The war in Ukraine has seen its fair share of twists and turns over the last 27 months. The first year was largely defined by the Russian army’s highly public missteps, from gas-less tanks stranded on the roadside to Russian soldiers redeploying to the Donbas after a failed push to take Kyiv. Then came Ukraine’s swift September 2022 counteroffensive in Kharkiv. The Ukrainians were riding high in November 2022, so much so that U.S. intelligence agencies picked up chatter that Russian generals were talking about the use of tactical nuclear warheads.
The situation, however, has deteriorated for the Ukrainians ever since. The capture of Kherson in November 2022 was the high-water mark of Ukraine’s progress. Since then, the battlefield situation has slowly rebounded to Russia’s advantage. Moscow has regained more territory over the last two months than Ukraine did during its entire counteroffensive last year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is frustrated by Russia’s current operations in Kharkiv, leading Washington to loosen its ban on using U.S.-supplied weapons to hit targets inside Russia.
All of this leads to the inevitable question: At what point should Ukraine shift its strategy from total military victory toward a good-enough peace?
For many, even talking about the possibility of a diplomatic settlement with Russia is blasphemy. Russia, after all, is the aggressor, invading a sovereign neighbor and committing countless atrocities in the process. Its president, Vladimir Putin, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Ukraine is the victim, the logic goes,........