By Tatiana Stanovaya, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2/13/25

Three weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration, he had a much-anticipated phone call with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Both sides have kept a diplomatic silence over who initiated the call, but the very fact that it took place and lasted almost an hour and a half looks like a major win for the Russian leader. Effectively, the long-awaited negotiations between Moscow and Washington on the fate of Ukraine have been launched in the format that best suits Putin.

In addition, the Russian president is entering into a dialogue at a time when negotiations appear desirable but by no means necessary for Russia to achieve its goals in its war against Ukraine. For Putin, this is a window of opportunity that he would of course like to make the most of, but virtually any outcome will be a good result for Moscow.

There’s certainly no guarantee that Trump will accept all of the Kremlin’s many demands and agree to a full-scale “deal.” But there are plenty of other possible outcomes that will still benefit Russia, such as the erosion of Western unity, Ukraine being forced to accept what the Kremlin terms “reality” (territorial losses), and a reduction in Western support for Kyiv.

Even the very attitude and approach of Trump and his team to potential negotiations is playing into Putin’s hands. Hours before the phone call took place, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said publicly that a return to Ukraine’s 2014 borders is unrealistic, and so is the country’s bid to join NATO. While similar conclusions have been expressed behind closed doors, it was the first time they had been acknowledged at such a senior level, drawing new lines within Western debates on Ukraine.

For now, the prospect of a full-scale “deal” looks unlikely: the U.S. and Russian positions are too far apart. Putin’s key goal remains a “friendly Ukraine,” which is not about territorial divides or the security of the contact line, but about guarantees that Ukraine as a whole will turn away from the path of Western development upon which it has embarked.

In practical terms, that would mean persuading the West to withdraw from Ukraine in every sense. Russia’s deputy foreign minister has already said the Kremlin would require “cast-iron guarantees” that Ukraine will not join NATO. It would also mean annulling Ukraine’s existing bilateral security agreements with Western countries, not to mention a change in the country’s political leadership, the rewriting of the Ukrainian constitution, and much more.

Russia also requires guarantees that there will be no full-fledged army, Western weapons, or military bases in Ukraine. Trump’s position, meanwhile—mineral resources in exchange for Washington’s support, and European peacekeepers on the contact line—appears to have little in common with Moscow’s vision. In addition, it’s not just a question of what Trump wants, but what he can actually do. A full-fledged deal that would be acceptable to Russia would require the active participation of other Western countries and, of course, Ukraine itself.

At the same time, Moscow is clearly not prepared to soften its demands too drastically. Putin has repeatedly made it clear that he believes Russia can achieve its goals in Ukraine without any U.S.-brokered deal. As far as he is concerned, Moscow simply needs to wait until Ukraine falls apart of its own accord, after which the Russian army will crush any remaining resistance among the Ukrainian army.

Trump’s attempts to force Ukraine to start negotiations with Russia and to make Europe “own responsibility for its own security” are only helping Moscow advance toward its own goals in this war. For Putin, therefore, talks with Trump are a secondary issue, eclipsed by what is nothing less than an existential goal for him: ensuring a “friendly Ukraine.”

The Kremlin’s most basic task right now is to keep Washington in a constructive mindset toward Russia. That in itself is already facilitating the achievement of Putin’s goals in Ukraine, so the Russian leader is prepared to pay a certain price to preserve this conducive atmosphere.

That price could take the form of what are effectively hostage exchanges (even if the equivalence of the most recent exchange is dubious), the release of Ukrainian prisoners of war, and perhaps even in the future, suspending hostilities temporarily or sending someone not too senior to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose legitimacy Putin does not recognize.

It will be a lengthy bargaining process in which Moscow is ready for any outcome, from limited agreements to ending all dialogue and even military escalation. The Russian leadership will try to avoid that last option—but not at any cost.

Now that the first substantial telephone conversation has taken place, the tricky business of preparations for a meeting between the two presidents begins. Washington has made a concession by distancing Special Representative for Ukraine Keith Kellogg from direct contact with Moscow: there is reason to believe that Trump himself has cooled toward Kellogg’s approach to the issue in recent weeks in favor of greater pragmatism.

