Out of reach
Why a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine remains unlikely
Over the past weeks, the news cycle has again been dominated by the peace negotiations between the United States, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine. Despite all the talk and debate about the different proposals, I am still convinced the chances of reaching a lasting and durable peace deal remain extremely low.
Many elements are leading to that conclusion. Still, to reduce it to the simplest and most parsimonious explanation, as things stand, there is no set of conditions that are acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine.
The Russian leadership has not abandoned their maximalist war aim to conquer and subjugate the whole of Ukraine. After the failure of the initial invasion, Russia has resorted to attacking Ukraine's civilian infrastructure in an attempt to make Ukraine non-viable as a state. The Kremlin's long-term goal remains to control Ukraine via both military and political means. While Ukraine could agree to compromise on some issues, even accepting the de facto, although not de jure, Russian occupation of 18% of its territory, it clearly cannot compromise on its own statehood.
In short, while Ukraine wants to maintain its independence, sovereignty, and freedom to pursue its own domestic policy and international aspirations, Russia can only accept Ukraine's existence as a Russified vassal state akin to Belarus. There is no possible compromise between these two positions. That should be enough to understand that as long as the Kremlin's goals do not change, there is no reason to think or hope that a lasting peace deal can be reached.
What the Trump administration is getting wrong
The main issue with the Trump administration's approach to the negotiations is that they seem to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the conflict and its stakes for both Russia and Ukraine. The way they have conducted the negotiations suggests that they see this war as essentially a territorial dispute that can be solved with a compromise between the warring parties. On the other hand, to both Russia and Ukraine, this war is existential.
By subjugating Ukraine and destroying its statehood, Putin wants to reestablish Moscow’s imperial sphere of influence and challenge the European security architecture post-1991. So far, the Trump administration's approach has been to court Putin by offering him territorial concessions in Ukraine, some talk of sanction relief, and a reset in the relationship between the US and Russia. That is much more than Putin could have hoped from any other administration, but ultimately it does not satisfy his imperial ambitions. Such offers, along with Trump's appeals to 'stop the killing', reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of the Kremlin's preferences and intentions.
For the Ukrainians, on the other hand, this is nothing short of a war for their independence, future, and national survival. The Trump administration seemed to assume that Ukraine would bend and accept whatever conditions the US and Russia agreed on to obtain "peace". Once again, this miscalculation stems from a profound lack of knowledge of the country, its leadership, and preferences, but also from what looks like a poor understanding of the actual state of the war.
Several members of the administration, including President Trump and Vice President Vance, have engaged in the kind of misinformation about Ukraine that seems to have become popular among the MAGA crowd. In that narrative, Ukraine is a country on the brink of collapse, entirely dependent on the US military and financial aid, where 'millions of people' have been killed, most cities have been razed to the ground, and with an unpopular president who keeps fighting the war to stay in power. The problem is not only that none of that is true, but also that any policy starting from such wildly false premises will hardly be effective, and sometimes it may even achieve the opposite result to its stated goals.
Here are a few examples:
Throughout February and March, Trump and others attacked President Zelenskyy on the grounds of his alleged unpopularity, questioning his legitimacy and claiming that if elections were held in Ukraine, he would 'lose by a landslide'. Such attacks and the infamous White House meeting have only increased Zelenskyy's domestic support and strengthened his standing amongst European partners.
It is no secret that Ukraine relies on US military aid, especially in some important areas (Patriots, MLRS, intelligence, etc.). This aid will eventually run out unless another spending bill is passed through Congress or Ukraine is allowed to purchase what it needs. The Ukrainian government has known this for some time and has worked on developing Ukraine's own military production and capabilities. As a result, today, Ukraine is less dependent on the US than it ever was over the past three years. In threatening to pause or cease the military assistance, the Trump administration was essentially threatening something that was bound to happen anyway and pushing Ukraine in a direction where the US will have less and less leverage.
The Trump administration has been very outcome-oriented in its pursuit of a rapid end to the conflict. It is almost as if speed were a goal in and of itself, more than the actual terms. Several officials have repeatedly said that the US will not hesitate to abandon its efforts if an agreement is not reached quickly. Now, given that the Kremlin’s preferred outcome would be precisely for the US to walk away from the conflict, it should come as no surprise if, so far, they have played for time, hoping that the US will lose its patience and walk away.
Russia's position
If Russia has no intention of abandoning its maximalist goals, why is it negotiating? This looks contradictory only at first glance.
As we said, Russia would like nothing more than seeing the US disengage from Ukraine and Europe in general. Their goal is to ensure that the failure of the peace negotiations is blamed on Ukraine and the Europeans, so that the war can continue without the US involvement.
