By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

A Pathway to Peace in Ukraine Trump Needs a Realistic Game Plan

The lead picture on the website is from when Zelensky was threatened by Russia that his country would be invaded and Russia would come for him, the US offered free passage for Zelensky who refused and said I stay here; in fact, he is still here today.

Between the late eighteenth century and 1917, people who came to identify themselves as Ukrainians lived in both the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. This split historical experience is the basis for Putin’s claim that part of Ukraine is in Eastern Europe while most of it “was given” to Russia. It also explains why the formation of a unified Ukrainian national identity has been such a challenge. In 1994 the U.S., the U.K., and Russia guaranteed Ukraine's security in an agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum whereby Putin's petty excuses to violate its clear commitments are craven violations of international law and norms.

For those seeking to end Russia’s devastating war in Ukraine, the election of Donald Trump presents a crucial opportunity. In direct contrast to U.S. President Joe Biden, whose administration has held to a policy of unwavering support for Ukraine without pushing for a defined endgame to the war, Trump has focused almost exclusively on that endgame. He has long made clear his intention to bring the two sides to the negotiating table soon after he takes office and maybe even before that. Within weeks of his election victory, he named a retired general and former senior official, Keith Kellogg, as special envoy for Russia-Ukraine, underscoring the priority he and his administration will place on winding down the war.

This coming radical shift in the U.S. approach to the war could revive negotiations that have been effectively dormant since April 2022. Back then, in the first weeks of the war, Russia and Ukraine conducted several rounds of talks in person and online aimed at ending the conflict; although a framework for peace called the Istanbul Communiqué was drawn up, an agreement was never finalized. In the run-up to and since Trump’s election, however, there have been signs that both Kyiv and Moscow might be ready to return to the table. This is particularly true of the Ukrainians, who have been losing ground—as well as people and energy generation capacity—for two years and need urgent relief before their manpower situation becomes critical. Russia also faces some challenges: it is taking more ground by the day but at an extremely high price, and the Kremlin wants to lock in those gains without having to incur enormous costs indefinitely.

Although the president-elect has not yet articulated a clear plan for ending the war, he has given hints of the approach he might take. Specifically, Trump often points to the horrible human costs of the war and indicates a desire to put an end to the fighting as soon as possible. But pursuing a cease-fire agreement that does not address the underlying drivers of the conflict is unlikely to work. Indeed, a deal that just ends the fighting would likely be unacceptable to both Kyiv and Moscow.

To gain traction, any U.S. approach to talks must take account of the broader drivers of the conflict that are in play on both sides and how they can plausibly be addressed. The administration will need to both formulate a comprehensive endgame for the war that addresses these core issues and craft a diplomatic strategy for getting there. That means not only setting out a road map for a durable cease-fire but also identifying ways to assure Ukrainian security, providing incentives to both sides and laying out a strategy for stabilizing Russia’s relations with the West.

 

Tell Them How it Ends

A crucial prerequisite for a successful U.S. approach to negotiations is a defined endgame. The Biden administration has made it a matter of policy not to define a U.S. objective for the war in Ukraine but rather to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes” and to defer to Kyiv on the details of the desired outcome. This pointed refusal to have a defined U.S. goal is not the norm for U.S. foreign policy. Although it can be awkward for the United States to state a desired outcome for a conflict in which it is not a direct participant, Washington has often done so when the stakes for U.S. interests were high and it had leverage, as, for example, in the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the Balkan wars or in President George W. Bush’s “road map” to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, Biden himself specified the U.S. vision of an endgame for the other ongoing conflict of major geopolitical significance, the war in Gaza.

In this context, Biden’s refusal to articulate a U.S. plan for ending the war in Ukraine is a glaring omission. For much of the past year, the president’s silence on the issue has sparked bipartisan ire in Congress, which demanded such a strategy when it approved the administration’s $60 billion supplemental request for Ukraine in April. Moreover, in the absence of a U.S. strategy, other powers, including China and Brazil, have dominated the international conversation about ending the war: Beijing alone has penned three different peace plans. That Trump has so swiftly redirected that conversation away from the Chinese peace plans—and even the Ukrainian plan—underscores the leverage the United States has always had to shape the outcome.