It is not yet clear who will represent Russia in any negotiating delegation, but it’s unlikely to be a figurehead like Vladimir Medinsky, whom Putin named as his chief negotiator in the conflict back in 2022. Putin may well use him in negotiations with Kyiv, however, if necessary.

Figures such as the Ukrainian-born Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund; the oligarch Roman Abramovich; and former Kremlin chief of staff Alexander Voloshin are often mentioned as informal intermediaries in establishing the current contacts, and each of them can indeed play a certain role in communications. But their influence should not be exaggerated. Anything of any real importance either has Putin’s approval or happens at his instigation.

Of course, much in the negotiations will be determined by external, rapidly changing circumstances: above all, by the state of play at the front, and in Ukrainian domestic politics. Russia is sorely tempted to try simply waiting for Ukraine to become more vulnerable—both in military and political terms—and then ramp up the pressure, radically improving its negotiating position. Especially since right now, negotiations with Washington will not give Moscow what it wants anyway. For now, therefore, it is enough for Russia to keep Trump in a positive mindset, and that’s something Putin does well.

By Lyle Goldstein, Responsible Statecraft, 1/31/25

Donald Trump is once again the president and there is no greater foreign policy challenge he has promised to tackle than how to resolve the Russia-Ukraine War.

In the frenzied rush to save Ukraine from Russian aggression, there has been scant attention paid to the origins of the conflict. However, an important memoir published in 2024 by John Sullivan, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2020 until 2022, could provide some answers.

Ominously titled “Midnight in Moscow” the book shows just how belligerent towards Russia the Biden administration was at a fraught moment — and how little key American diplomats seemed to think of real diplomacy.

A careful study of Sullivan’s account reveals he was the wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time. Sullivan had prior experience as an attorney and this helped shape his sheriff-like, good-versus-evil worldview. The result was an escalatory spiral in U.S.-Russia relations that ended in catastrophe for Ukraine.

Every U.S. ambassador to Moscow likes to compare himself to George Kennan — one of America’s most famous and far-sighted diplomats — and Sullivan is no exception. But whereas Kennan was a genuine scholar of Russia, Sullivan seems to have made misstep after misstep. The best that can be said is he does appear to have done his utmost to protect American citizens unjustly held in Russia. He also attempted to improve the U.S.-Russia relationship in certain ways, for example in seeking to renew the important START agreement on strategic nuclear weaponry.

Nevertheless, the many grave errors made during Sullivan’s tenure cannot be ignored. By far, the most important revelation from his memoir is that the Ukraine issue was hardly even discussed at an important Geneva summit in June 2021 between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. This is both bizarre and depressing, particularly as this was clearly the best chance Washington had to head off the escalation that eventuated in the Russia-Ukraine War.

The responsibility, of course, lies not only with Sullivan but other senior Biden administration officials, who neglected their duty by apparently not realizing the dangers that had been building in the Ukraine context. Of course, to make progress on that issue also would have required an inclination toward diplomatic compromise — one part of an ambassador’s job description that Sullivan seems to have missed.

Two more interesting facts emerge in this memoir regarding that key summit. First, Sullivan explains that the meetings were to consist of two sessions, planned for a total of about five hours. However, Biden proposed significantly truncating the meeting down to about three hours.

And whereas the Ukraine topic was hardly broached, Sullivan explains that the approaching U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was talked about quite extensively during the Geneva Summit. Apparently, the United States made clear that it was actively seeking an alternative base for its counterterrorism operations in the region. Putin then brought up the possibility of the U.S. using a Russian base in Tajikistan — a country bordering Afghanistan.

While this was clearly an attempt by the Russian leader to find common ground, Sullivan dismissed the overture as “utterly improbable” and failed to follow up.

It’s part of a dismaying pattern for Sullivan, who claims he is “not a Russophobe,” yet asserts with pride that he took this tough diplomatic post in order to “study an adversary up close.”

