Opinion | How Russia’s war in Ukraine could end – with Donbas as the next Northern Cyprus

For many, it’s unthinkable to leave Ukraine’s breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in Russian control, just as Northern Cyprus has been Turkish since 1974

But with Europe braced for a hard winter, support for Ukraine could fade as Western elites realise that frozen conflicts are still better than a forever war

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Russian troops guard the Kakhovka hydroelectric station, in Kherson, south Ukraine, on May 20. According to Russian state TV, the future of the Ukrainian regions occupied by Moscow’s forces is all but decided. Photo: AP

Published: 1:30am, 8 Sep 2022Updated: 5:18am, 8 Sep 2022

How the war in Ukraine ends is the question many people have been asking over the past six months. For the first few months, each side had hopes of getting the upper hand. But, with Ukraine’s failure to take back Kherson, one must be a hopeless optimist to believe the military stalemate can be broken.

Ukraine has turned into a quagmire, reminiscent of the meat grinders in the first world war. Many in the West still hope the Russian economy will implode under sanctions pressure.

The Russians will suffer considerable pain, but suffering is their national sport. To date, Russia’s economy has contracted by 4 per cent – a far cry from US President Joe Biden’s suggestion at the beginning of the war that it would halve.

If anyone is nearing implosion, it is probably Europe’s heavily indebted economies, facing an unprecedented pre-winter energy crisis, inflation, deindustrialisation and a growing social unrest already causing fissures in the Western alliance.

If one wants to imagine what the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics – which make up Donbas – will look like in some years, the best predictor may be Cyprus.

In July 1974, the Turkish army invaded Cyprus, following a Cypriot coup d’état orchestrated by the Greek military junta with the goal of unifying Cyprus with Greece. Greece’s historic rival, Türkiye, could not accept a Greek takeover, and within four weeks, one-third of the island was conquered.