The U.S.-led talks to end the war in Ukraine have been placed on hold. The Trump administration’s focus on Iran might be the proximate reason, but it is not the underlying cause. In truth, the negotiations had already stalled because of a more serious problem: the way the United States has structured the peace process.
To this point, the Trump administration has centered the talks on a core bargain. In order to end the war, Ukraine will cede more of its land to Russia—specifically, the nearly 20 percent of the Donbas Kyiv still controls—in exchange for security commitments from the United States and Europe. “The Americans are prepared to finalize [security] guarantees at a high level once Ukraine is ready to withdraw from Donbas,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a March interview. Or, in U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s formulation, “the Russians want certain pieces of territory, most of which they’ve occupied but some of which they haven’t. So that is really where the meat of the negotiation is. The Ukrainians want security guarantees, the Russians want a certain amount of territory.”
The administration is right to seek a negotiated end to the fighting. The war between Russia and Ukraine has been immensely destructive, first and foremost to Ukrainians but also to regional and international security, to global economic growth, and to U.S. and allied military stockpiles. Yet structuring a peace agreement around land for security guarantees has not worked yet and is unlikely to work in the future. This approach exaggerates the significance of territory for Russia and the importance of Western assurances for Ukraine. And it neglects to address the key challenge in ending any war, which is what political scientists call the credible commitment problem: convincing a belligerent that its enemy will really commit to peace.
To overcome that obstacle, U.S. negotiators will need to take a different approach and seek a more comprehensive arrangement, one that addresses the credible commitment problem. That means an eventual deal must give Ukraine the means to defend itself and deter a possible future invasion while assuring Russia that Kyiv will not be a beachhead for NATO and will only try to restore its territorial integrity via nonmilitary means. And it means treating negotiations not as a barter of land for security guarantees but as the foundation for stable—if hostile—relations between Russia and Ukraine and, eventually, Russia and NATO.
Even this comprehensive approach might not work. It is possible that the Kremlin will stop at nothing less than the subjugation of all of Ukraine. But structuring a deal around the parties’ core security concerns at least provides a real chance at overcoming each state’s underlying threat perceptions and thus achieving a lasting peace.
FEAR AND LOATHING
On the surface, the Trump administration’s decision to frame settlement talks around a trade of territory for security guarantees seems like a smart solution to a long-running war. Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded the rest of the Donbas as a prerequisite for a cease-fire. Ukraine has repeatedly said that meaningful security guarantees are essential to any settlement. In theory, then, a land-for-guarantees deal is a straightforward path to peace.
But this approach has not worked. To understand why, first consider how the Kremlin sees it. To be sure, the issue of territory has grown in importance for Moscow over the course of the war, as thousands of Russian troops have died trying to seize bits of Ukraine’s east. But occupation of the entire Donbas is certainly not a sufficient condition for peace. Before it stops fighting, Moscow wants to resolve the broader security concerns its leaders have consistently voiced—namely, that Ukraine will become a forward base for NATO or that Kyiv will seek to retake its territory by force—and full control over the Donbas will not address these fears. Possessing the region would not, for example, limit Ukraine’s future military capabilities, including its continued acquisition of high-end Western systems. It would not prevent Kyiv from joining Western alliances. And it would not stop Ukraine from hosting NATO forces.
In fact, the security guarantees currently under discussion could actually result in the deployment of NATO troops on Ukrainian soil. According to multiple press reports, the assurances Kyiv is discussing with its Western partners would result in a “coalition of the willing,” led by France and the United Kingdom, that deploys forces to Ukraine after a cease-fire and in Europe that supports an 800,000-person peacetime Ukrainian military. This outcome would ultimately heighten Russia’s perceived insecurity, no matter how much land Moscow gets in the bargain.
The trade of territory for U.S. or European security guarantees is also unlikely to reduce Ukrainian insecurities. For starters, sacrificing the rest of the Donbas will objectively make Ukraine less resilient to future attacks. The country has spent years heavily fortifying the urban areas in the narrow strip of Donbas territory it still commands, to the point where military analysts now call it the “fortress belt.” The strip has thus become essential to protecting the largely flat steppe terrain to its west. Although operating in these open areas would come with its own challenges for Russia, including increased vulnerability to drone attacks, surrendering the remainder of the Donbas would still leave the rest of the country more exposed and thus vulnerable to conquest.
Western security guarantees could compensate for this vulnerability if they really ensured that NATO would enter the fight should Russia reattack. But the United States and Europe cannot credibly offer such assurances. Ukrainian officials, after all, have no reason to believe that these countries will be willing to enter a future war with Russia when they aren’t fighting now. If Kyiv goes along with the formula being discussed, it would thus surrender valuable defensive terrain and end up getting little in return.
