Three conditions for a US-backed peace agreement in Ukraine

Two points in particular are fundamental. The first is Zelensky’s acknowledgement that the areas of Ukraine now held by Russia will remain under Russia’s de facto control. There will be no Ukrainian or Western legal recognition of Russian annexations, but the issue will be left for future negotiation.

According to members of the Russian establishment with whom I have spoken, the Russian government itself does not expect this, as they know that Russia’s essential partners in the Brics will also never formally recognise Russian sovereignty. Rather, Moscow hopes for a situation like that of Cyprus, where talks on reunification have dragged on for half a century until the issue has been forgotten.

Equally important is Zelensky’s recognition that while his government strongly wishes for Nato membership or a “Nato umbrella” for the 80% of Ukraine not occupied by Russia, “nobody has offered this”. Given Trump’s America First ideology, it is exceptionally unlikely that he will ever do so. The acceptance of a new Nato member also requires the unanimous consent of existing members. Hungary will certainly veto; Turkey probably; and due to internal political crises, the future policies of France and Germany are highly unclear.

This leaves the question of guarantees for Ukraine short of Nato membership. Zelensky has suggested bilateral security guarantees by individual Nato members (some of which, like the UK, have already signed bilateral security agreements with Kyiv). The presence of Western troops, as desired by Kyiv, is a non-starter as far as Russia is concerned. It is seen as just as bad as Nato membership, in part because it would give the Ukrainians the chance to provoke a new war to recover their lost territories, in which Western forces would be immediately embroiled.

The question of guarantees to Ukraine is therefore probably the most difficult of all those that will have to be resolved in peace negotiations. Adding to the difficulty is that it is mixed up with the Russian demand for Ukrainian “demilitarisation”. The US and Ukrainian point of departure must be that almost every Western government, and huge majorities of Western populations, have categorically ruled out going to war with Russia for the sake of Ukraine. This means that absolute Western guarantees of Ukrainian security are ipso facto impossible.

Three things are however possible, and I would strongly urge that they be made the basis for US peace proposals, and European influence on those proposals. Firstly, that long-range missiles capable of striking deep into Russia be banned, but that the US and Nato should commit themselves to providing Ukraine permanently with the strongest possible defensive weapons, and maximum aid to build up its defensive lines. Given the advantage that contemporary weaponry gives to the defensive, and the huge difficulty and losses both Russia and Ukraine have experienced in trying to break through prepared defences, this would be a formidable barrier to future Russian aggression.

Secondly, certain Western sanctions against Russia should be suspended. These would especially include the ban on natural gas imports, which has hurt Germany more than it has hurt Russia; and the exclusion of Russia from the Swift banking system. However, these sanctions would not be ended but suspended, with the formal proviso that they would automatically return if Russia launched a new war.

Finally, any peace agreement, while negotiated between Washington, Moscow and Kyiv, should be formally ratified by the United Nations and the Brics. Given the effort that Russia has put into wooing non-Western countries (and their strong desire that the war should end and not be renewed), their support for a peace settlement would also strongly discourage Russia from future aggression.

Both Ukraine and Russia would have strong motives for accepting a settlement along these lines; the Zelensky administration because, in the words of former foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba this week, “Do we have the means and tools to turn the tables and change the trajectory of how things are happening? No, we don’t. And if it continues like this, we will lose the war.” Numerous reports have described the exhaustion of Ukrainian frontline troops and ammunition reserves.

Absent a peace settlement that meets basic Russian conditions, the Putin administration seems ready to continue the war. It would however be very foolish to do so if a reasonable deal were visibly on the table. This is because of the immense sacrifices that Russia would have to make to achieve a complete victory in this war, and the Russian population’s lack of appetite for these sacrifices.

Putin himself has implicitly recognised this in his rejection of calls from Russian hardliners for full Russian mobilisation. Only a fraction of Russia’s available manpower has been recruited, and the recruits have been paid enormously high salaries. This and the other needs of the war are putting huge pressure on state finances, as shown by the latest plunge in the value of the rouble.

Putin should also look carefully at the latest news from the battlefield. He is clearly anxious to make further territorial gains before the Trump administration takes office. But the attempt to drive the Ukrainians from the sliver of Russian land they hold in Kursk has required the import of thousands of North Korean troops, thereby escalating tension with the West; and in the Donbas, the latest Russian advances, though steady, have been very slow, and at a very high cost in casualties.

For Ukraine to reject a peace settlement along these lines would be to play va banque; to put everything on the table and risk losing it all. Putin would not be staking as much, but he would still have to ask himself if the gains were worth the gamble. In December 2022, then Ukrainian commander in chief said that “it is not yet time to address Ukrainian soldiers the way [Field Marshal] Mannerheim addressed Finnish soldiers” at the end of the Soviet-Finnish War, when he told them that deeply painful territorial concessions would have to be accepted, and they must all work to strengthen the remaining core of Finland. That time has now come for President Zelensky.

Anatol Lieven is a former war correspondent and Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington DC.