Russian officials constantly claim that they are open to peace talks, but then set preconditions that are completely unacceptable to Ukraine, and knowingly so. In the Soviet tradition, they make absurdly maximalist claims to be able to present any movement as a concession, knowing that someone Steve Witkoff, a real-estate lawyer with no experience in international affairs and to whom success means closing a deal fast, will be more than willing to take that as a gesture of goodwill.
With a US administration so far unwilling to back Ukraine and pressure Russia, from Putin's perspective, continuing the war is preferable to a deal under which Ukraine would get any significant security guarantees. The only type of deal that we can expect Putin to agree to is one that pauses the conflict and gives no real deterrence or security guarantee to Ukraine, allowing Russia to regroup and resume the war a few years down the line.
Another factor that may figure in the Kremlin's calculation is that while Russia has no manpower issue and still recruits roughly 30,000 men each month, albeit with ever-higher signing bonuses, it may soon start to face shortages of tanks and armoured vehicles. That is due to the dwindling Soviet legacy stockpile and domestic production not being able to compensate for the rate of losses in Ukraine. As a result, while Russia has enough men to replace its high personnel losses, it may struggle to sustain the current rhythm of offensive operations into 2026. A pause would allow them to reconstitute the force to resume the war in a few years.
Ukraine's position
Any discussion on peace negotiations should start from recognising that the simple fact that Ukrainians may want peace does not mean they are willing to settle for peace at all costs. Ukraine does not want or need any peace but a durable and sustainable one, which means that the status quo may still be preferable to a bad peace deal.
The current situation on the frontline, with Ukraine on the defensive, means that Russia is suffering heavy casualties for small gains and without achieving any strategic breakthrough. A peace deal that froze the conflict on the current lines, allowing Russia to rebuild its military without offering much to Ukraine in the way of security and defence, would be worse than the status quo.
Unfortunately, the public discourse on peace negotiations has excessively focused on territories and territorial concessions. The Ukrainian territory illegally occupied by Russia is undoubtedly important, and Ukraine will never accept a formal recognition of the Russian occupation. However, the preconditions for a peace acceptable to Ukraine have little to do with that. The three pillars of a peace deal acceptable to Ukraine are: defence, security guarantees, and economic development.
On defence, Ukraine cannot and will not accept any deal that limits the size and capabilities of its armed forces and military-industrial complex. As we know, throughout all negotiations in the spring of 2022, Russia was repeatedly trying to push a deal that would significantly weaken the Ukrainian military, making it impossible to defend the country in the event of a future invasion.
On security guarantees, the Ukrainian leadership is aware that Nato membership is not a likely prospect at the moment, but they cannot give it up in the absence of an alternative form of security that is a) significantly more robust than anything Ukraine had before 2022 and b) capable of deterring a future Russian invasion.
Finally, regarding economic development, the real measure of Ukraine’s success in this war for its independence and national survival is not necessarily how much territory it retains, but whether it survives as a viable state to grow as an independent democratic nation. This question is deeply intertwined with defence and security, as no nation would be able to prosper while existing in a state of complete vulnerability next to an aggressive, revanchist, and hostile neighbour, but also on Ukraine's prospects of European integration and the development that would come with that. After all, Ukraine's choice of a future in the EU was the root cause of Russia's initial invasion in 2014, and it is the EU integration that will determine Ukraine's future.
The possible scenarios
One hundred days after Trump's inauguration, it is safe to say that the administration's approach to negotiations has failed to deliver on its promise of a quick resolution that would bring lasting peace through a negotiated settlement.
The peace proposal presented to Ukraine and the European allies by US envoy to Russia, Steve Witkoff, in Paris on April 17th was way too favourable to Russia to be acceptable to Ukraine and its European partners. In the following weeks, Ukraine's negotiators and their European counterparts worked hard to present a solid counterproposal to the US envoy to Ukraine, General Kellogg, on April 25th. However, it is hard to imagine that the Kremlin would ever agree to it, as it would involve security guarantees, including the potential deployment of Western troops to Ukraine, that would seriously frustrate any future attempt by Russia to invade Ukraine.
The Trump administration has so far been unwilling to exercise more pressure on Russia, and despite some encouraging signs in recent days, it is hard to imagine that this policy will change significantly. That is not only because Trump seems to have a genuine affinity for Putin over Europe and Ukraine, but also because such a change of policy would entail a longer US involvement that may antagonise both the MAGA America First and the China-hawks Pivot to Asia components of Trump's team.
The more likely scenario, therefore, is that the US will more or less gradually disengage from the negotiations and that the war will continue. Russia will try to have Ukraine and Europe blamed for it, hoping that this would cause a US withdrawal from both Ukraine support and European security, while Ukraine and the Europeans will try to pin it on Putin in an attempt to keep some degree of US support. It is hard to predict which outcome will prevail, but it should be noted that neither is likely to lead to a rapid change of balance at the frontline.