Decades could pass before relations are normalized, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence has said.
Russia and Ukraine may never sign a formal peace treaty ending the current conflict, Kirill Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, wrote in an op-ed, excerpts of which were published on Monday.
He pointed to Russia and Japan, which never signed a comprehensive peace treaty after World War II due to Tokyo’s claims on several of Russia’s Kuril Islands.
“There are cases in history when old wars between the states have not been legally concluded. An obvious example is Russia and Japan. They did not sign a peace agreement after 1945 due to [the dispute] over the Northern Islands, also known as the Kuril Islands in Russia. This territorial problem is now more than 70 years old,” Budanov wrote in an op-ed for NV magazine.
“This is why such a scenario is highly likely in our case, considering that Russia has significant territorial appetite when it comes to Ukraine, and not only pertaining to Crimea.”
The comments come as Kiev’s long-anticipated counteroffensive, which was launched in the summer, has largely petered out without achieving any significant victories on the ground. Ukrainian troops struggled to break through fortified defense lines and cross thick minefields, losing many NATO-supplied tanks and other armored vehicles in the process. Speaking to The Economist this month, Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top general, described the situation on the battlefield as “a stalemate.”
The prospects for a peace treaty between Moscow and Kiev remain bleak. President Vladimir Zelensky and other senior Ukrainian officials have ruled out negotiations unless Russia surrenders its recently acquired territories. Moscow has repeatedly said that this would be impossible.
Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia in 2014, following a Western-backed coup in Kiev that year. Four other territories – the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions – did the same after holding referendums in September 2022.
Last month, President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia is not aiming to acquire new lands, but to protect the people of Donbass and maintain its own security, noting that Kiev was close to signing a neutrality pact in March 2022, but has since discarded the preliminary agreements.
