Ukraine and Russia have held intermittent peace talks since late February 2022, just days after Russia launched the war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin dashed hopes of an imminent peace deal on April 12 when he said the talks had “again reached a no-win situation for us.”
Ukraine maintains that discussions are still “going on” even as “negotiations are extremely difficult,” according to Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak.
Russia’s continued attacks on the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol as well as the mass killing of civilians in Bucha make it difficult to hold peace talks.
But as former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin once said: “You don’t make peace with friends. You make peace with very unpleasant enemies.”
Peace talks are always a complex mix of strategic calculation and human emotion.
In my 20 years of experience working on peacebuilding programs and researching peace and conflict, I have learned that it is important to pay attention to both factors to understand why talks may or may not succeed.
The Conversation* asked me to answer the following questions about the peace talks.
How often do peace talks fail and why?
In most cases.
Between 1946 and 2005, only 39 of 288 conflicts, or 13.5%, were resolved by a peace agreement, according to a research initiative from Uppsala University in Sweden. The others ended with victory for one side, or the end of the fight without a peace agreement or victory.
But even when warring parties fail to reach a peace agreement, talks can reduce civilian casualties through temporary ceasefires or the establishment of humanitarian corridors to deliver supplies or evacuate civilians.
There is also evidence that even failed peace agreements reduce the intensity of future conflicts.
How useful can peace talks be when the warring parties are still fighting?
Much.
Peace talks can create a basis for an eventual agreement to end the conflict. They can also reduce damage to communities.
In my experience, ceasefire negotiations often take place during a spike in violence. This violence may drive a reduction in fighting in the future.
If the warring parties agree to a ceasefire and stick to that agreement, casualties on both sides can be avoided. They can also create an initial foundation of trust that can pave the way for more difficult negotiations.
The Nuba Mountains ceasefire agreement in Sudan, for example, is credited with helping to build the trust that allowed broader and more meaningful north-south peace talks to take place, beginning in 2002.
Limited agreements can also be reached that help ends the violence and save lives. During the 2008-2009 Gaza war, for example, although there was no agreed ceasefire, Israel opened a humanitarian corridor to allow vital aid to be delivered to civilians.
Crucially, wartime peace talks are not something that warring parties do as an alternative to armed confrontation. It is a strategy used in conjunction with fighting to achieve your goals.
What are the biggest problems facing the peace talks?
There are many.
The biggest challenge for peace talks is the violence related to the conflict and the anger and mistrust it creates between the different parties to the conflict.
Negotiators must sit across from those they believe have killed their sons and daughters.
The violence in the Ukraine war has been pervasive and widespread, affecting soldiers and civilians alike. In Ukraine, more than 1,842 civilians have been killed by Russian forces, according to UN estimates. The actual number of civilians killed is likely to be much higher.
This means that there must be compelling strategic reasons to negotiate.
However, more often than not, one party believes they are winning and do not have an incentive to negotiate.
In Afghanistan, for example, the Taliban withdrew from peace talks in 2021 because they were making significant military gains and the United States had announced that it would withdraw troops.
What brings negotiators to the peace table?
An impasse that hurts both sides can bring different parties to the table.
Both sides realize that they are being harmed by the status quo, but they also know that they cannot defeat the other side militarily. Negotiations are then a logical way forward.
Once at the table, negotiators, often supported by neutral mediators, work to come up with some version of a solution that both feel they have gained.
A central objective is to work out agreements that create a kind of mutual benefit.
Negotiators must not only strike a deal, but also sell that deal to a community that is angry, traumatized, and grieving.
This is just one of the reasons why it is important to include all kinds of people, including women, community organizers, and different ethnic leaders, in peace talks.
Their inclusion means that public acceptance of the peace agreement grows as the negotiations progress.
But the most common pattern, as in the case of the Ukraine and Russia talks, remains for a few elite men to broker a deal, and only then try to sell it to key groups at home.
Even authoritarian leaders need support for peace agreements, even if only from the military to prevent a coup.
Can you count on the good faith of other participants during the peace talks?
No.
Peace negotiators need to build some sort of working relationship in order to organize peace talks.
That, however, does not guarantee that those involved will negotiate in good faith. In South Sudan, for example, peace negotiators were accused of participating just so they could stay for weeks in luxury hotels.
In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has often been accused of engaging in peace talks as a public relations ploy or allowing his army to regroup before his next attack on civilians.
Good faith negotiations occur only when it is in the best interest of the parties to reach an agreement.
Meanwhile, Russia has been accused of poisoning two top Ukrainian peace negotiators, as well as Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, during a round of Ukraine war talks in March.
This violence violates the old diplomatic customs that guide peace talks, including that peacekeepers will remain safe.
The alleged violation of these customs by Russia will make it even more difficult for the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine to reach a successful outcome.
The talks will likely be long and arduous, requiring smaller steps to build trust before the war is over.
