No Peace for Ukraine: History is filled with long wars: the Thirty Years War, the Hundred Years War, and a Cold War that lasted a half-century.
Wars they may be, but that doesn’t mean there was continuous warfare. The Napoleonic Wars saw sporadic wars between France and hostile coalitions, interspersed by periods of uneasy peace such as the Treaty of Amiens between Britain and France in 1802. Israel has fought multiple wars with Arab states since 1948, and still has no more than an armistice with Lebanon and Syria. Yet the battlefield phases of the Arab-Israeli conflict – where armies engage in battle — have tended to last no more than a few weeks.
The Real Ukraine Challenge: Peace Won’t Be Easy
So when leaders such as Trump and Putin speak of “peace” and “ceasefire” in Ukraine, are they really talking about peace?
The problem is that peace doesn’t always mean the violence has ended. In some cases, former enemies can indeed stop fighting even if they don’t become friends. For example, Israel and Egypt have had a frosty peace since the 1978 Camp David Accords, with limited trade and tourism.
But that’s still an improvement. The armed forces of the two nations have not engaged in combat, nor are Israel and Egypt sponsoring terrorist groups and other means to subvert the security of the other.
The road to Camp David required a seismic change in thinking for Egypt in particular, which for decades had refused to accept the existence of the Jewish state. For Israel, the peace treaty meant having sufficient trust – not an easy thing for Israelis — to relinquish the Sinai as a buffer against the former dominant power in the Arab coalition against Israel. Yet despite all the doubts, peace has endured between two once-bitter enemies.
History Says Be Warry
In that sense, a negotiated, lasting peace in Ukraine under current conditions is unlikely. Putin – or any like-minded successors – would have to accept the existence of an independent Ukraine. If Moscow’s goal in invading Ukraine was to ensure that Ukraine never joined NATO, or to forcibly incorporate Ukraine into a reborn Soviet empire, then a peace that would be acceptable to Ukraine and its Western allies would be unbearable.
In addition, even if Putin proclaims victory, questions will inevitably arise about whether annexing Crimea and a chunk of Eastern Europe was worth a million casualties. For its part, there are bound to revanchist sentiments in Ukraine to recover territories seized by Russia. Under those conditions, a peace along the lines of post-1945 Western Europe – where heavily fortified national borders have been erased – seems a distant dream.
Ceasefire Talk?
What about the permanent cease-fire demanded by Trump?
Such an arrangement could resemble the ceasefire between India and Pakistan over Kashmir since 1949. But Kashmir has been the scene of numerous border clashes, including air battles between Indian and Pakistani jets, that have brought . two nuclear-armed powers to the brink of war. On the Golan Heights, a UN-monitored ceasefire didn’t Israel from repeatedly launching air strikes into Syria to stop the flow of Iranian arms through Syrian territory to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
If Russia is still bent on the extinction of Ukraine as an independent nation, there are numerous ways that it can attack Ukraine short of abrogating a ceasefire. Moscow can sponsor insurgent and terrorist groups inside Ukraine, “accidentally” fire at Ukrainian troops, or strike Ukrainian cities in response to alleged border violations.
Russian Msta Artillery. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
By themselves, a peace treaty or ceasefire agreement are no more than scraps of paper. Nations may adhere to them from mutual exhaustion, as with Israel and Egypt. Or, because one side becomes exhausted, as America did in Vietnam. Yet while Ukraine is tired, its people are still determined to resist Russia, or some stronger power enforces the rules, as the U.S. did in Western Europe after World War II. In theory, a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine could accomplish this – if only Europe had the military resources and political will to potentially fight Russia.
For now, it appears that any cessation of hostilities between Ukraine and Russia would be no more than a truce while both sides rest and rearm for the next round.
Europe – and America, depending on the mood of the Trump administration – should be prepared to keep supplying Ukraine.
