Opinion Sur
In Ukraine we cannot expect a lasting and true peace, but a frozen war perhaps celebrated according to the rites of a bloody carnival. But it will be, if it happens at all, at least a truce.
The title of this note is a copy of a well-known phrase attributed to the Roman historian Tacitus: “Rapine, murder and robbery are called by a false name governing, and where they create a desert, they call it peace”.[1] It applies especially to the war in Ukraine and the negotiations between two dictators – the experienced Russian and the improvised American – with their respective entourages.
The occasion is the predictable outcome of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which after three long years and hundreds of thousands of dead[2] — devastated cities, dead, captured and displaced populations — ends with an exhausted Ukrainian army, surrounded, and on the verge of collapse.
Not only two armies but also two narratives are confronting each other. On the one hand, the Russians felt seriously threatened with NATO’s eastward expansion and put Ukraine as the last frontier where that alliance should stop. When NATO overran it, the Russians invaded. For their part, the Ukrainians surprised the invaders with hardened and courageous resistance. They demonized each other. In both cases, the phrase that a French gentleman invented in 1868, and which rhymes in its original version, “Cet animal est très méchant; quand on l’attaque, il se défend” (This animal is verybad; when attacked, it defends itself), was fulfilled to the letter.
On the resulting wasteland, the supposed peace will have to include the loss of a fifth of the territory of the invaded country, and the very problematic reconstruction of the remaining “sovereign” territory, with security guarantees by the United States and its submissive European allies.[3] Instead of peace, the more accurate term is “frozen war”, the model for which is the ageing two-Koreas scheme. A frozen war is a situation in which an armed conflict has ended in practical terms but has not been formally resolved by a peace treaty or agreement. In essence, active fighting has ceased, but the underlying causes of the conflict remain unresolved, and tension and the risk of renewed conflict are still present.
One issue for all the competing parties – East, West, and in the middle a country that has been disemboweled – is how to disguise an outcome as grim as it was unnecessary. On the one hand, there will be a Russian victory of which it will not be in that country’s interest to boast too much (like Israel in another context, Russia fails to disguise its oppression as liberation). On the other hand, there will be a major strategic concession by what is left of the classic Western world, which it will have to “sell” at home and abroad –urbi et orbi– as a diplomatic triumph.
We know that President Trump is a master at organizing a carnival,[4] but in the bloody farse President Putin has the more imposing disguise. What will be left on the ground and on the way to that ground in the larger context? In other words: What is the unfinished business in the years ahead?
First, let’s consider the terrain.
- Population: The population in Ukraine has declined by about 10 million since 2014 and by about 8 million since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, according to the United Nations Population Fund. These figures are optimistic estimates. The country has entered a catastrophic downward demographic spiral.
- The territorial concession: Ukraine will lose 20% of its territory. Russia will keep a large part of the East of the country and Crimea.
- The guarantees: As in Korea, they would be a security “trigger” to prevent a future invasion, putting a military contingent as “cannon fodder” of guarantor powers. Will US troops go to arm the trigger? No: they will be European troops. The American motto is “let’s buck up and you go.” These guarantees circumvent and abandon the famous article 5 of NATO,[5] an organization which Ukraine will have to resign sine die, that is forever.
- Reconstruction: Will the emigrants and displaced persons return to their country in ruins? They will have to stop the downward demographic spiral. Who will finance the reconstruction of the material and electronic infrastructure of the country? Which investors will have confidence and economic guarantees to invest in the future development of the country? What onerous conditions will investors impose, especially with the emerging tax matrix of the USA, Russia and China?
- Corruption: It is the biggest counterweight to Ukrainian patriotism. Given the country’s complex history, how to control endemic corruption, both Russia- and US-linked?
Second, let’s consider the context.
- NATO’s impotence: The security guarantees of the future Ukrainian rump state, by circumventing NATO’s Article 5 and bypassing the whole, will clearly indicate that the organization has little chance of standing on its own two feet. It will be only a label, not a real deterrent to variable arrangements and transactions between powers – above, below, and on the side of the seemingly powerful and provocative alliance that calls itself defensive.
- Permanent tension between Russia and European countries, which will only diminish as some of them move to the side of the right-wing international.
- Net strategic benefits for China, even if there is further US rapprochement with Russia.
- Abdication of the European Union as an independent power/bloc, despite (or because of) its (US-sponsored) rearmament, which increases in inverse proportion to the social welfare of member countries.[6] The redirection of public spending towards military preparedness is alarming.
- Significant decline in the prestige and soft power of the United States in the concert of nations, especially the decline in the prestige of the Anglo-Saxon model of liberal democracy. This model is being replaced by what C. Wright Mills defined in 1956 as “crackpot realism” in his study on the power elite. It consists of making highly risky decisions believing that one is exceptionally rational.
- Relief from one of the American distraction factors (the other is in the Middle East) in the main strategic contest between the US and China.
In short, and I write these lines in the run up to the ongoing negotiations in the relevant capitals (Washington, Moscow, Kiev, London and Brussels), we cannot expect a lasting and true peace, but a frozen war that will be celebrated according to the bloody logic of a mendacious carnival. But it will be, if it happens at all, at least a truce. The President of the United States has already nominated himself for the Nobel Peace Prize. What times we live in, what habits we have!
[1] See https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/08/14/the-real-collusion-between-donald-trump-and-vladimir-putin?giftId=daabac42-3f33-47d7-94ce-71041d4780bc&utm_campaign=gifted_article
[2] For an estimate, see https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/us/politics/russia-ukraine-troop-casualties.html There are more than one and a half million and counting.
[3] On the European submission, a single episode is enough to prove it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-08-18/zelenskiy-allies-set-to-plead-with-trump-to-stand-behind-ukraine?cmpid=081825_morningamer&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=250818&utm_campaign=morningamer
[4] I use the term in the sense proposed by Mikhail Bajktin, who defined the carnivalesque as a ceremony of the world turned upside down, which from time to time arouses the interest of an entire people, as a symbolic retribution or revenge against the status quo. In his literary theory, the carnivalesque refers to a cultural and literary phenomenon involving the inversion of social norms, collective laughter and the celebration of the grotesque, often associated with traditional carnival. The Nobel Peace Prize aspiration is an exemplary instance of the carnivalesque.
[5] Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty establishes NATO’s principle of collective defense. If a NATO member country is attacked, all other members are considered to have been attacked and are obliged to take whatever measures they deem necessary to assist the attacked country, including the use of armed force.
[6] For a theory of collective abdication, see Ivan Ermakoff’s contribution: https://www.dukeupress.edu/ruling-oneself-out.
