Could this bloody war be about to end?

A local resident rides a bicycle past a building destroyed during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the separatist-controlled town of Volnovakha in the Donetsk region. Picures: Reuters

Could this bloody war be about to end?

For Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, to declare Ukraine cannot join NATO and he’s glad his countrymen now understand this, is surely the most significant political development we’ve seen in the Russia-Ukraine war.

As Russia’s murderous war enters its fourth week, this may be the start of a deal.

For at the same time, Vladimir Putin has told the Finnish Prime Minister that regime change in the Kyiv government was never a prerequisite for him.

So the shape of some kind of ceasefire is beginning to take shape.

Ukraine promises never to join NATO, and presumably NATO endorses this self-denying ordinance on Kyiv’s part, while Russia keeps control of much of eastern Ukraine, almost certainly including a full land corridor from the Donbas region down to Crimea.

It’s surely likely that Zelensky, whose magnificent defiance has inspired the world, would not have made such a conciliatory statement on NATO membership if he did not have some indication from the Russians that a deal was possible.

Such a deal will be a bitter fruit for Ukraine. It will permanently have lost the eastern half of its nation and permanently lost the chance for full integration into the West, and suffered appalling human cost and damage to infrastructure.

Evacuated residents outside their 16-storey residential building which was destroyed in Kyiv on March 15 after strikes on residential areas killed at least two people.

In reality, Ukraine was very unlikely ever to have been accepted for NATO membership. One condition of joining NATO is that an aspiring member nation have no border disputes. Russia has guaranteed Ukraine can never satisfy that criterion.

Yet Ukraine’s heroism will still have saved its national existence. Putin intended to take Kyiv easily in a few days and then install a puppet regime which would grow ever more dependent on Moscow. He wasn’t able to do that because the Ukrainians decided to fight, and to fight like lions.

Of course, the fact that we can possibly now discern the overall shape of a deal doesn’t mean the deal will necessarily happen.

Putin could double cross the Ukrainians, pocket their declaration on not joining NATO and just keep killing.

It’s also the case that Putin may not yet have achieved his main territorial ambitions. He may want to take the port city of Odesa, rendering Ukraine a landlocked country and destroying much of its trade potential.

Similarly he may want to keep bombing and shelling cities in western Ukraine so that its people too remember forever the harshness of Russian military action.

And the question of how much sanctions relief Putin will get if he agrees to a cease fire will be intensely negotiated.

Yet given that NATO will not come directly to Ukraine’s rescue, and that Russia can keep killing Ukrainians on an industrial scale probably for a long time, Zelensky’s priority must be to preserve some of his nation and stop the killing.

The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.