Four years of Ukraine crisis show there will be no winner

Anniversaries are supposed to bring changes, but Feb 24 seems like a date stuck in a loop, a repeat of 2022, with new numbers but the same grim arithmetic: the death toll rising, trenches deepening, budgets swelling, rhetoric hardening, and peace perpetually scheduled for “the next round of talks”.

As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reiterated in Munich this month, regional hot spot issues — including the Ukraine crisis — must be resolved through dialogue and consultation. China is not a party to the conflict. Instead, it has dispatched envoys, urged ceasefires and encouraged all sides to return to negotiations. Peace, as he insisted, will not materialize on its own; it must be negotiated.

The conflict is trapped in a zero-sum vise: neither Ukraine nor Russia seems willing to compromise on their core concerns. But neither objective can seemingly be achieved without negating the other.

Ukraine, sustained by Western aid, has demonstrated remarkable institutional resilience. Russia, slapped with multiple sanctions, has nonetheless stabilized its economy. This is a chilling reminder that modern states can metabolize military endeavours far longer than policymakers once assumed.

Meanwhile, negotiations inch forward like a reluctant glacier. Recent talks in Geneva reportedly led to technical progress. Yet the strategic core — territory, neutrality, security guarantees and identity — remains frozen. Moscow demands a neutral Ukraine with limits on its military; Kyiv insists on sovereign choice and an unconditional ceasefire. Between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s positions lies a diplomatic no-man’s-land wider than the Donbas itself.

Wang’s call for Europe to be “at the table, not on the menu” lands with particular resonance. The conflict is being fought on European soil, yet Europe’s strategic autonomy remains aspirational. NATO members have pledged to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense, with some pushed toward 3 percent or more — a windfall that largely flows back across the Atlantic through arms purchases. The European Union has imposed 19 rounds of sanctions on Russia and absorbed economic losses estimated in trillions of euros, yet it still leans on the United States’ security guarantee.

Until Europe can stand on its own legs it risks remaining a consumer rather than a designer of its security architecture — a diner handed the bill for a meal it did not order.

Many countries have declined to take sides. However, the post-Cold War order is not collapsing so much as molting, shedding assumptions about “Western primacy” and the West’s “institutional authority”. The conflict has accelerated experiments in alternative payment systems, non-Western multilateral forums and new adjustments of international relations. It has exposed fractures within the West; even within NATO, where unity sometimes looks less like solidarity than synchronized anxiety.

And with US midterm elections looming in November, as some observers say, the temptation to frame a ceasefire as a political trophy is palpable.

The deeper tragedy is normalization. What began as a shock has settled into a background condition — the world has learned to function around it.

Yet anniversaries still offer a choice. Wang’s emphasis on dialogue points to a basic truth: conflicts end not when one side achieves moral clarity, but when all sides accept the reality, in this case an impasse. Europe’s security architecture will not be rebuilt through slogans about unity or procurement targets. It will require inclusive negotiations that address root causes, balance interests and acknowledge anxieties — including Russia’s, however inconvenient that may be for Western narratives, and Ukraine’s, however costly that may be for Moscow’s appeals.

Four years on, the Ukraine crisis has proved that endurance is not victory, sanctions are not strategy and military aid is not security. The choice ahead is not between winning or losing, but between endless fighting or an imperfect peace.