By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Why Peace Talks Fail in Ukraine

It has been nearly three months since U.S. President Donald Trump launched a major effort to bring the war in Ukraine to an end. The diplomatic exchanges that followed have yet to produce meaningful results. In Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump faces a crafty, experienced adversary who hopes to capitalize on the American president’s impatience with the war to coerce Ukraine into signing away what the Russians have failed to win by force on the battlefield.

There is no reason to think that Trump will acquiesce to Putin’s list of demands. He has repeatedly voiced frustration with the lack of progress in the talks and has threatened to walk away, as Russia continues to creep forward, inch by bloody inch, in a long war of attrition with no end in sight.

Amid all the recent proposals and counterproposals, threats and counterthreats, reexamining the last real attempt to bring this war to a negotiated end can help inform the current effort. In the war’s first weeks and which, by the end of March 2022, had produced the so-called Istanbul Communiqué, a framework for a settlement. The core bargain in the framework would have entailed Ukraine embracing permanent neutrality, foreclosing its possible membership in NATO, in return for ironclad security guarantees. The sides failed to finalize the deal in the subsequent months, and the war has now entered its fourth year.

With talks once again underway after a three-year hiatus, it is a good time to review the lessons of Istanbul and assess what can be learned from that process for the present diplomatic effort. Of course, much has changed in the intervening period, so the Istanbul framework itself is unlikely to be the starting point for the current talks. But that attempt offers broader lessons that can inform today’s negotiations.

The primary imperative for both sides in any agreement will be ensuring their long-term security. All parties whose interests are at stake in the negotiations need to be at the table; if they are not present, they could undermine any agreements. The lack of Western willingness to provide Ukraine security guarantees has been a major challenge to reaching a settlement; it remains an impediment. A belligerent’s optimism about its battlefield prospects can also diminish its interest in making a deal. And finally, the humdrum mechanics of a cease-fire are no less crucial than the high politics of agreeing on the postwar order. Both must be pursued simultaneously if the parties expect to bring this bloody, grinding war to a stop.

 

Far Horizon

No durable peace deal will be possible that does not address Ukraine’s and Russia’s fears about each other over the long term. As they did in Istanbul in 2022, both sides still prioritize these national security concerns. Other issues, such as the status of disputed territory, sanctions relief for Russia, and the funding of postwar economic reconstruction in Ukraine, are important but fundamentally secondary. In Istanbul, both countries prioritized addressing postwar security over all else. The Kremlin insisted on Ukraine renouncing NATO membership, never hosting foreign forces or exercises involving foreign forces on its territory, and accepting some limits on the size and structure of its military. Kyiv, for its part, wanted no restrictive caps on its forces and was focused on obtaining security guarantees from its Western partners, and the implicit acceptance by the Kremlin that these powers would come to Ukraine’s defense were Moscow to once again launch an attack.

These future security concerns remain the key issue for today. The Ukrainians fear that unless they can defend themselves and guarantees from Western powers, any ostensible peace deal will merely set up a future Russian invasion. The Russians fear that a well-armed Ukraine can attempt to reclaim any Ukrainian territory that Moscow still occupies. And the Kremlin worries about the prospect—however unlikely it might seem now—of Ukraine’s eventual membership in NATO, and the long-term security implications of such a development. Although the Trump administration is ruling out membership, that offers little comfort to Moscow—a future administration could reverse course.

This focus on ensuring security after the end of the war shapes both sides’ military behavior and bargaining positions. The current talks must address these threat perceptions to maximize chances of success. At the moment, other issues, particularly the question of territorial control and the recognition of Russia’s illegal annexations, appear to have taken the fore. Leaked versions of U.S. peace proposals, for instance, refer to Washington providing “de jure recognition” of Crimea as part of Russia and “de facto recognition” of the other Russian-occupied territories. But focusing on territory distracts from the primary security agenda. Russia did fine without any country formally recognizing its occupation of Crimea since the territory’s March 2014 annexation, and it can survive perfectly well without such recognition going forward. And it is unnecessary to declare “de facto recognition” of other areas because recognition is a legal act; it’s either de jure or it’s not. Indeed, regardless of how any outside party views their territorial claims, neither Russia nor Ukraine is likely to surrender territory they currently hold. The realities of war, not of the negotiating table, will determine territorial control.

