Volodymyr Zelenskyy has claimed peace in Ukraine could be "closer" than people think, as he hinted at a plan to end the war with Russia that has raged for two-and-a-half years.
Speaking to ABC News ahead of an address to the United Nations on Wednesday, Ukraine's president said the victory plan he will present to Joe Biden this week is not about negotiating with Russia, but rather "a bridge to a diplomatic way out, to stop the war".
Zelenskyy remains an "impassioned communicator", said The New Yorker, "an entertainer turned statesman who has weaponised the force of his personality in a thoroughly modern form of warfare". But it is also "abundantly clear that the war, now in its third year, cannot be won on Zelenskyy's talents alone".
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Some form of negotiated peace is "now seen as the most likely outcome by most Europeans", said The Guardian, with a European Council of Foreign Relations poll suggesting most people think a settlement will end hostilities.
But how exactly could the war in Ukraine end? Here are four scenarios.
1. 'Victory' for Ukraine
The ideal conclusion to the conflict for Ukraine is for total victory, one that delivers its long-stated aims: the complete expulsion of Russian troops from its territories and Vladimir Putin being held to account for war crimes.
That scenario is looking like one of the more unlikely outcomes currently and there is a "growing realisation that the odds are stacked against Ukraine winning this war", said Chris Bambery at Counterfire.
A long-awaited Ukrainian counter-offensive "fizzled out without much result" last year, said The New Yorker. Meanwhile, Russian forces have since "steadily increased their foothold" in the Donbas, in Ukraine's east – "a grinding campaign in which Russia suffers enormous losses yet manages to march forward, inch by bloody inch".
Russia has given no indication it would be willing to withdraw its forces from the Ukrainian territory it has captured since February 2022. The only foreseeable situation in which this could happen would be if its hand was forced by its most important ally. Russia is currently extremely "dependent" on China, as it remains "the only major economy still taking the risk to support its regime", wrote Lancaster University economics lecturer Renaud Foucart on The Conversation.
Western leaders are "increasingly frustrated" with China's inaction for essentially "enabling" the war. However, there remains the possibility that Beijing could shift its attitude and effectively "force Vladimir Putin to end the conflict" to protect its own economic interests in the West.
Stalemate was the word used to describe the state of the war towards the end of 2023, one that was widely used to "capture the difficulty each side faced in making major gains against the other", said Stephen Sestanovich at the Council on Foreign Relations.
But the idea of a never-ending deadlock is both undesirable and unlikely, and the term stalemate is becoming increasingly "obsolete".
Neither will want the conflict to drag on indefinitely. However, neither will immediately end the holding pattern to enter into negotiations. Russia would want to "achieve greater battlefield success" to force Kyiv into accepting terms it would not currently, while if Ukraine's forces "continue to blunt the Russian advance" and hold territory in Kursk, the idea of negotiating could look "attractive to Putin", said Aris Roussinos on UnHerd.
3. A negotiated settlement
The idea of a negotiated ceasefire is becoming seemingly more attractive to both sides. Over the summer, Putin twice "floated the idea of peace negotiations", suggesting he thinks that the "time is ripe to try to force Kyiv to negotiate with the help of Ukraine’s Western allies", said John Lough at Chatham House.
Zelenskyy seems to be preparing the ground for a potential compromise, but one which can be negotiated only if Kyiv is coming from a "strong position", he told ABC News this week.
Key to any settlement would be Kyiv dropping its demand for Russia to return all territory captured since its February 2022 invasion. This merely reflects the reality on the ground, Czech president Petr Pavel said this week.
The former senior Nato general has been "one of Ukraine's most robust backers in its war with Russia", said The New York Times, but with European unity over the war fracturing and fatigue after 31 months of conflict "growing everywhere," Ukraine now has to be "realistic", Pavel said in an interview with the paper.
"The most probable outcome of the war," he said, "will be that a part of Ukrainian territory will be under Russian occupation, temporarily." But, he added, that "temporary thing" could last for years.
Zelenskyy must also factor in the upcoming US presidential election, which could see its aid support put in jeopardy. The New York Times reported in July that Donald Trump is "planning a swift push for a peace deal" if he is re-elected. There is little detail of how Trump "would end the intractable war", but he would try to "broker this outcome quickly".
4. Russian 'victory'
The state of the war is not changing quickly, but there is a sense that Russia is gaining some superiority. There have been a "series of slow but steady advances that are reversing hard-won Ukrainian victories" said The New York Times.
Russian troops have made "serious advances" in the east and are closing in on Vuhledar, a city on the southern part of the Donbas frontline "that the Russians have been trying to seize since the beginning of their full-scale invasion", said the BBC.
Ukrainian military expert and retired colonel Kostyantyn Mashovets warned his fellow Ukrainians they had to be "psychologically prepared" for the loss of Selydove, Toretsk and Vuhledar in Donbas.
If Russia was able to achieve a definite victory in Ukraine then Putin would "almost certainly expand the war deeper into Europe", said Peter Dickinson at the Atlantic Council. Victory would "transform the geopolitical situation", significantly "strengthening Russia militarily, economically, and strategically" and simultaneously "severely weakening the West".
That is why Zelenskyy remains desperate to keep Western military aid flowing into Ukraine, and Putin is "holding out for a Trump victory". That, he hopes, will "help the Kremlin consolidate its illegal conquests of Ukrainian territory", said The Washington Post.
Any reduction in aid to Ukraine or ceding of territory to Russia would "fracture the transatlantic coalition built up in support of Ukraine’s resistance" and threaten European security. Ukraine will be hoping that after November it can still count on support from the US to help it hold out in the ongoing war.
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Arion McNicoll is a freelance writer at The Week Digital and was previously the UK website’s editor. He has also held senior editorial roles at CNN, The Times and The Sunday Times. Along with his writing work, he co-hosts “Today in History with The Retrospectors”, Rethink Audio’s flagship daily podcast, and is a regular panellist (and occasional stand-in host) on “The Week Unwrapped”. He is also a judge for The Publisher Podcast Awards.
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