Historic Endless Stalemates: Why Peace in Ukraine Remains Elusive

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Endless Stalemates: Why Peace in Ukraine Remains Elusive

 

Efforts to halt the war in Ukraine have repeatedly collapsed under the weight of history, mistrust, and political maneuvering. Russia’s most recent ceasefire, declared during the Orthodox Easter, lasted only 30 hours and was limited in scope. Despite this brief lull, both sides quickly accused each other of violations, continuing a pattern that has marked the conflict since its earliest days.

 

Ukrainian officials noted a rare calm during the truce. “There had been no air raids alerts on Sunday,” Kyiv reported. President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested that the Easter truce could represent the "easiest" model to expand into a longer ceasefire, perhaps 30 days or more. The United States had also tried to initiate a 30-day ceasefire, but this effort faltered without ever taking hold, exposing how difficult it is to secure even a temporary pause in the violence.

 

 

One major obstacle is the entrenched mistrust between Ukraine and Russia. Zelensky, during a tense meeting with Donald Trump in February, accused Russia of breaking 25 ceasefire agreements since 2014. He stressed that any future deal would be meaningless without firm security guarantees. The mistrust runs deep, going back to 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, breaching a 1997 treaty between the two countries that pledged to respect each other’s territorial integrity.

 

The war has always been marked by accusations of betrayal. General Viktor Muzhenko, Ukraine’s former chief of General Staff, blamed Russia for ambushing withdrawing Ukrainian troops in Ilovaysk in August 2014, killing at least 366 soldiers. This event followed broken promises of safe passage.

 

The first formal ceasefire was signed on 5 September 2014 in Minsk but was quickly violated, with Ukrainian forces reporting attacks on Donetsk airport within hours. A second truce, known as Minsk-2, went into effect on 15 February 2015 and also failed almost immediately. Observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported mortar and artillery fire shortly after the ceasefire began, though they did not assign blame.

 

Numerous other ceasefires followed, but they too failed swiftly. These included annual “Easter truces,” “school ceasefires,” “Christmas truces,” and “bread ceasefires” intended to protect seasonal activities like harvesting or school attendance. None held for long. A “comprehensive ceasefire” declared on 27 July 2020 lasted only 20 minutes, though it did help reduce casualties among Ukrainian forces in the year that followed.

 

Matthew Savill of the Royal United Services Institute believes that Russia has never engaged in ceasefire talks with sincerity. “Russia has never been sincere about removing or ending the risk of the use of force in seeking its objectives,” he said. While acknowledging that “Ukraine bears some responsibility,” Savill emphasized that the persistent Russian or Russian-backed threat was the dominant issue.

 

John Herbst, former U.S. ambassador to Kyiv, also pointed to Russia as the “serial violator” of the Minsk agreements. Independent verification of violations is complicated by the near-total exclusion of journalists from Russian-controlled territories. Russian-backed forces even attacked Debaltseve after the Minsk deal, claiming the town was not covered by the agreement.

 

Zelensky has called the Minsk accords a “trap,” arguing that they allowed Russia to prepare for the full-scale invasion launched in 2022. Putin, meanwhile, claimed Ukraine and the West never intended to uphold the agreements. When Russia recognized the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk republics as independent, it effectively buried the accords.

 

Putin’s Easter truce, brief as it was, failed to produce any meaningful change. Trump expressed hope that “Russia and Ukraine will make a deal this week,” but warned that if either side stalls negotiations, “we're just gonna take a pass.”

 

With Russia insisting that “the underlying causes of the conflict” must be addressed—code for undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty—it’s clear that peace remains a distant goal. Vladislav Surkov, a former advisor to Putin, captured the Kremlin’s stance when he described peace itself as “nothing but a continuation of war by other means.”

 

Adpated by ASEAN Now from BBC  2025-04-22

 

 

[Tug]

The reason there’s no peace is solely the responsibility of putin and his military no one attacked Russia no one .there’s no stalemate there’s a raping looting hoard of Russian soldiers attacking their neighbor go home peace restored simple.

[thesetat]

13 hours ago, Tug said:

The reason there’s no peace is solely the responsibility of putin and his military no one attacked Russia no one .there’s no stalemate there’s a raping looting hoard of Russian soldiers attacking their neighbor go home peace restored simple.

You can not lay blame on only Putin. Zelenski wants this war just as much as Putin. His country is getting so much money from other countries to support him. He actually stated his feelings about no chance he would try to stop the war previously.