Although the Kremlin is not averse to legitimizing its conquests, and the Ukrainians would certainly be happy to regain territories they have lost to Russia, Istanbul demonstrated that the status of the Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine will not be as important an element in the negotiations as it is sometimes made out to be. Indeed, in Istanbul, the talks deliberately skirted the question of borders and territory. Although important, the issue was and remains secondary to core security concerns.

 

All Seated at the Table

Successful negotiations must include all relevant parties. If a state’s equities are on the table in a given negotiation, that state must be at the table from the start of the process. Kyiv’s backers often insist that it cannot be sidelined in any diplomatic resolution of the conflict. They repeat the slogan “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” But Istanbul demonstrated that this slogan is not exclusive to Ukraine. The discussions in Istanbul excluded the major powers of the West—the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and others—even as Russia and Ukraine negotiated issues relating to these countries and their obligations.

For example, Ukraine did not consult with the United States and other Western countries until after the Istanbul Communiqué had been issued. That exclusion was largely a function of exigency:

Russian forces were on the outskirts of Kyiv, so negotiators had no time for multilateral diplomacy. But the lack of Western involvement in the talks made Western officials averse to embracing the communiqué, regardless of its merits. They might have said, “Nothing about the West without the West.”

In short, agreements written without all those affected present at the creation are unlikely to succeed. The mediators today will find it much easier to steer the war toward negotiations if all the parties—including the Ukrainians and the Europeans—are involved from day one.

There are practical reasons for taking an inclusive approach. If the United States and Europe worked together, rather than at cross-purposes as they seem to be today, to deliver a viable peace, Putin would have had less scope for what Trump has described as “tapping me along,” that is, stringing him along by prolonging the talks. The Europeans would also be less inclined to throw a spanner into the peace process as they have done, for instance, by refusing to discuss sanctions relief or by trumping up their plans to send ground troops to Ukraine.

 

Commitment, not Kabuki

Istanbul demonstrated that when push came to shove, Ukraine’s Western backers were unwilling to give Kyiv the guarantee that it believed to be essential for its security. Indeed, Western governments distanced themselves from the Istanbul Communiqué not only because they were not involved in the underlying negotiations but also because the security guarantee described in the document went far beyond what Washington and allied capitals were willing to provide. The Istanbul framework would have obliged the United States and its allies to defend Ukraine if it were attacked again—in language much more concrete (including, for instance, a stipulation about the imposition of a no-fly zone) than that contained in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the collective defense clause in NATO’s charter.

Three years on, the aversion to direct military entanglement still shadows the Western approach to Ukraine. It has, for example, become clear that the Trump administration is unwilling to offer security guarantees. But Trump is just continuing a policy he inherited—after all, the Biden administration didn’t make such an offer, either. Even the Europeans have not been willing to offer an explicit security guarantee. Western powers are unwilling to intervene now, and it remains unclear whether they would be eager to do so if Russia were to reinvade after a future cease-fire.

Debates about the prospect of European boots on the ground in Ukraine sidestep that fundamental question, which has been unanswered since Istanbul. Indeed, guarantees would not necessarily require the presence of Western forces in Ukraine (and Russia is unlikely to agree to such a scheme, in any case). Rather than discussing the possibility of deploying forces to Ukraine after a future hypothetical cease-fire, European governments should answer the first-order question about their willingness to offer real guarantees to Kyiv. Deploying forces to Ukraine without a guarantee would be political theater, not a genuine commitment.

 

The Calculus of the Battlefield

Just as it did in 2022, the calculus of the battlefield looms large over the negotiating table. What concessions each side makes ultimately depends on how they perceive the costs of procrastination. If the Russians believe that the war is going well for them and that Trump will eventually just leave Ukraine and the Europeans to fend for themselves, then they will put more emphasis on military action. If the Kremlin concludes that the failure of peace talks is likely to dim its longer-term war prospects, then Moscow will show a greater eagerness to negotiate.