As of now, Trump has said he wants the fighting to end, but he has not laid out a plan to get there. Any such plan should include four key features: a well-designed cease-fire agreement, a credible guarantee of Ukraine’s postwar security, a way to provide accountability for Russia’s aggression, and measures to stabilize Russian-Western relations. The question of which side controls what territory is unlikely to be decided at the negotiating table; the line of contact, perhaps with some small swaps and adjustments, will remain where it is when the guns fall silent. Moreover, territorial control, while extremely important to both sides, is ultimately not as core a concern as these broader political issues. And recognition of Russian annexations is rightly considered a nonstarter for both Ukraine and its Western backers.

Russian soldiers undergoing training in Krasnodar, Russia, December 2024

 

Arm the Porcupine

To avoid renewed fighting, a U.S. peace initiative must include measures to deter Russia, assure Ukraine, and provide incentives to both sides to maintain the cease-fire. Security guarantees for Ukraine that are directly tied to the cessation of hostilities can advance all three of these objectives. If there are significant costs tied to a future Russian attack—whether because it will trigger third-party intervention or retaliation from a Ukraine armed with an enhanced deterrent—Moscow will be less likely to undertake one. And if Kyiv is convinced that its security is guaranteed, it will be able to focus on economic recovery and democracy rather than on becoming a garrison state.

Kyiv is seeking security guarantees in the form of accession to NATO. But neither the Biden administration nor the incoming Trump administration appear willing to offer that possibility either during the war or in its immediate aftermath. Moreover, preventing Ukraine from joining NATO has been a Russian policy objective for decades, and it was among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s core motives for attacking Ukraine in 2022. Even if membership in the alliance were a viable option, it is a clumsy policy instrument for ending a war. Accession would require the approval of 32 parliaments and thus take months at best, and it would be contingent on Ukraine implementing many reforms that have nothing to do with conflict resolution.

In fact, there are other, potentially more effective ways to provide a security guarantee to Ukraine in the context of a negotiated end to the war. On multiple occasions since World War II, the United States has made bilateral security commitments to allies and partners in comparable post conflict situations. Two months after the end of the Korean War, the United States signed a bilateral mutual security treaty with South Korea in which Washington committed to come to Seoul’s aid if it were attacked. After the 1973 Arab-Israeli war ended, the United States reached an agreement with Israel in which it committed to “remedial action” if Egypt violated the cease-fire or if there were “threats to Israel’s security or sovereignty by a world power.” These approaches, which helped produce enduring periods of relative stability and peace, could provide models for what might be offered to Ukraine in a future negotiation.

Another kind of security guarantee could take the form of Ukraine’s eventual EU membership. Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union, known as the EU’s mutual assistance clause, states that if a “Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power.” This language is arguably more binding even than NATO’s common defense pledge, Article 5, and Russia already agreed not to stand in the way of Ukraine’s EU membership during the 2022 talks.

Whether or not Ukraine gets binding external commitments to its security, it will need an independent deterrent in the form of strong armed forces. The Biden administration and numerous NATO allies have already laid the groundwork for providing Ukraine the necessary training, arms transfers, and intelligence cooperation to create this deterrent in the bilateral security agreements signed earlier this year. But Ukraine’s partners need to consider how best to arm Ukraine to ensure a sustainable peace. Enabling a force focused on combined arms offense and long-range strike capabilities, for example, could make a second Russian invasion more, not less, likely by exacerbating the Kremlin’s threat perceptions.

Instead, allies should enable Ukraine to adopt a “porcupine model” of defense through their security cooperation. This would entail helping Ukraine develop a force that is optimized for defending the territory that Kyiv controls when the fighting ends, instead of providing training aimed at improving the ability to retake Russian-held territory. There is, of course, no clear-cut distinction between offensive and defensive capabilities and no off-the-shelf guide for what a porcupine model for Ukraine should look like. But aid focused on helping Kyiv to hold territory should help enable a future Ukrainian force to be more effective at deterring a future Russian attack.

 

Engage Russia

It will take more than just commands from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin to durably end the fighting on the frontline. For one thing, the size of the front, by the standards of contemporary global conflicts, is extraordinary and presents challenges of its own. Taking into account the undisputed areas along Ukraine’s borders with Belarus and Russia, as well as the line of contact in Ukraine, the front extends nearly 1,200 miles.