About the Author: Michael Peck
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Business Insider, Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Swamplaw Yankee
April 30, 2025 at 3:02 pm
Oh Boy sick! The speculators are out waving, fellow, academic, military, etc., flags, pennants indicating their fantasy history, like a comic book festival such as complay.
The authors must never read the peer comments. Do they avoid the shill + troll barrage from the zhimmm types? The authors might catch on that the trolls reflect alternate history from competing empires, enemies of the Yankee empire.
Peace was never any issue to multi generations of Putin’s ancestors. For thousands of years. The peasant russian just obeyed his ancient ethnic instinct for deviant sex and bi-annually set off in Caravans into Ukraine to harvest little girls and boys. One assumes that the deviants left their own families back in Moscow.
What does this author not understand in the facts? The peasant russian did as grandpa russky did, to earn huge cash in the human trafficking business with the Muslims, etc.. These authors must be in therapy if they read this and discover that human trafficking still exists! What, even inside the pristine USA land borders??
The authors who refuse to face the fact that water is wet, well, I can not do therapy with them. The Obama cabal in 2014 greenlighted the free, no-cost, giveaway of ancient Ukrainian soil and families to the prime cold war enemy of the USA: Putin. Yes, Democrats, OBAMA, the deep state, all gave the green light in 2013-14 to human trafficking. What is the fact problem, boy sicks?
Now, there is ten years worth of Putin’s very hard work in supplying free Ukrainian children to very needy russian language teachers in Muscovite. And also owners of very dusty table tops.
The peasant russian loves Putin, adores Putin for this ancient fullfillment of their subconscious thnic russian needs. And, for free, as long as the peasants support him! The Nabokov subliminal ethnic deviancies are lived at no-cost, “Lolita” style in so very many russian language parlours all thanks to the USA. Yes, the 2014 USA power structure has brought by 2015 joy, eckstasy, fullfillment, to over a million russian peasants. The Putin power structure very much appreciates the American Epstein elite who facilitated this human trafficking for over 6 years.
The above factors in this article: all incidental. The peasant russian has human trafficked with the Muslim traders in Caffe in Crimea for thousands of years. The Yankee in recent America just can not process this emotional information of the russian ethnic addiction for kiddies. The above articles prove it.
The current Trump MAGA cabal just wants to cuddle, close rub + chat kiddies with this ancient kidnapping ethnic group. Paying “Pominki” to the Muslim Khans meant that the orc muscovite were free to cultivate the hinterlands of Ukraine for little children. Pominki were a serious financial burden on the Muscovy orcs at the exact time about 1616. The year that Ukrainian fathers attacked by sea and land both sex trade partners: Muscovy + muslim sex traders.
Yankee scribes need to speak about pre-payment by Putin of $10,000,000 in gold bullion per each and every child as compensation + reparation. Now, first, prime! Forget all that whackooff weirdo shame show stoogery + rescue the victimized children first. Crimal charges against the millions of peasant russian language teachers second.
If these two points are the only agenda topics, the sex crazed ethnic russian addicts will cease, desist + stop their fake land war on Ukrainian families in short days. Attempt to regain your lost honour, chief magistrate! Discard the Epstein type crowd that still circulates! Got it. Otherwise, the proven plots that Shakespeare once revealed might become very contemporary! This William scribe wrote his plays exactly in the years that Putin’s ancestors were inside Ukraine’s hinterland enjoying their human trafficking delights and huge profits. -30-
Jim
April 30, 2025 at 8:00 pm
What does Russia want?
A neutral, non-aligned nation (which was part of Ukraine’s 1996 founding document and Constitution).
And continued to be part of Ukraine’s basic foreign policy until the 2014 violent overthrow.
Ukraine limited to a national police force or constabulary force limited to under 100,000 and no continued weapons shipments from Nato countries… and limited to light armored vehicles.
