Zelensky has humiliated Putin, but what good can his ‘buffer zone’ do?

After Ukraine’s audacious incursion into the Kursk region – which made Vladimir Putin the first Russian leader since 1941 to suffer a foreign invasion – establishing a fully demilitarised zone between the warring neighbours could yet prove useful in the event of Donald Trump’s re-election, says Sean O’Grady

Ukrainian soldiers wait in a military vehicle near the border with Russia (Getty)

Had Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” gone to plan, then Volodymyr Zelensky would long ago have fled Kyiv and now be whiling away his days in exile as a rather pathetic figure, living in some mansion supplied by his old allies in, say, the English home counties.

Heading a powerless government in exile and taking occasional tea with his old friend Boris Johnson, he would be anxiously awaiting the inevitable assassination attempt.

If the Russian invasion of February 2022 had fulfilled its fanciful objectives, Ukraine would by now be joyously conjoined with the Russian Federation, its people having warmly welcomed the Russian soldiers who’d expelled the “Nazis” running their country. The residents of Kyiv would flock to an annual victory parade presided over by their beloved saviour President Putin.

It’s fair to say, things haven’t quite worked out like that.

So, far from being a reborn Peter the Great or Joseph Stalin, restoring Russia’s imperial pomp and pride, Putin finds himself outmanoeuvred and outshone by his upstart counterpart. Indeed, the audacious Ukrainian counterattack on Russia itself means that Putin is the first Russian leader since 1941 to suffer a foreign invasion. And, just like the German blitzkrieg then, this Ukrainian lightning offensive has the element of surprise, and the advantage of superior technology and tactics.

Then as now, the Russians were caught napping, either refusing to believe any intelligence that they may have gathered about an imminent military attack (as in 1941); or, more likely, simply because their spying activities in Ukraine are so feeble that they didn’t know what was about to befall them. Either way, their advance in eastern Ukraine, which was proceeding glacially, has been disrupted, the Russian people have suffered a psychological trauma, and Putin has been made a fool of.

His people may still support him, but they must wonder why they are losing yet another war – after Afghanistan, the Cold War and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Things are not as chaotic or grim as they were when Mikhail Gorbachev left office, or when Boris Yeltsin handed over to Putin; but the pressures of a war economy, Western sanctions and endemic inflation are taking a toll.

Now, Russia cannot control its own borders, and the people know it.

This is not what strongman Putin is supposed to be all about. All of his chilling words about any attacks on Russia being followed by thermonuclear armageddon have been exposed as a bluff. His ICBMs are useless.

Now, shrewd as ever, it is Zelensky laying down the territorial terms. Wisely, he declares no interest in annexing or occupying sovereign Russian territory. Instead, he wants to establish in Kursk (and perhaps other border regions) what has been called a “buffer zone”.

This is vaguely defined, but it could be a demilitarised zone, such that Russia would not find it so easy to invade or menace its neighbours, and from which it would be unable to easily launch missile and drone attacks. It would almost be a neutral zone – neither Ukrainian nor Russian forces, but not quite sovereign.

Thinking aloud, Zelensky could offer, say, a similar set up on his side, or even a promise for Ukraine not to join Nato, the hoax that Russia used to justify its invasion (propaganda eagerly disseminated by the likes of Nigel Farage and Donald Trump).

In its way, the Kursk buffer zone would resemble the demilitarised zone and its environs on the Korean peninsula, though hopefully not so (ironically) heavily fortified and tense. It might also be seen, with Ukrainian guarantees about Nato, as a more formal buffer state between the alliance and Russia.

This would be analogous to the status enjoyed until recently by Finland, before Russian aggression and Putin’s incompetence propelled it, plus neutral Sweden, into Nato membership. Older examples would be the old Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan, when it was the buffer between the Russian and British empires in India.

Of course, all that still leaves huge, existential questions about how much of her territorial integrity Ukraine is able to recover. In truth, it seems unlikely that Ukraine will take back Crimea or Donbas and Luhansk in the east – but now is the time for the West to redouble its efforts and give Kyiv the weaponry to recover as much as it can.

If the ultimate catastrophe of a second Trump presidency comes to pass, then Ukraine’s best chance lies in changing the facts of occupation on the ground in preparation for an armistice line imposed by the White House and the Kremlin, which will probably prove to be a de facto border (as happened at the end of the Korean war). Zelensky may not be able to “win” this war, but neither can Putin, and there’s no reason to allow him to gain any further ground just because the West is nervous about long-range missiles being used on Russian soil. We have seen how empty Putin’s threats are.

Zelensky and his people continue to deserve the West’s support. His Kursk incursion shows exactly why he is the best hope for peace in the region.