Calls for Ukraine to become ‘neutral’ because this will remove Russia’s incentive for aggression ignore the fact that Ukraine was already neutral when first attacked in 2014. Implementation of such proposals would expose Ukraine to future attacks that would threaten European security still further.
Fallacy
A number of prominent commentators have proposed that, to end Russian aggression, Ukraine should adopt neutral status. They argue that Ukraine should relinquish its aspiration to join NATO, rule out the presence of foreign military bases on its territory, and refrain from joint military exercises with NATO members. They further argue that potentially institutionalizing such an arrangement via US assurances to Russia regarding Ukraine’s neutrality would satisfy Russia’s so-called ‘security concerns’, which were among the pretexts for its full-scale invasion in 2022. This, it is claimed, would be sufficient to prevent further Russian attacks on Ukraine.
Analysis
Imposed neutrality would leave Ukraine exposed to a continued existential threat. It would invite more aggression from Russia and is contrary to a fundamental principle of international law – the sovereign right to choose international alliances. Russia itself formally recognized this principle as a co-signatory of the Istanbul Declaration of 1999.
Neutrality is commonly understood to mean the sovereign right of a country to refrain from taking sides during a military conflict. But this is not what the Kremlin wants. When Russians demand a ‘neutral’ Ukraine, they really mean making it defenceless against the Kremlin’s territorial claims, allowing the creation of a zone of undisputed Russian dominance, and ensuring the protection of Russia’s military bases in Crimea. The fact of the matter is that Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014 when it was already de facto neutral, and when ‘non-bloc status’ was still a guiding principle of Ukraine’s foreign policy. This has left a deep scar and aversion within Ukraine to any solution that proposes to restore that vulnerable status.
When Russians demand a ‘neutral’ Ukraine, they really mean making it defenceless against the Kremlin’s territorial claims, allowing the creation of a zone of undisputed Russian dominance, and ensuring the protection of Russia’s military bases in Crimea.
At the core of the expansionist agenda of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is a desire to regain what Russia (inaccurately) presents as historically ‘Russian lands’. The territory targeted by this project extends far beyond the bounds of Russia and all the way west to Kyiv, as well as including the whole of the Black Sea coast. Furthermore, Putin’s address at the start of the war claimed that Moscow had a legitimate right to far more than Ukraine – in fact, to all former Russian imperial territory contained within the USSR at its creation in 1922. Sixteen months into the war, there is no indication that Putin is changing his aims. Indeed, they are consistent with a decades-long policy of persistent disrespect of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Following Ukraine’s independence in 1991, its Soviet-era internal borders with Russia became external national borders. Russia acknowledged the existence of such borders in principle, but there was no agreement between the two countries on the precise demarcation of territorial boundaries. Even after recognition of Ukraine as an ‘equal and sovereign’ state in the 1997 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, Russia’s commitment to respecting the agreed ‘inviolability’ of the two countries’ borders remained nominal. (Russian provocations included former Moscow mayor Yuriy Luzhkov frequently referring in public to Sevastopol as a Russian city, and Russia’s attempt to join the Ukrainian island of Tuzla to the Russian mainland across the Kerch Strait in 2003 – an illegal dam construction project which led to a serious bilateral crisis.)
Neutrality would create new territorial grey zones, encouraging Russia to step up territorial claims against its neighbour on spurious grounds. It would embolden Putin to continue a tactic of ‘salami slicing’, incrementally absorbing Ukrainian lands into Russia. Experienced observers of Russia have no doubt that after restoring its military capabilities, Moscow would continue its campaign of territorial conquest to reach – at a minimum – the administrative borders of Donets, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. (Russia proclaimed the ‘annexation’ of all four regions in September 2022, although a large proportion of their territory remains under Ukrainian sovereign control.)
Moreover, even if Russia were to provide security guarantees to a neutral Ukraine, the invasion and related atrocities and war crimes committed by Russia have removed any grounds for trust in such assurances. Early in the war, in March 2022 when Kyiv was at risk, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was ready to put neutrality backed by viable security guarantees on the table. However, Russia’s actions throughout the course of the war – including the mass killing of civilians in Bucha – have ruled out this option. Russia is now a pariah state led by a war criminal wanted by the International Criminal Court. Since its initial invasion of eastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia has violated more than 400 international treaties and conventions, most significantly the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. It was in return for the security guarantees enshrined in this memorandum that Ukraine relinquished its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal, at the time the world’s third largest.
Even if Russia were to provide security guarantees to a neutral Ukraine, the invasion and related atrocities committed by Russia have removed any grounds for trust in such assurances.
Given these aggravating factors, expecting the adoption of neutrality by Ukraine to provide a route to peace is simply not feasible. No Western country or coalition could compel Ukraine to do so. The country has passed the point of no return in its choice of alignment with the West. Any changes to its security status would demand amending the Ukrainian constitution, which since February 2019 has enshrined an aspiration for NATO and EU membership. With 80 per cent of Ukrainians supporting NATO and EU membership, and only 9 per cent believing that ‘neutrality with some kind of international guarantees’ could secure the country, there is no democratic means of arriving at a ‘neutral’ Ukraine.
The way forward
Neutrality is thus doomed for failure as a proposed remedy. To secure Ukraine, as well as Europe more widely, a transatlantic consensus must form around the strategic objective of defeating Russia. This means, as the war goes on, ensuring that the Ukrainian armed forces have all the necessary resources to defeat Russia’s occupying troops. It includes providing military equipment on a sustained and strategic basis, offering lend-lease funding to underwrite the costs of the war, sharing intelligence and cooperating on cyber defence. Russia’s military calculus is only likely to change if it understands that Western financial resources will flow to Ukraine for the foreseeable future.
Ultimately, there remains no substitute for NATO membership, which should be the aim for Ukraine once the war is over. Interim multilateral security guarantees should be viewed only as a temporary solution. In the light of Russia’s aggression and likely future expansionist ambitions, NATO’s leadership and members should offer Kyiv a clear pathway to full membership during the Vilnius summit in July 2023. Any accession process is likely to be facilitated by the fact that the Ukrainian army has already adopted many of NATO’s procurement, land combat and logistics standards in the course of the war with Russia. Ukraine’s armed forces are rapidly moving towards closer ‘interoperability’ with other NATO forces. Integration would also be aided by internal reform of Ukraine’s security sector.
NATO membership would provide a powerful deterrent to future aggression by Russia. But in addition to the protection Ukraine would enjoy, its accession would also benefit NATO by providing the alliance with one of the most combat-ready armies in Europe.
Another necessary step to reinforce Ukraine’s resilience and security is to push ahead with EU membership. Accession would consolidate Ukraine’s economic and political alignment with the West, and allow for mutual defence assistance from external threats. Provision for such assistance was introduced as part of the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007 (Article 42). In addition, EU membership would improve Ukraine’s internal resilience by providing access to the European single market, helping post-war reconstruction and offsetting the decade-long decline in Ukraine’s historical trading relationship with Russia. The formal process of accession would also help to introduce higher standards of governance as Ukraine reformed its economy and legal system to meet EU requirements. A priority for Ukraine and the EU should therefore be to open accession negotiations as soon as possible.
