Three Years into the Ukraine War: The Path Not Taken

Key Chapter Title List

1. Overview
2. The Cost of War
3. Course of the War
4. Negotiation Opportunities
5. Rejection of Diplomacy
6. About the Author
7. About the Quincy Institute

Document Introduction

This report was authored by Marcus Stanley, Research Director at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and released on the third anniversary of the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war. The report provides a comprehensive review of this bloodiest and most costly conflict in Europe since World War II. Its core lies in examining the wisdom of the strategic path chosen by the United States and its Western allies—namely, rejecting early diplomatic efforts in favor of supporting a war of attrition aimed at "weakening" Russia—and exploring the potentially different outcomes of overlooked alternatives.

The report first systematically outlines the enormous losses caused by the war. Beyond an estimated casualty figure exceeding one million, the report focuses on analyzing the catastrophic demographic and economic losses inflicted on Ukraine itself: the population plummeted from approximately 42 million pre-war to 28-30 million, facing the world's highest mortality rate and lowest fertility rate; economically, it is projected to have lost a cumulative $120 billion in GDP by the end of 2025, with damage to infrastructure and capital stock reaching as high as $1 trillion. Furthermore, the war has driven up global food and energy prices, and its financial costs have been largely passed on to taxpayers in Western countries, with the United States alone having allocated $175 billion.

Through tracking and analyzing battlefield situation maps, the report points out that after Ukraine's successful counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson in the autumn of 2022, the war reached a stalemate, evolving into a brutal war of attrition. Although the front lines have seen minor fluctuations, the Ukrainian armed forces have failed to expel Russian troops on a large scale from internationally recognized territory, while Russian offensives have achieved only minor territorial gains. The report specifically mentions that although Ukrainian forces entered Russia's Kursk Oblast in August 2024, this had limited impact on the overall frontline.

The report's core analysis focuses on missed diplomatic opportunities. It details the Russia-Ukraine negotiations held in Belarus and Turkey from March to April 2022, and a preliminary framework agreement draft reached at that time. The draft's contents included Ukraine maintaining neutrality, not joining NATO, accepting multinational security guarantees including Russia, limiting military size, and addressing legal issues related to Russian-speaking communities; in exchange, Russia agreed to hold peaceful negotiations on the status of Crimea and support Ukraine's accession to the European Union. The report quotes a Ukrainian negotiator as saying that the two sides were "very close" to reaching a peace agreement at that time. However, this agreement collapsed due to opposition from Ukraine's Western partners and the emergence of evidence of Russian military atrocities.

The report further analyzes the strategic logic behind the United States and its allies' rejection of diplomatic avenues in favor of pursuing "maximalist" war aims, namely the hope of permanently weakening or "punishing" Russia by prolonging the war, even hinting at regime change. The report cites the assessment by U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley at the end of 2022—he believed the Ukrainian military had achieved reasonable battlefield objectives and should consolidate gains through negotiations—but notes that the Biden administration publicly rejected this advice and continued to support the 2023 counteroffensive, which was assessed as having a very low chance of success.

Ultimately, the report concludes that although the strategy of seeking to weaken Russia may appear "cool-headed" and allows the U.S. to exhaust its opponent at low cost, its result has been to make Ukraine pay a terrible "butcher's bill," while failing to achieve strategic goals such as territorial recovery. The report emphasizes that the core issues of any peace negotiation today remain those unresolved in the 2022 Istanbul talks. The report argues that the United States still possesses considerable leverage and could, through wise diplomacy, seek to establish a secure, independent state on at least 80% of Ukraine's pre-2014 territory and support its future prosperity (such as joining the EU), rather than continuing the slaughter and destruction of the past three years. The report traces its root cause to the failure to acknowledge the long-standing warning that NATO expansion touched Russia's "red lines," and calls for U.S. foreign policy to shift from endless war to active diplomacy.