What’s The Likelihood Of Setting Up A Buffer Zone Inside Ukraine?

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel last week that Ukraine should consider setting up a buffer zone within its borders. This follows Russian President Vladimir Putin suggesting in mid-March that his country could create a “cordon sanitaire” there in response to cross-border terrorist raids from Ukraine into Belgorod Region, which came shortly after former President Dmitry Medvedev spoke about Russia’s need to protect its “strategic borders”.

The incumbent Deputy Chair of the Security Council elaborated that “It has always been this way: those who could afford it, wanted to control the development of the situation near their own borders, and also projected their influence as far as possible.” In the context of the special operation, this could potentially take the form of what former NATO Supreme Commander Admiral James Stavridis proposed in his opinion piece for Bloomberg back in November.

He put forward the idea of a Korean-like armistice resulting in the de facto partition of Ukraine between its Kiev- and Russian-controlled parts, but for as attractive of a solution as this might seem to some, the challenge is that it doesn’t meet Russia’s goal of demilitarizing Ukraine. Keeping part of the country under Kiev’s control could retain its existing level of militarization, lead to NATO flooding it with more arms, and then likely cause a continuation conflict sometime down the line.

President Putin also told war correspondents during a meeting last June that “If [Ukraine’s patrons] genuinely want to end today's conflict via negotiations, they only need to make one decision which is to stop supplying weapons and equipment. That’s it. Ukraine itself does not manufacture anything. Tomorrow, they will want to hold talks that are not formal, but substantive, and not to confront us with ultimatums, but to return to what was agreed upon, say, in Istanbul.”

Regarding that agreement from spring 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported in early March that Russia proposed severe limitations on the Ukrainian Armed Forces back then, including a ban on their use of foreign weapons. Another relevant term was restoring that former Soviet Republic’s constitutional neutrality. It’s difficult to imagine these goals being attained in the event that Ukraine was de facto partitioned and Russia didn’t have any say in the military affairs of its Kiev-controlled part.

In that event, Ukraine could easily rearm, and any continuation conflict that it later provokes could lead to NATO members intervening in its support on a bilateral basis if there are any associated secret clauses in their recently agreed so-called “security guarantees”. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis suggested as much in early March when he said that NATO as a whole can’t intervene since Ukraine isn’t a member, not to mention that Orban would block it, but its members can do whatever they want on their own.

The risks of World War III breaking out by miscalculation would correspondingly spike since NATO members France and the UK are nuclear-armed powers, and their participation in any “coalition of the willing” could lead to them resorting to brinksmanship if they end up clashing with Russian forces there. It’s also possible that one or both of those two, as well as the US, could threaten to use nuclear arms in support of other NATO allies that might intervene instead and get trounced by Russia in Ukraine.

One possible way to avert those risks is to establish a buffer zone in the Kiev-controlled part of a de facto partitioned Ukraine as part of a larger compromise between Russia and the US. The reason why the de facto dimension of any potential partition is emphasized is because Kiev is unlikely to rescind claims to its pre-2014 territories that are nowadays part of Russia. Nevertheless, tacitly recognizing the ground reality could create the basis for a pragmatic understanding between Russia and the US.

The regions east of the Dnieper that remain under Kiev’s formal control but are beyond the administrative borders of the four territories that unified with Russia after September 2022’s referenda could theoretically be demilitarized, but only if it’s able to force Ukraine and the West to agree to this. That would require another offensive in the coming months and could be aided by the outbreak of genuinely grassroots protests in Kiev if Zelensky clings to power after his mandate expires in late May.

The Ukrainian Intelligence Committee warned about these interconnected possibilities in a Telegram post in late February that was meant to pressure the West into giving it more meaningful military support. If Russia achieves a breakthrough across the front lines in parallel with the Ukrainian regime collapsing, then it might be possible that this sequence of events coerces the US into agreeing to a de facto partition of the country that demilitarizes its Kiev-controlled regions east of the Dnieper.

President Putin might not want to order the Russian Armed Forces to advance beyond the administrative borders of the four territories that reunified with his country if he expects that NATO members might overreact by conventionally intervening on the pretext of preventing another “Battle of Kiev”. He’s thus far done everything possible to prevent an uncontrollable escalation that could spiral into World War III by miscalculation and there’s been no indication that he’s now willing to throw caution into the wind.

The cost-benefit analysis of risking the aforementioned scenario in order to completely demilitarize Ukraine might not be deemed worth it by him and his military-strategic advisors, in which case they might be wiling to compromise with the geographically broad demilitarized zone that was proposed. It takes two to tango, however, and it’s not guaranteed that the US will agree. Even so, some comparatively responsible policymakers inside the Biden Administration might convince decision makers to do so.

The Russian military breakthrough that’s required to set these events into motion would still risk an uncontrollable escalation, however, which is why it’s best if Ukraine is convinced to voluntarily agree to the proposed demilitarized zone east of the Dnieper. This arrangement could in principle satisfy Orban’s buffer zone proposal, President Putin’s “cordon sanitaire” concept, Medvedev’s “strategic borders” one, and Stavridis’ de facto Korean-like partition plan but calls for lots of political will to implement.