Before 2014 and the violent overthrow of the duly-elected president and the alienation of half the populace that voted for that president, Ukraine’s armed forces were relatively small and were sufficient for their needs until they deemed the people who rejected the results of the violent overthrow subject to military attack.
To de-Banderite Ukraine. No Stepan Bandera ideologues in the government of Ukraine. Bandera is considered a national hero in Ukraine. Bandera was a hyper-chauvinist who murdered Poles, Jews, and Russians at the tail end of WWII to achieve his vision of Ukraine.
(The Russians say, “de-Nazification,” but Banderitism has a separate history from Nazism, yet crossed paths during World War Two, although, today, there are some “neo-Nazis” like the Azov battalion, Right-sector, and Krakken, but they tend to be limited to being “muscle on the street” and not in the government.)
And, the four Oblasts and Crimea recognized as Russian territory both de facto and dejure . In Crimea and the Donbas, the people will fight to stay alive against a Kiev regime which says over and over, “We want to kill Russians where ever we find them.”
So, Russia wants self-determination for Russian speakers in Crimea and the Donbas and respect for Russian speakers (no systematic discrimination) in what ever is left of Ukraine after the war stops.
Essentially, all the items listed are what Ukraine was before the 2014 violent overthrow of the democratically elected president and the institution of a police-state over time before the invasion and martial law.
Simple, take out the Banderites and you might have a peace settlement.
Leave them in power and it will be a fight to the death… and total defeat for Ukraine.
The Banderites are the stumbling block to peace.
MuricanSwamp
April 30, 2025 at 8:28 pm
No peace, until the french, the Brits and possibly the Germans commanded by Friedrich mertz enter the eastern battlefields in a reprise of operation Barbarossa.
They will then go hammers and tongs against the russkies and the Donbass inhabitants in the second half of 2025.
Trump will watch the outcome of the clash and then decide who to support.
Then peace becomes clearer.
Now’s the right time to hurl some nukes !
Make hay while sun’s rising in the sky. In 2025.
Zhduny
April 30, 2025 at 10:07 pm
Eighty-four years ago, Germany invaded the soviet union with 3 million men, or over 150 full divisions, 3,000 tanks, 7,000 guns and 5,000 aircraft.
Germany was accompanied by several fascist allies, from Finnish units, to Romanians, Hungarians, Italians and even a Spanish division.
The initial operation started in summer 1941 and ended in early winter 1941 after getting pushed back from the gates of Moscow.
That was made possible after the sorge spy ring informed Moscow that Japan wouldn’t attack Siberia. The soviets then rushed 17 divisions from the Soviet far east to fight against the Germans.
German military units adopted an unduly harsh policy toward the civilians and soldiers of the USSR, which was later repaid in full by the Red Army when it rose up from the ashes and plowed its triumphant route to berlin in 1945.
That story has been faithfully rehashed today in Donbass, where initially after the fascists snatched power, the azov battalions employed massive heavy firepower against donbass until Russian units intervened and threw back the fascist forces.
Thus the situation today is like in late 1943 in the USSR, where the fascists were still strong and wholly or clearly undefeated, and peace was still faraway.
It would not be until late summer 1943 when the Red Army started its string of counteroffensives against the Nazis after their spectacular failure of operation citadel.
By 1944, most Nazi units on the eastern front were furiously backpedalling, and with the start of bagration, the Red Army began smashing the Germans left and right.
By early 1945, the Red Army was in eastern Poland and on Jan 12 1945, it launched the vistula-oder offensive that brought it finally to almost within 70km of berlin. Then later berlin fell and the fascists were crushed and peace reigned until the rise of the new Nazis in 2014.
History is repeating itself.
George Gordon Byron
May 1, 2025 at 1:08 am
1) For the Author and other experts of the Western world:
1.1) Don’t you think that by presenting material from the mainstream of Western ideology and the Western point of view – the point of view of the “White Superman” – a colonizer, an invader, you deprive yourself and the readers of objectivity?