Policing such a line would require tens of thousands of peacekeepers, an impossibly large number—even if Russia and Ukraine agreed to allow such a force, which is highly unlikely. Nonetheless, unmanned systems and sensors could be leveraged to establish an effective monitoring system along the cease-fire lines. Such a system would likely require third-party oversight to assess the information coming in and to arbitrate disputes. Accountability mechanisms would have to be built in to ensure violations come at a cost. And a demilitarized zone with clear limits for deployments on both sides should be carefully designed to avoid the pitfalls of the Minsk agreements—the deals signed in 2014 and 2015 intended to end that earlier phase of Russia’s war—which did not contain a mutually agreed cease-fire line or clear disengagement commitments.

Another crucial issue will be assuring that the Kremlin’s aggression entails enduring costs to deter Russia or any other state from invading neighbors. Although Putin will inevitably claim victory when the fighting stops, the rest of the world should not come away with the impression that Russia has paid no cost for its aggression. The West can impose those costs by maintaining some sanctions and export controls as measures in place for the long term—or until Russia fully withdraws from Ukraine. Additionally, as part of the settlement, the roughly $300 billion in Russian state assets that are already frozen in Western countries could go to the reconstruction of Ukraine—with Russia’s explicit agreement. The Kremlin in all likelihood recognizes that it will never see those funds again, so such a deal is not implausible. Unless Moscow legally consents that the funds be used for that purpose, key European states will continue to object to spending them for fear of setting a dangerous precedent. Moscow is likely to demand in return that Ukraine relinquish further monetary claims on Russia for damages done during the war.

Russia will also need some positive incentives to comply with a settlement. Assurances that Ukraine will remain nonaligned, that foreign forces and infrastructure will not be deployed in Ukraine, and that mutual understandings can be reached on the limits of Western military aid, could be put on the table—and such assurances need not necessarily be incompatible with Western security guarantees for Ukraine. These would be similar to what the parties themselves imagined in the 2022 Istanbul Communiqué. Incentives could also encompass partial sanctions relief, with snap-back clauses to reimpose them if Russia violates the terms of the deal. Further, Russia is unlikely to agree to end the fighting without talks on NATO-Russian issues that go beyond Ukraine, such as the conventional force balance and long-range strike capabilities on the continent. Agreeing to a consultation process to address these issues in parallel to talks on the war itself could be part of the arrangements to end the war. Establishing such a process is no gift to Russia; it would serve Western interests as well since any durable settlement will require managing broader Russian-Western tensions.

Riding a bicycle near a front line in Donetsk, Ukraine, December 2024

 

Communication is Key

In addition to identifying the main elements of a settlement, the United States needs a plan for getting there. The first step is for Washington to begin a dialogue with Kyiv and U.S. allies about the endgame. Surprisingly little time has been spent on this issue since the war began. Indeed, to this day, many senior U.S. and European officials see it as a secondary priority; in December, the new secretary-general of NATO, Mark Rutte, said, “We need to have these debates, but for the immediate future, the most important thing is to get your military aid into Ukraine.”

That approach needs to change. A negotiation is coming, and U.S. and European officials need to be ready. Preparing for the talks and building consensus on the overall approach will take time—and should start immediately. Input from Ukraine will be essential. Without advice from the United States and its allies, Kyiv has produced unrealistic ideas on ending the war—such as Zelensky’s victory plan announced this fall. The Ukrainian president and his team would benefit from regular engagement with their Western counterparts on diplomatic strategy to avoid this kind of dissonance.

The next step is opening channels of communication with Russia. There has been no regular dialogue between Moscow and key Western capitals since the full-scale invasion began. For negotiations to have any chance of success, exchanges of views, even without any expectation of reaching agreement, should become the rule and not, as they are now, the exception. In this regard, Trump’s appointment of Kellogg as special envoy on the war presents a significant opportunity, since it can be used to cajole Putin to appoint a Russian counterpart. That would ease engagement with Moscow significantly; at the moment, no one in the Kremlin appears to have the authority to negotiate on these issues.

