Artículo Frontline, 01.09.2026 Ajai Malhotra, embajador ® y académico indio (TERI)
The Ukraine war has reached a stalemate, with neither side able to force victory or accept the concessions needed for peace. For India, the challenge is to ensure that whatever settlement emerges does not constrain its strategic autonomy.
Four and a half years into Russia’s “Special Military Operation” (SMO), the Ukraine conflict has entered a phase in which neither side is likely to achieve all its objectives. Yet, neither is prepared to accept the compromises required to end it. Negotiating positions remain far apart, making the conflict harder to win and no easier to end.
Russia now controls about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, with its forces making steady, if unspectacular, gains through 2026. Ukraine, while resilient, is being worn down, faces growing manpower shortages, and remains dependent on NATO and Western support for critical military capabilities.
The conflict has hardened into a test of political endurance, industrial production, technological adaptation, and economic resilience. While the battlefield remains important, the conflict is increasingly about the terms of the settlement that will follow it, not just the territory that changes hands.
The conflict’s roots lie in the 2014 “Maidan coup” and subsequent fighting in the Donbas. The 2015 Minsk II agreement envisaged an internal political settlement but was later publicly acknowledged by French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as being intended to give time to strengthen Ukraine’s military. As fighting between Ukrainian forces and Donbas militias intensified, Russian forces entered Ukraine on February 24, 2022, quickly bringing Ukraine to the negotiating table with Russia.
Talks started in Belarus and continued in Türkiye. Israel’s then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who mediated the Istanbul talks, publicly stated that both sides agreed to significant concessions in March 2022 but Western powers “blocked” the emerging agreement, choosing to “keep striking Putin” instead. Russia has since pursued a strategy of attrition, using its larger manpower pool, defence-industrial capacity, and advantages in missiles and massed firepower to grind down Ukrainian forces and exhaust Western arsenals.
Despite NATO and Western training, intelligence and material support, a Ukrainian counter-offensive in June 2023 collapsed by year-end, while an incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblast in August 2024 caught Russia by surprise but was reversed by March 2025. Ukraine’s ground forces are holding a long front amid growing manpower deficiencies. Long-range Ukrainian drone strikes on oil refineries, supermarket warehouses, and logistics facilities have taken the fight into Russian territory, imposing costs and bringing the consequences of the conflict closer to the Russian public. They show that Russia cannot insulate its vast territory from the conflict, but they have not altered the strategic balance.
Instead, Russian ground forces are slowly but surely advancing towards Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, the two remaining fortress cities in Ukraine’s Donbas defensive belt, built up during the 2014-2022 period with Western support. Russia has also intensified its aerial campaign, exploiting Ukraine’s shortage of advanced interceptors to direct missile and drone barrages against its electricity grid and other critical infrastructure. Following attacks on Russia-linked or -owned shipping in the Black Sea, Moscow has begun striking ships and port infrastructure around Odessa, seriously affecting Ukrainian grain exports.
Russia’s capacity to sustain the conflict derives from its larger population and resource base, the successful expansion of defence production into a wartime economy, and an unrelenting operational tempo. Federal defence spending for 2026 has been set at 12.9 trillion roubles (about $157 billion), roughly one-third of the state budget. Domestic drone production has reached 30,000 units annually, with the capacity expected to double. Oil and gas revenues in the first half of 2026 fell to 64 per cent of their level two years earlier. The picture is one of strain due to sanctions, not of economic meltdown.
Support for the SMO in Russia remains around 70 per cent, with even those Russians favouring negotiations doing so predominantly on condition that Russia retains its territorial gains.
Diplomacy without convergence
While diplomacy has continued, negotiating positions have remained far apart. The Anchorage formula that emerged from the August 2025 Trump-Putin summit in Alaska was tied to Ukrainian recognition of Russian control over five Ukrainian regions with substantial Russian-speaking populations: Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. Ukraine rejected it, and repeated US efforts have failed to bridge the gap. Equally, Russia insists that Ukraine renounce its NATO aspirations. Both sides have kept the door open to negotiations without making the compromises needed to reach them.