1.2) Where is the alternative point of view in your reasoning? From a historical and philosophical point of view, you are not objective, taking a pro-American, pro-Western, pro-Ukrainian position..
2) For the pseudo-Yankee from the Top:
2.1) Your repeated re-writing of the same pseudo-historical nonsense and fixation on the Bandera nationalist platform, slander against Russia, Russian history are boring and false.
2.2) The world knows only one great Little Russian – the Pole Gogol-Yanovsky …. who considered himself Russian!
Of the 6 Nobel laureates who came from Ukraine – citizens of the Russian Empire, the Ukrainian SSR USSR: 5.5 are Jews, and 0.5 are Moldovans.
2.3) Only Banderovites and Western “experts” who never lived in the Russian Empire, the Ukrainian SSR USSR can believe that there was some strong difference between Russians and Ukrainians. And only Western Ukrainians – linguistically, culturally, and genetically differ from Russians… and from Eastern Ukrainians!
3) My competence in this matter does not raise questions: my origin, personal residence in Ukraine, my environment, communication, education.
4) N.V. Gogol:
4.1) “Thank God first of all that you are Russian. “Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol to A.P. Tolstoy.” 1847
4.2) “There have been comrades in other lands, but there have never been such comrades as in the Russian land.” Let them all know what comradeship means in the Russian land! If it comes to dying, then none of them will have to die like that!.. No one, no one!.. Their mouse-like nature is not enough for that!” “Taras Bulba”. 1835.
waco
May 1, 2025 at 4:42 am
Peace comes only from the aftermath of a mushroom cloud and no other thing.
That was true in August 1945.
On august 6 1945, the USAAF dropped Little Boy on hiroshima that resulted in a 15kt explosion. It big shocked the Jap military.
Three days later, before the jap military could even recover from their big great shock, the USAAF dropped Fat Man on nagasaki which resulted in an even bigger 20kt explosion.
The second explosion from ‘a new type of bomb’ as the japs called it, then shocked the emperor’s balls to the core and he quickly announced he was in favor of surrender, a state of condition totally opposed to the day, when with great satisfaction, he authorized chemical and biological warfare against china in 1937, just eight years earlier.
So, under the stewardship of the emperor, Japan surrendered on 15 august 1945. Thus peace comes only after the mushroom cloud.
That’ll still be true in 2025.
Jim
May 1, 2025 at 10:07 am
Trump needs to bite the bullet and face-down the Washington establishment and walk away.
Trump wants peace.
Neither Ukraine or Russia want peace… they want victory… and only one of them looks to get it.
The United States can’t change the outcome… we can only prolong the agony.
Walk away and leave the combatants to their fate.
Sounds cold-hearted and and indifferent, but what’s worse? Prolonging the fighting and the agony or letting the course of events run to their inevitable conclusion?
It’s tough, it’s cold turkey… but Trump needs to do it.
Walk Away.
And, don’t come back to it.
Horsemen-of-the-Apocalypse
May 1, 2025 at 1:17 pm
Cessation of fighting in Ukraine leads to only a truce and no end to war. No peace either.
But the situation in south Asia is vastly different.
Today, may 1, 2025, a top India bigshot says modi will WIPE OUT Pakistan.
Eknath shinde says Narendra modi has met top ranks of India army, navy and air force and preparing a response to pahalgam incident.
A military response has been greenlighted.
Pete hegseth has called and says India has right to self-defense and thus US giving full support to India.
So, the situation there is different. No truce, no ending, no peace only a total WIPE OUT.
The world awaits beginning of ww3. Along indo-pak border.
Tom Aron
May 1, 2025 at 3:31 pm
The principal voice being left out of this discussion is the ‘average’ citizen in Western European countries. Public opinion does not does not include more military aid for Ukraine and definitely not include their own militaries having boots on the ground. The majority in Germany supported humanitarian aid but has never supported military aid.
