite. Since early August 2024, however, Ukraine has, with its capture of Russian state territory, supplied the basis for a transactional agreement instead of the hitherto suggested unjust peace between the two states. The million-dollar question is now whether and how officially pro-truce, pro-negotiation, and pro-peace non-Western countries, above all China, will react to and act on this novel situation.

To be sure, Putin and other representatives of the Russian regime have made it clear that Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has made negotiations impossible. This shift of the Kremlin’s ten-year public advocacy of Russo-Ukrainian peace talks is of little surprise. In the current situation, a ceasefire does not imply a de facto Ukrainian capitulation under the guise of a diplomatic settlement. Now, negotiations between Russia and Ukraine would make real sense, as both countries have territories to gain and lose. Thereby, peace talks have, however, also lost their function for the Kremlin. Moscow’s only envisaged way to end the war is via a military or diplomatic victory over Kyiv—and not through a mutually acceptable settlement.

Yet, Russia is economically and technologically dependent on foreign support, most of all on China’s. Some of Russia’s crucial political and economic allies, like North Korea, Iran, and Syria, are unequivocally interested in Moscow’s full victory. They will support the Russian aggression as far as they can. Other countries friendly to Russia, like China, India, or Brazil, may, in contrast, possess conflicting internal and foreign interests in their governments, parliaments, economies, and societies. Some domestic factions may favor a continuation of the war and Russian victory. In contrast, others might prefer peace now rather than a less favorable peace later.

Beijing has profited from the Russo-Ukrainian War so far, both economically and geopolitically. The war has created many new business opportunities for China and other countries around the world that do not participate in the Western sanctions regime against Russia. Beijing has acquired a valuable junior partner in Moscow in its geopolitical confrontation with Washington. 

Since February 2022, the Russo-Ukrainian War has distracted the attention of the United States and the entire West from the Indo-Pacific realm, as well as diverting more and more Western financial, military, and other resources to Eastern Europe. On the other hand, the war’s continuation is generating, with every additional month, more risks and after-effects not only for the West. Some of the transcontinental repercussions of Russia’s military aggression are not in China’s economic or political interests.

Nuclear Scenarios

For instance, in late September 2024, Putin announced plans to loosen Russia’s nuclear doctrine. Putin’s declaration may be merely a continuation of the Kremlin’s nuclear bluffing that had already begun with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. Nevertheless, Russia’s ever-more aggressive war and continued threats of nuclear escalation are eroding the normative as well as psychological foundations of the worldwide non-proliferation regime.

As the war continues, the likelihood increases, moreover, that an escalation with grave implications not only for Eastern Europe but also for the wider world could happen. Harvard’s nuclear historian Mariana Budjeryn has recently pointed out that a Russia that is winning in Ukraine may actually be more likely to use nuclear weapons to complete its victory than a Russia that is losing. Such behavior would follow the pattern of the first and only deployment of nuclear weapons by the United States in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the worst case, the Kremlin’s continued public intimidation of Western countries supporting Ukraine with World War III could, even if not intended, become a self-fulfilling prophecy. One wonders whether China, Brazil, or India are interested in such a development.

A very different scenario of instability is also looming: The war could end with Russia’s crushing military defeat in Ukraine. This, in turn, could result not only in a regime change in Moscow but also in a partial or even complete break-up of the Russian Federation into several smaller states. The latter prospect is a possible outcome proposed by Professor Alexander Etkind of Central European University in Vienna. Etkind compares the actions of late Austria-Hungary with Russia’s behavior 100 years later. In 1914, the Habsburg dual monarchy had paradoxically started a world war that led to the disintegration of the empire four years later. In 2014, the Russian Federation started the Russo-Ukrainian War, which may eventually fracture Moscow’s post-Soviet rump empire.

Some observers suspect that this scenario may be one of the reasons why Beijing is cynically fueling the Russo-Ukrainian War through intensified economic cooperation with Moscow. According to this logic, the longer the war lasts, the more likely a break-up of the Russian Federation will occur, along with the potential for Chinese territorial gains. This includes the lands of “Outer Manchuria,” which were obtained by the Russian Empire from the Qing Dynasty in the nineteenth century via “unequal treaties.” In September 2024, Taiwanese president William Lai suggested that the People’s Republic should, if it takes its irredentism seriously, also be concerned about the historically Chinese northeastern territories that had been lost to Russia during the so-called “century of humiliation.”

If Beijing is indeed secretly promoting the corrosion of the Russian state through the continuation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, this would constitute a profoundly cynical strategy with uncertain benefits. It would not only create a zone of instability to the north of China but also create multiple nuclear-armed states on its northern border. Ethnic Russians would populate the post-Russian states, statelets, and territories at any rate and would certainly resent Chinese incursions. 

Will the Global South Help Ukraine?

Whether Russia wins or loses its war against Ukraine, the international repercussions of either scenario will be considerable. A total Russian victory would unsettle the UN system as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. It might even involve, as Mariana Budjeryn has written, the explosion of one or more nuclear warheads.

If Russia loses in a humiliating way in Ukraine, the resulting political instability in Moscow will have wider repercussions. In one way or another, it will spill over into the realm of international security. The Russo-Ukrainian War has created many political and economic opportunities for China and the Global South. However, its negative after-effects and global risks are also accumulating not only for Ukraine and the West but also beyond.

The coming weeks and months will show the strength of either pacifist or bellicist, risk-prone or risk-averse inclinations in various non-Western nations. Will Beijing and other powerful non-Western capitals be willing and able to seize the opportunity to persuade Moscow to cease its fire along the entire frontline and within Russia, too? Are countries like China, India, and Brazil interested in peace enough to use their international clout to force Russia into serious negotiations?

Will the major non-Western countries recognize their common interest with the West in a just peace between Ukraine and Russia and reject a veiled Ukrainian capitulation? Will Beijing and other non-Western countries be willing and able to force the Kremlin to leave the war? Ukraine's incursion into the Kursk Region since early August 2024 could be the last chance to prevent further escalation and expansion of the conflict beyond the Russo-Ukrainian frontline.

Dr. Andreas Umland is an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for East European Studies (SCEEUS) at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI).

Image: miss.cabul / Shutterstock.com.