By Dr. Matt Bivens, Substack, 8/23/26

Matt Bivens is a former journalist who reported from Russia for years. He is currently a practicing doctor.

Two out of every three Ukrainians favors immediate negotiations to end the war with Russia.

What would achieving peace entail?

The Russian demands are clear. They want:

-the territories they have occupied, including Crimea and the east (which are historically and ethnically Russian, and which the government in Kyiv had waged war upon for eight years prior to the Russian invasion);

-the CIA, the Ukrainian Neo-Nazi right, and NATO all out of power in Ukraine, to be replaced by a more tolerant and less anti-Russian government (note that the Russians are not insisting on control over that future government, they just want us out);

-a broad, international discussion about reforming or ending NATO itself (so that this pro-war, anti-Russian alliance could be replaced with something new, some sort of security infrastructure that would allow Russia to work with, and not against, the West).

Three illustrative maps of Ukraine. Left: Russian-held territory in orange as of August 2026, according to the Congressional Research Service. Middle: How the country voted in the 2010 elections, with blue territories supporting the candidate who favored neutrality instead of joining NATO. Right: Languages of Ukraine spoken at home as surveyed in 2001 and 2009, with yellow areas in the West speaking Ukrainian, red areas in the East speaking Russian, and orange in the middle speaking a mix of the two.

There’s a deal to be made

Events made clear long ago that Russia will win this war.

Honestly, it was clear on day one, just from looking at the map:

This can be ground out on the battlefield over time, at enormous suffering and terrible risk. (In addition to the 4 1/2 years of this war we’ve already endured, to say nothing of the eight years of Ukrainian civil war before that.)

But in the end, Russia will hold what it chooses to hold, possibly to include Odesa (which it is closing in upon militarily, but also not yet staking claim to), and, if things get bad enough, even Kyiv itself.

At that point, we’d go back to using the familiar spellings “Odessa” and “Kiev”. Ukraine would be left a land-locked, war-wrecked, rump state. We in the West would spare as much thought for the people there as we do now for, say, the women of Afghanistan, over whose freedoms we used to so anxiously wring our hands.

But victory for Russia would be nearly as miserable as defeat for Ukraine. It would be bought at terrible cost, and Russia’s major goal — a NATO-free future — would remain elusive.

And that’s good news. Because it means there is a deal to be made: Peace in Ukraine, in return for renouncing America’s CIA-led regime-change adventures and winding down NATO.

We should insist upon urgent peace talks on exactly those terms.

We should do so on the humanitarian grounds; because of the growing risk of nuclear war; because NATO is reckless and long past its expiration date; and because ordinary Russians, Ukrainians, and Americans have a shared interest in ending the crazed partnership between the CIA and the Ukrainian fascist movement.

In this five-part series, we’ll review all of these excellent reasons to start emergent and serious peace talks, with an agenda based on Russia’s opening terms.

The humanitarian grounds 

More than 2 million young Ukrainians and Russians may have been killed or grievously injured fighting this war. It’s an astonishing toll of misery and death.

Two million young men, killed or maimed, in just a few years.

Most Western leaders bring this up only to gloat about the Russian losses, usually followed by demands that we get more, and younger, Ukrainians to the front lines, to kill more Russians (and Eastern Ukrainians) or die trying.

A rare exception — and wow, is this a shameful commentary on the reflexive sociopathy baked into our politics — has been Donald Trump. The President has been virtually alone in citing the military war dead as by itself an unspeakable tragedy.

“The numbers of dead soldiers that have been killed in the last month are numbers that are staggering,” Trump said in an interview with TIME Magazine at the end of 2024. “Both Russians and Ukrainians, and the amounts are fairly equal. You know, I know they like to say they weren’t [comparable death tolls on both sides], but they’re fairly equal. But the numbers of dead young soldiers lying on fields all over the place are staggering. It’s crazy what’s taking place. It’s crazy.”

Otherwise, American and European political elites have tended to echo Mitt Romney, who so cheerfully raved, “We’re losing no lives in Ukraine!”, and who called the tsunami of money we’ve sent there ($195 billion and counting) “about the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done!”

There are other humanitarian costs.

Civilian casualties are steadily rising, with each month breaking the previous month’s record. In the past two weeks, it looks like about 60 Ukrainian civilians have been killed by Russian attacks; and about 30 Russian civilians killed by Ukrainian attacks.

In the past week, we’ve seen Kyiv bombarded by more than 200 missiles and drones that struck more than 30 apartment buildings, a kindergarten, a school and a children’s hospital, and that killed at least 16 people. That’s for Kyiv alone.

Moscow, meanwhile, saw an even heavier wave of drone attacks, more than 600 in the past few days, although most were successfully shot down by air defenses. There was only one civilian death in Moscow documented.

The United Nations confirms at least 16,431 Ukrainian civilians (including 803 children) have been killed since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. The death toll on the Russian side has been far smaller, with estimates ranging somewhere around 1,000 civilians.

Tens of thousands more have been injured (including nearly 3,000 Ukrainian children).

Millions remain displaced.

Millions of homes are destroyed.

Each side is now openly attacking the other’s energy infrastructure (with the Russians more successful). The city of Kyiv is making lists of who will need evacuated this winter purely for lack of heat.

Both sides are also now blowing up Black Sea shipping, and since both sides export huge agricultural harvests via that sea, and Russia exports huge amounts of fertilizer needed for agriculture elsewhere, this threatens starvation across Africa and Asia.

A peace deal could avert all of this: The military and civilian deaths and injuries, the terrible looming winter of Ukrainian cold and worldwide hunger.