The reality is that ‘Ukraine doesn’t matter’ to most western nation citizens. It was part of the Soviet Union for well over a half century and the world didn’t collapse. Western leaders have made it an issue, have put themselves in a corner and are now clueless as to any realistic solution that doesn’t include Russia dominating occupied Ukrainian territory.
Voice of Reason
May 1, 2025 at 4:10 pm
The author is likely wrong.
The massive elephant walking out of the room is $60 billion dollars a year spent on Ukraine. We whine about countries not spending 5% of their GDP on defense, this represents more than _50%_ of Ukrainian GDP.
Europe could conceivably replace this amount if it doubles its support to Ukraine. Since Hungary will not permit the EU to do that it’s up to individual member states that are more indebted than the US. Good luck with that.
Ukraine’s military support will substantially decrease in 2025 while Russia’s will increase.
All Russia has to do to force the endgame on the terms it is demanding is run a strong campaign this summer and fall. Recovering all the land it now claims as Russia is within its reach. If it doesn’t, there’s always next year.
The earliest possible date Ukraine will start to receive a level of support similar to what it received over the past 3 years in 2029.
No one, not even Zelensky, as he has openly stated, believes it is possible for Ukraine withstand Russia without U.S. support.
Russia is at most a couple of years away from dictating peace.
So no, there will likely be peace.
Michael
May 1, 2025 at 5:29 pm
Dzhim, drop the the ”we”. You got nothing in common with us.
By the way, Brent oil futures are fluctuating between $59.69 and $61.90 today. Toss in the coal mining business that already operates at a loss on average, the US economy teetering on recession etc etc and I bet Nabullina isn’t sleeping well nowadays. You are heading for bankruptcy.
Mark Thomason
May 1, 2025 at 11:59 pm
There will not be a truce. Nor a ceasefire.
There will be an unconditional surrender, as the regime falls apart and runs, just as happened in Afghanistan.
It will be Trump’s Afghanistan.
Ol'Timer
May 2, 2025 at 12:02 am
An authentically independent, economically viable, and militarily defensible Ukraine in the EU is possible, if Europe gives Ukraine what it needs for as long as it takes and makes clear its intent to do so. Their collective populations and GDPs dwarf Russia’s and Russia knows it. Ukraine’s will to win dwarfs Russia’s and Russia’s soldiers know that, too.
A well-armed Ukraine that is backed by European security guarantees would then create a nice buffer between Russia and all those small and vulnerable NATO states between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. That’s good for Europe and NATO.
Russia can take its winnings now and call it a glorious victory or it can try to destroy Ukraine’s independent existence and, in so doing, cripple itself. Since Putin is so unaccustomed to hearing “nyet” from anybody, I expect him to press on.
That’s too bad, especially for Ukrainians, which only wanted NATO membership to deter future Russian aggression not provoke it.
Hopefully, the families of Russian soldiers see what an unnecessary waste it all is and yell, “stop!” In the meantime, the families of Ukraine’s sons and daughters will continue to shout, “fight, fight, fight.”
It is no accident that Sun Tzu put the moral law first, which “causes the people to be in complete accord with their leader, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.”
The longer this war goes and the lower the price of oil and gas get, the more dismayed I see Russians getting.
Daniel
May 2, 2025 at 3:57 pm
While geopolitics is given, there are, as Russians love to say, nuances. The article silently assumes Mr. Putin will rule forever. But, with leadership changes, there might also be significant changes in Russian foreign politics.
Michael
May 3, 2025 at 5:37 am
Daniel,
25+ years of non-stop rashka-paraska lies & propaganda from kremlin against their own population will not disappear quickly. Even oldtimers from the soviet days have noted that the oppression, media control and propaganda is worse today than during the soviet time. Just look around here – all these russian trolls that seem to honestly believe all the non-sensical ”facts”, bile and vitriol they spew out. Unfortunately, there’s going to be a lot of hardship for average Ivan & Olga before things get better.