Facing longer odds on the battlefield at the moment, the Ukrainians are ready to negotiate. If, however, their situation improves, they, too, may conclude that military action would serve their purposes better than talking to the Russians. This is what happened after Istanbul in 2022. The talks collapsed in part because after the Russians were beaten back near Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky decided that he could avoid painful concessions and press ahead on the battlefield.

The United States has a lot of leverage to influence each side’s perceptions of the pros and cons of negotiations. Washington should use it wisely to make a negotiated outcome more attractive than the prolonging of the fighting. This would require a careful calibration of U.S. military aid to make it clear to both Moscow and Kyiv that the United States is committed to preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty and preventing a Russian victory, but not to assisting Ukraine in restoring its internationally recognized borders. The United States should also work with its European allies so that they line up behind the same goals. By inducing a stalemate, such a policy would make talks more attractive than continued fighting for both sides.

 

Two Fronts

To succeed, negotiations must address the process through which fighting will come to an end, as well as how the contours of the postwar security order will be delineated. In Istanbul in 2022, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators focused almost exclusively on the latter. With admirable ambition, the sides sought to bridge major geopolitical disputes—the question of NATO enlargement, Ukraine’s role in European security, U.S. security commitments in the post-Soviet space, and so on—that had eluded diplomatic compromise for decades. The communiqué was silent on the more mundane question of how to reach a cessation of hostilities. But without an agreed path to end the fighting, the talks on a settlement were increasingly disconnected from the military realities of an intensifying war. Eventually, this disconnect made the negotiations politically untenable.

At the start of his push to end the war this year, Trump seemed to prioritize a cease-fire exclusively. As he put it following his blowup with Zelensky in the Oval Office on February 28, “I want [the war] to end immediately... I want a cease-fire now.”

His administration subsequently called for an unconditional 30-day cease-fire, a position that Zelensky embraced but Putin rejected. Then, during meetings with the two sides in Riyadh in March, Washington pushed for a phased approach, aiming for one deal that banned strikes on energy infrastructure and another that barred attacks on civilian shipping in the Black Sea.

Those deals were never completed. Indeed, in recent weeks, the administration appears to have abandoned efforts to hash out a cessation of hostilities altogether and instead pivoted to a discussion of the terms of a final settlement. During meetings in Paris and then London in April with Ukrainian and European representatives, the U.S. team presented a multipoint peace plan covering many of the most contentious issues, ranging from ruling out Kyiv’s NATO bid to offering U.S. recognition of Russia’s annexation of 

Crimea. This effort at a grand bargain also appears to have made little progress. Meanwhile, the war rages on.  

The Istanbul talks, as well as Trump’s current struggles, suggest that parallel discussions of both the mechanics of the cease-fire and the elements of a political settlement will be needed to conclude either. To progress in one of these tracks, Ukraine and Russia will need to progress on both of them at the same time.

 

A Possible Thaw

The 2022 negotiations serve as a reminder that Putin and Zelensky are capable of entertaining significant concessions. Both men have gained a reputation for maximalism in the past three years. But Istanbul showed that they could be open to the kind of politically risky compromises necessary for peace.

In 2022, Putin was willing to engage in a diplomatic process on the status of Crimea, and to at least entertain the possibility that the United States would intervene in Ukraine were Russia to invade again. He also notably agreed to Ukraine’s ambition to seek membership in the European Union. Zelensky, for his part, was willing to forgo NATO membership, embracing permanent neutrality, and even openly called for direct talks with Putin to complete the deal.

It is therefore unwise to take their current publicly stated positions as bottom lines. Such positions are often just an opening offer. Each side is naturally interested in creating the impression that its positions are nonnegotiable. The bargaining comes in the process. A peace agreement may prove very difficult, perhaps impossible, to attain. But as the 2022 talks demonstrated, failed negotiations could augur many more years of war.

 

 

For updates click hompage here