That may relate to another of Sullivan’s candid admissions: that he was almost fired by Trump in 2018 for authorizing sanctions against Russia. This move “incensed” Trump, who believed “the ‘deep state’ was acting without his approval to subvert his relationship with Putin and Russia.” Sadly, at nearly every turn, Sullivan, under both Trump and later Biden, opted to escalate tensions with Russia rather than seeking diplomatic solutions.

An obvious example of Sullivan’s failure to seek compromise was his evident support for Washington’s poorly thought-out dispatch of Victoria Nuland to Moscow in October 2021 as Biden’s top emissary to negotiate on the matter of Ukraine. Nuland is reviled and indeed sanctioned in Russia for her notorious role in the 2014 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine. This choice demonstrated an evident desire to rub salt in Russian wounds rather than achieve necessary compromise.

Somewhat predictably, Sullivan concludes his book with a call to arms, urging Americans not to shrink from their “responsibility” to support Ukraine and bear the burdens of the new cold war. We can only wonder how history might have turned out if Washington still had diplomats who actually engaged in diplomacy rather than insults and escalations.

This whole sad story is only underlined by the pathetic fact that Biden’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, hardly even spoke with his Russian counterpart after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It’s a nearly unparalleled feat of diplomatic malpractice.

RT, 2/14/25

The Kremlin has requested clarification from the US after Vice President J.D. Vance suggested American troops could be sent to Ukraine if Russian President Vladimir Putin does not agree to a peace deal ensuring Kiev’s long-term independence. Moscow says it has asked Washington for an explanation.

Vance made the comments in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, saying that Washington had “economic” as well as “military tools of leverage” to pressure Russia into a peace deal. He added that the possibility of sending American troops to Ukraine remained “on the table” if Moscow refused to engage in good-faith negotiations.

“These are new elements of the [US] position; we have not heard such statements before, they were not voiced,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday. “During upcoming contacts [with the US administration] we expect to receive further clarification,” he added.

Vance’s remarks contrast somewhat with earlier statements by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Speaking at a gathering of Kiev’s supporters in Brussels this week, he ruled out sending American forces to Ukraine following any security agreement. Hegseth stressed at the meeting that military support for Kiev should primarily come from European countries.

The US vice president also told the Journal that the results of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine could be surprising. “I think there is a deal that is going to come out of this that’s going to shock a lot of people,” he told the WSJ. He added that Washington would prioritize its interests in negotiations with Russia and that “things that are very important to Ukrainians” may need to be sacrificed.

A meeting between Vance and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is planned to take place at the Munich Security Conference. US President Donald Trump announced that “high-level” US representatives would meet their Russian counterparts at the event on Friday to discuss a resolution to the Ukraine conflict. Russian officials have not attended the Munich Conference since 2022, and Moscow has yet to confirm its participation this year or announce the composition of its delegation.

Putin and Trump spoke for nearly 90 minutes by phone on Wednesday, marking the first known direct interaction between the Russian and US heads of state since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. On Thursday, Trump said the phone call had paved the way for further direct contacts between American and Russian officials. The Kremlin described the conversation as “constructive,” with both leaders agreeing to meet soon in a third country.

Following his call with Putin, Trump spoke with Zelensky, after which the US president reaffirmed that Kiev is prepared to seek an end to the conflict with Russia.

By Geoffrey Roberts, Brave New Europe, 2/16/25

Geoffrey Roberts is Emeritus Professor of History at University College Cork and a member of the Royal Irish Academy

A Trump-Putin deal to make peace in Ukraine could be closer than some people think. There are plenty of pitfalls that could upend the dramatic about turn in American-Russian relations inaugurated by Trump’s telephone conversation with Putin, but as of now the two countries are tantalising close to agreement on the essential preconditions for an armistice that would halt hostilities in Ukraine and initiate the negotiation of a detailed peace treaty.

Putin’s terms for a ceasefire were set out last June: Kiev’s concession of Crimea and the four provinces – Donets, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhe – annexed by Russia in October 2022 – and acceptance of Ukraine’s neutralisation.

