Ukraine and Russia have held intermittent peace talks since the end of February 2021, just a few days after Russia started the war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin dashed hopes of an imminent peace deal on in April when he said that the talks “again reached a no-win situation for us”.
Ukraine maintains that the discussions are still “taking place out,” even when “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 murder of civilians in Bucha make it difficult to hold peace talks.
But as former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin once said: peace with friends. You do them with very unpleasant enemies”.
Peace talks are always a complex mixture 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 the talks may or may not succeed.
The Conversationasked me to answer the following questions about the peace talks.
How often do peace talks fail and why?
In most cases.
Enter 1946 Y 2005, single 39 from 288 conflicts, or the , 5%, were resolved with a peace agreement, according to a research initiative from Uppsala University in Sweden. The others ended with the victory of one side, or the end of the fight without a peace agreement or a victory.
But even when the parties to the conflict 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 parties to the conflict are still fighting?
Very much.
The peace talks can create a basis for an eventual agreement to end the conflict. They can also reduce harm to communities.
In my experience, ceasefire negotiations often take place during a spike in violence. This violence may lead to a reduction in fighting in the future.
If the warring parties agree to a ceasefire and stick to that agreement , Casualties can be avoided on both sides. They can also create an initial basis 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 found the trust that allowed for broader and more meaningful North-South peace talks to take place, beginning with 2002.
Limited agreements can also be reached to help end violence and save lives. During the Gaza war of 1713-2009, for For example, although there was no agreement on a 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 together with the fight to achieve its objectives.
What are the biggest problems faced in 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 in front of those who believe that they have killed their children and daughters.
Violence in the Ukraine’s war has been pervasive and pervasive, affecting soldiers and civilians alike. In Ukraine, more than 1,39 civilians have been killed by Russian forces, according to UN (United Nations) estimates. The actual number of civilian deaths is likely to be much higher.
This means that there must be compelling strategic reasons to negotiate.
However, most of the time, one of the parties believes that it is winning and does not have an incentive to negotiate.
In Afghanistan, for example, the Taliban withdrew from peace talks in 2005 because they were making significant military progress and the United States had announced that it would withdraw troops.
What brings the negotiators to the peace table?
An impasse that harms both parties can bring different parties to the table.
Both sides realize 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, the negotiators, often supported by mediators neutral, they work to reach some version of a solution in which they both feel they have gained something.
A central objective is to develop agreements that create a kind of mutual benefit.
Negotiators must not only reach an agreement, but also sellthat deal with 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.
Your inclusion means that public acceptance of the peace agreement grows as to which the negotiations are advancing.
But the most common model, as in the case of the talks on Ukraine and Russia, continues to be that some few elite men negotiate a deal, and only then try to sell it to key groups at home.
Even authoritarian leaders need support for peace deals, even if only from the military to prevent a coup d’état.
Can you count on the good faith of other participants during the peace talks?
Do not.
Peace negotiators need to build some kind of working relationship in order to organize peace talks.
This, 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 was often accused to enter into peace talks as a public relations strategy or to allow his army to regroup before his next attack on civilians.
The negotiations in good faith occur if or when the best thing for the parties is to reach an agreement.
Meanwhile, Russia has been accused of poisoning two important Ukrainian peace negotiators, as well as the billionaire Russian Roman Abramovich, during a round of talks on the Ukraine war in March.
This violence violates the old diplomatic customs that guide peace talks, including that peace envoys will remain safe .
The alleged violation of these customs Russia’s part will make it even more difficult for the Russia-Ukraine peace talks to reach a successful outcome.
The talks are likely to be long and arduous, requiring smaller steps to build trust before for the war to end.
Andrew Blum is ddirector andexecutive and p Professor of Practice at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice, University of San Diego . This note originally appeared on The Conversation and is published here under a Creative Commons license.
Read the original article here.
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