US-Russia-Ukraine trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi and Geneva in early 2026 produced prisoner exchanges but no agreement on core issues. On August 20, 2026, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov signalled Moscow’s readiness for new ideas from Washington, provided they aligned with President Vladimir Putin’s objectives and “ground realities”. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Ratcliffe’s August 25 visit to Moscow to meet intelligence counterparts showed that high-level contacts remain open. On August 28, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared peace talks were in a “deep pause”, with Russia“pressing forward” with the SMO.
Russia wants a settlement addressing the security threat posed by NATO advancing towards it and recognising, in some form, its territorial gains. Ukraine wants peace without legitimising Russian gains, along with credible assurances against a future Russian attack. In effect, both sides are seeking binding security guarantees.
For Russia, the confrontation with Ukraine is inseparable from a broader contest with NATO and the Western security system, while it seeks to protect the rights of Russian-speakers in the Donbas. For Ukraine, prolonged conflict risks further devastation by a larger, better-resourced adversary, even as it fights to maintain its territorial integrity. Neither position easily accommodates the other.
External dimensions: EU and China
The EU increasingly recognises that a Russian defeat is most unlikely and US involvement will not remain limitless, as the NATO summit in Ankara in July underscored. European governments are expanding defence spending and military-industrial capacities. Ukraine’s shortages of artillery ammunition, air-defence systems, drones, and other equipment have exposed the shallowness of NATO and European stockpiles. While EU support for Ukraine is becoming more institutionalised, European governments will have to show that they can sustain military aid over years, not months.
Extensive Western sanctions have imposed costs on Russia but not enough to compel it to abandon its basic objectives or even bring it to the negotiating table on Western terms. Russia has adapted by redirecting trade to Asia, particularly China. Bilateral trade with China, its top trading partner, is being settled almost entirely in yuan and roubles. Yet their deepening relationship should not be mistaken for a Sino-Russian alignment. A full-fledged alliance is not attractive for Russia or China, despite their common adversary in the US.
Neither Russia nor China has an interest in being drawn into the other’s territorial disputes. China has not recognised Russia’s claims over Crimea and the Donbas, has no interest in backing Russia against NATO, and does not recognise Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. Russia, for its part, does not recognise Chinese claims in the South China Sea or wish to become directly embroiled in its territorial disputes. Beijing seeks to retain influence over a post-conflict Eurasian order while keeping Russia as a useful, albeit junior, partner in an asymmetric relationship.
The shape of an ending
Russia is too strong to be militarily defeated by a NATO-backed Ukraine, yet far from imposing the settlement it wants. Ukraine is under strain; President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s dismissal of Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov and, days later, Army Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, reveals tensions at a critical stage. It is too dependent on external support to secure a military advantage and its public finances are a mess. Europe is increasingly conscious of the costs of an indefinite conflict, while
The more likely route to an end is a negotiated settlement with any ceasefire embedded in a broader political agreement. Russia has repeatedly rejected the idea of a ceasefire that merely freezes the battlefield, giving Ukraine time to rearm. For Russia, hostilities should cease only after there is agreement on the principal elements of a final settlement. Ukraine, by contrast, has sought a ceasefire as a first step towards negotiations. This difference over sequencing is itself a major obstacle to ending the conflict.
The most difficult substantive question concerns security guarantees. Ukraine is seeking credible and firm assurances that would prevent a repeat Russian invasion. Russia, in turn, will not accept an arrangement that reproduces the pre-conflict European security environment. Underlying both positions is deep mutual distrust. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev told me separately in 2012 and 2013 that the West had categorically committed to him at the highest levels that “NATO would not expand into the ex-Soviet space, excluding the Baltics”. Given that history, it is not surprising that Russia is now seeking ironclad guarantees precluding NATO’s further expansion into former Soviet space.