ON THE DEFENSIVE
If U.S. officials want to end the long, bloody war between Russia and Ukraine, they must stop anchoring the process on a narrow land-for-guarantees formula. Instead, they need to adopt a comprehensive approach that allows both Moscow and Ukraine to have confidence in their long-term security and that charts a course toward a less hostile and more sustainable relationship.
Pursuing such an approach requires that all the relevant parties meet at the same table. To date, negotiations have proceeded along several discrete tracks. Ukraine and the United States have met bilaterally and frequently over recent months, sometimes with the Europeans included. Europe and Ukraine have also held their own consultations. And U.S. negotiators have met with Russian representatives, including Putin himself, at least a dozen times. But there have been only a few meetings involving Russia, Ukraine, and the United States—and none where the Europeans were also in attendance. This has proved chaotic and counterproductive. It has increased the risk of misunderstandings and made it hard to identify terms that can gain buy-in from all stakeholders. Identifying compromises that all parties can accept requires testing different propositions and iteratively revising their terms, a process best accomplished through direct dialogue, not asynchronous discussions.
Once they have gathered, Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and Europe can begin to identify trades that might make peace attainable and durable. As part of a future deal, for example, Ukraine could formally pledge to not join any military alliance, agree to permanent nonaligned status, and declare self-determined caps on its forces at levels that do not constrain its defensive capabilities but that limit its offensive ones. By making these commitments, Kyiv would credibly signal that it seeks to militarily defend just the areas still under its control. It would still dispute Russian occupation, but only via peaceful means.
Some might fear these concessions would leave Ukraine vulnerable to Russian attack, but these concerns are unwarranted. Even if Kyiv could afford it, a massive active-duty military would be unnecessary in peacetime anyway. Using a strategy that relies on fortifications, drones, mines, and sufficient stockpiles of air defense and artillery, Ukraine would need an army of only modest size to make a future invasion too costly for the Kremlin to undertake. And Kyiv would be free to keep developing its defense industrial base and to receive long-term Western military assistance when it comes to the weapons needed for a defensive strategy, including short-range precision munitions.
Sacrificing the rest of the Donbas will objectively make Ukraine less resilient.
In exchange, Moscow should adopt limits on its deployment of forces, missiles, and heavy weapons near Ukrainian territory and in parts of Ukraine it has occupied. Both sides could vow not to host foreign forces on their territory. For Russia, such terms could be acceptable because a formally nonaligned and defensively armed Kyiv would not present the type of acute threat that would require placing offensive military capabilities near the frontline. For Ukraine, constraints on Russian deployments would provide assurances that Moscow is not planning a new invasion, or at least ensure that Kyiv has ample warning before any future aggression occurs.
The United States and Europe would play an important role in making sure both Moscow and Kyiv believe any deal will stick by offering them assurances and making those assurances conditional on their adherence to the agreement. For Russia, the United States and some other NATO members could offer a formal and legally binding commitment—perhaps in the form of a UN Security Council resolution—that they would veto efforts to enlarge the alliance to the east as long as Russia does not reinvade Ukraine. This promise would also represent a first step toward a more stable relationship between Russia and NATO. In addition, the United States and its allies could explicitly exclude U.S.- and European-made long-range missiles and combat aircraft, the most acute sources of Russian neuralgia, in their peacetime assistance to Ukraine.
To reassure Ukraine, the United States and its European allies could make legally binding commitments to provide military aid, including air defenses, artillery rockets, and other short-range precision munitions, along a set timeline. They could also promise to build stockpiles of both these and more powerful weapons located outside Ukraine, so that they could surge supplies in the event of recurring aggression. Such codified guarantees would give Ukraine credible and concrete promises that its military will be better armed and prepared to deter renewed war and that Western assistance would be faster and more comprehensive—and less subject to political vicissitudes—than it has been in the past. Such guarantees would certainly leave Ukraine better off than would expansive promises of direct military support, which Kyiv cannot trust and Moscow will not accept.
Negotiating this kind of multilateral package will be extremely hard and time-consuming, especially given the complex threat perceptions, deep resentments, and decades-long disputes involved. There is no guarantee the United States and its partners would succeed. Other thorny issues will also have to be hashed out before a final settlement is reached. Moreover, it is possible that Putin is uninterested in any deal and will accept nothing less than control of all of Ukraine. It is also possible that, after four years of horrific war, the Russians and Ukrainians are too mistrustful to entertain these kinds of compromises. But there is no easy, land-for-guarantees shortcut to ending this war.
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