Can the war in Ukraine be ended through diplomacy? If so, how and when? RM staff have combed through recent commentary by experts on both sides of the geopolitical divide in search of answers. Even before Russian and Ukrainian officials said this week that peace talks were “on pause,” none believed a lasting peace deal could be negotiated anytime soon. That should come as no surprise, given that neither of the warring sides has yet lost hope it can succeed on the battlefield. As Harvard’s Stephen Walt has put it, “the war … won’t end until the protagonists realize that they cannot achieve all their original goals and will have to accept a less-than-ideal outcome.” For some Russian and Ukrainian experts, this is perhaps the only proposition on which they agree with one another.
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