Ukraine has already lost the war

So far this century, there have been 49 wars worldwide, 30% of which have ended with a peace agreement, 38% are still active, and 14.3% have resulted in military victory for one of the parties. The remaining wars are deactivated but not yet resolved. For decades, the tendency has been to resolve armed conflicts through negotiation and the signing of a peace agreement, something that has always satisfied me. But in recent years, the trend has changed, with wars that end with victory for one side and defeat for the other beginning to proliferate. This is a worrying trend, especially at a time when global military spending and the arms trade have increased dramatically, and militaristic thinking is once again prevalent, in a new Cold War dominated by the paranoia of being attacked.

This introduction is to repeat something I've been saying for over a year, against the grain, and that is that the war in Ukraine has long since lost this country. Russia isn't losing ground and seems to be recovering some, even at the cost of tens of thousands of lives (this conflict is a real massacre), with over one hundred thousand soldiers dead, and many more wounded (a bloodbath to the point that one can't speak of winners, because it's an extremely bitter conflict).

I've dedicated my entire life to promoting dialogue to resolve conflicts, but that shouldn't fool me. Although only 14% of wars end in defeat for one side, in my opinion this is already the case in Ukraine, which, despite the military and political support it has received from European countries and the United States, lacks the capacity to reconquer the territories Russia has annexed. If things continue this way, it makes no sense to continue the current war of attrition, with more deaths and no way out.

From the meetings of recent days between Trump and the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, it can be deduced that the end of this war will be the result of an agreement between the two great powers—the United States and Russia—that Russia will end up keeping a large part of the territories it already controls, while Ukraine will never. The United States will pressure Ukraine, and also the rest of the European NATO countries, so that it will have no choice but to capitulate in order to obtain certain security guarantees for the future. In reality, what happens is that war is also a big business for the United States: Trump has said that Ukraine's security in the future will be Europe's responsibility, that there will be Europe's competition. I hate to say it, but I think this will be the case in the end.

The most curious, and at the same time pathetic, thing is that Trump will take the peace medal, and all because he was able to meet with the other side, Putin, something that European leaders have not had the courage to do. When you have a conflict, the first thing you should try is to go and talk to your adversary, over and over again, instead of isolating them and closing all bridges of communication. I've been insisting on this for over two years, without success, obviously, and weeks before the war began, when Russia was massing troops on the border, I wrote to the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Policy with several proposals, including establishing an "airlift" between Brussels and the Russian capital.

Failure to do this kind of thing, failure to understand the other side's underlying motives, ignoring accumulated historical errors, and having no alternative proposals has led us to the current situation, with no honorable solutions for Ukraine, a country where people are very tired of so much war and want an agreement that will put an end to so much death. Putin knows this, and that's why he continually bombs Kiev. Ukraine, therefore, will become the eighth case this century in which the war will not end with a peace agreement, but by imposition of the great powers.