If these differences cannot be reconciled, the alternative is a prolonged conflict without a settlement: a militarised frontier, periodic bombardment and drone attacks, and unresolved territorial claims. Such a frozen conflict would be less dangerous than the present level of warfare, but Russia is unlikely to accept it as an interim outcome while underlying political concerns remain. For Ukraine, it would mean accepting the loss of effective control over occupied territory without legally recognising Russian sovereignty, leaving the territorial issue unresolved for years.
The more likely near-term trajectory is a grinding conflict punctuated by intermittent negotiating rounds, not a ceasefire followed by negotiations. Ukraine is now seeking to use a diplomatic window extending into 2027. A new US-backed proposal is being discussed, and Ukraine is hopeful technical talks may resume soon. Russia, however, continues to insist that territorial and broader political questions be addressed first. It sees continued fighting as further strengthening its negotiating position and has little incentive to freeze the conflict before political terms are settled.
Russia has the resources, industrial base and domestic political acceptance to continue the conflict into 2027 and beyond. Ukraine’s position, without a step-up in Western support, will continue to deteriorate at the margin. US efforts to broker an accelerated settlement will face the same obstacles: Ukraine cannot politically accept the terms Russia will offer, while Russia sees no reason to soften them while its operating environment remains favourable.
The Anchorage formula, or a close variant, is what Moscow is likely to bring to the negotiating table when circumstances are ripe. Russian negotiators are patient practitioners of positional bargaining; they will refine, restate, and reintroduce their core demands until the political geometry on the other side changes.
Zelenskyy’s five-year presidential term formally ended on May 20, 2024, but elections have not been held given wartime conditions. He also faces the problem of the extreme-right Azov movement, with its Nazi origins, whose deployment to the Donbas front at this stage could create another domestic challenge for him. A change in Ukrainian political leadership through elections could bring a government with a fresh mandate to pursue negotiations. Moscow is positioning for this possibility and preparing terms that a post-Zelenskyy Ukrainian government might find easier to sell domestically.
Whatever the outcome, the conflict will leave behind a Europe with higher defence spending, a more militarised eastern frontier, and a security relationship with Russia that may take time to redefine. It will also leave Russia more deeply embedded in non-Western economic networks, while reshaping the balance of power across Eurasia.
View from India
For India, the Ukraine conflict has never been a distant European crisis. It has affected energy security, defence supplies, food and fertiliser markets, shipping, sanctions policy and India’s relations with Russia, Europe and the US. India’s position remains that the two sides return to dialogue and diplomacy.
India has a time-tested, special and privileged strategic partnership with Russia extending across defence, nuclear energy, oil and gas, space and other sensitive sectors. Ukraine, by contrast, delivered 320 T-80UD tanks to Pakistan during 1997-99 despite repeated Indian objections. It sharply condemned India’s 1998 nuclear tests, provided engines for Pakistan’s Al-Khalid tanks, and in 2021 contracted to upgrade Pakistan’s T-80UD tank fleet, with work beginning in February 2022 at the Malyshev tank factory in Kharkiv. This has shaped India’s calibration.
With the conflict pushing Moscow towards Beijing, preserving India’s relationship with Russia becomes even more important. For India, strategic autonomy means maintaining partnerships with the US, Russia and Europe without allowing any one of them to dictate its choices.
The longer the conflict continues, the more deeply sanctions, export controls and defence-industrial realignments become institutionalised. India’s access to Russian energy, defence equipment and technology is increasingly affected by unilateral decisions in Washington and Brussels. The conflict has also highlighted that India’s national security requires adequate domestic defence-industrial capability and quick technological adaptation.
India’s task is to preserve the space to engage all sides while pursuing its own interests. The Ukraine conflict may well end with an exhausted compromise that could reshape European security and Russia’s place in the international order. What matters for India is that any outcome should not constrain its room to exercise strategic autonomy. For India the real test of any settlement is whether it ends the fighting without narrowing its foreign policy choices.