Finally, in advance of beginning actual talks, the United States should push forward de-escalation measures. Two such efforts are already on the table: a Turkish-brokered agreement to avoid strikes on civilian shipping in the Black Sea and a Qatari-negotiated deal to avoid strikes on energy infrastructure. The text of both arrangements was largely finalized, but neither got over the finish line. A push from Washington could help. Additional such measures could include commitments to not strike beyond a certain distance from the line of contact; all-for-all prisoner-of-war exchanges, as opposed to the current practice of exchanging only equal and limited numbers of prisoners; and a pledge to not engage in further raids across the areas of the international border that both sides still recognize as such. (That last measure would rule out another Kursk offensive but also any Russian effort to create a buffer zone in the Sumy region of Ukraine, which borders Kursk.)

If some of these steps begin to bear fruit, consultations could begin on multiple tracks. In addition to bilateral contacts between Kyiv and Moscow, a contact group could be established involving Ukraine, Russia, key Western powers, and perhaps China. Separately, dialogues on U.S.-Russian and NATO-Russian issues could commence in parallel.

 

A Year, Not a Day

As Trump and Kellogg prepare to launch negotiations, there are several important pitfalls that should be avoided. First, it will be crucial to manage expectations—those of both the public and the governments involved. Trump’s promise of a 24-hour negotiation was likely aspirational, but it seems clear his team wants to move quickly. Yet as was true in many previous conflict talks, it is more likely than not that initial attempts at negotiations will fail; the path will be long and require great expenditures of time and high-level attention from the United States and its allies. The extent of the enmity between Russia and Ukraine—and between Russia and the West—and the dearth of communication among the parties over the past few years will make talks very difficult to get off the ground and a long slog once they do.

It would be surprising if diplomatic efforts to end the war succeed in less than a year—if they succeed at all. Consider that it took two years and more than 500 meetings for the parties to the Korean armistice to come to agreement. Beyond stopping the fighting in Ukraine, the even larger task of stabilizing Russian-Western relations will likely require an open-ended process rather than a single agreed document. Another risk of pushing for a quick deal is that it may create the impression that the United States values getting a deal done more than getting a good one. Washington would not want to create expectations in Moscow that the United States is uninterested in the details and thus willing to make significant concessions in the interest of a quick resolution.

Another pitfall would be the use of ultimatums to force the sides to accept a deal. Some in Trump’s orbit have advocated wielding U.S. military aid to Ukraine as a cudgel against whichever party proves intransigent in the talks: either by threatening to ramp up assistance to Kyiv to put the screws on Russia or to cut it off if Ukraine refuses to make the necessary compromises. Either step could backfire. It is not in the U.S. interest to cut off aid to Ukraine completely under almost any circumstance, because that could enable a Russian takeover of the country. Given how much aid the United States has already provided to Ukraine, there is not much room for Washington to expand the flow of arms quantitatively, and further qualitative increases would entail unacceptable escalation risks. In any case, such threats are unlikely to prove effective: U.S. leverage with Russia and Ukraine is significant, but not so much so as to force either of them to take what they see as a bad deal since both see the issues at stake as existential or near existential.

Third, Trump and Kellogg should avoid making this a bilateral U.S.-Russian negotiation. Putting aside the immorality and ugly historical resonances of excluding Kyiv from deciding its own fate, it is necessary to involve the Ukrainian side on purely pragmatic grounds: Ukraine can scuttle any deal that it finds unacceptable. Additionally, there are compelling practical reasons to keep the Europeans and other U.S. allies such as Japan involved: the EU accession process is key to Ukraine’s future stability; allies’ economic resources will be necessary to support reconstruction; and having a unified U.S.-European position will prevent either Russia or Ukraine from playing one side off the other.

Although the coming to power of a U.S. president who pledges to quickly end the war raises the possibility of a breakthrough, it also poses major risks. These will be high-stakes negotiations, mostly between two embittered belligerents in a war that has killed tens of thousands—and maybe hundreds of thousands—on both sides. If Trump’s efforts fail, the dynamic of the conflict will not simply revert to a stable status quo ante: the war is intensifying, and it is also becoming more internationalized. With a well-defined vision of the endgame and a game plan to get there, the incoming administration could help bring an end to this horror and the growing risks it poses to the broader world.

 

 

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