Trump’s administration has conceded that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO. Accepting that Ukraine will also de-align with NATO and become a permanently neutral state is not such a big step.

More complicated will be devising a credible international security guarantee for a neutral Ukraine. One possibility, long-advocated by Moscow, is a pan-European or pan-Eurasian collective security treaty, that would include Russia as well Ukraine. Under the terms of this treaty, Ukraine would be protected by the collective security commitments of a multitude of countries, There is also no reason why such a system cannot co-exist with the continuation of NATO (which would keep the Americans involved in Europe) and with the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation in the former Soviet space.

Putin has repeatedly identified the draft treaties initialled by Moscow and Kiev in Istanbul in spring 2022 as the starting point for detailed peace negotiations. Those drafts included provisions for Ukraine’s disarmament and limitations on the future strength of its armed forces.

Fearing the future rearmament of Ukraine, Putin will likely want a similar in-principle agreement before calling a ceasefire. At Istanbul the Russians proposed Ukrainian armed forces of no more than 75,000, but the 200,000 suggested by Ukrainian dissident politician, Oleksiy Arestovych, is more realistic. As Arestovych points out, the Ukrainians have long borders and Russia is not the only potential threat – Poland, Hungary and Romania all have historic territorial grievances against Ukraine that they might be tempted to activate if the country is too weak militarily. Arestovych has also proposed that Ukraine should undertake to guarantee Russia’s security by actively maintaining itself as a buffer zone against NATO.

In any event, Western hardliners who think Trump can wheedle Putin into a deal that will enable them to rearm Ukraine for a future fight with Russia, should dream on.

While the Americans have conceded Ukraine will lose substantial territories as a result of the war, the territorial issue remains tricky because of the complications of Russia’s domestic politics. Putin needs some kind of a victory to justify the blood and treasure he has expended. For Russia’s hardliners nothing less than the complete defeat of Ukraine and its western backers is an acceptable outcome of the war. But while Russia’s ‘pro-war’ party is very voluble, the majority of Russians will settle for a compromise peace that will protect them and safeguard their Russian-speaking compatriots who continue to live in Ukrainian-controlled territory.

Still, at minimum, Putin needs to complete the conquest of Donets and Lugansk. That means the capture of Pokrovsk and then an advance to Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and Konstantinovka – big targets that will take weeks if not months to invest. However, in relation to Kherson and Zaporozhe, Putin could conceivably concede the capitals of these regions to Ukraine. He could also pledge to keep his hands off Odessa, Dnipro and Kharkov. All of which would boost Ukraine’s future viability as an independent state.

More straightforward would be Ukraine’s withdrawal from Russia’s Kursk region in exchange for the return of Russian-occupied territory in the Sumy-Kharkov area.

But why should Putin make any concessions? Russia is winning the war handsomely. Why not wait until Ukraine collapses militarily and then impose peace terms of his choice?

While Trump’s overture offers the most immediate and certain path to an enduring peace with Ukraine, as important is that ending the war could catalyse a radical reconstruction of Russian-American relations – towards a global compact between Washington and Moscow that, together with China and other Great Power partners, would underpin a stable, multipolar system of sovereign states.

Putin’s overarching global ambition is to safeguard Russia’s security and civilisation for the ages. To achieve that goal he needs peace and an equitable relationship with the United States.

Among the highlights of Trump’s Truth Social summary of his conversation with Putin was his reference to the American-Russian alliance of World War II and the great sacrifices of the two countries’ peoples. Rumours are rife that Trump’s projected visit to Moscow will take place on Victory Day in May, when Russia will celebrate the 80^th anniversary of the end of the war. He would be in good company. China’s Xi Jinping will be there, as will the top leaders of many global South countries – states that will be a formidable lobby for peace in the coming months.

Trump’s remark about American-Russian cooperation during the Second World War was, in fact, a reprise of what he said at his joint press conference with Putin in Helsinki in July 2018.

Trump’s return to this theme coincides with the 80^th anniversary of the Yalta conference. At Yalta, the leaders of the allied coalition—the U.S., U.K, and Soviet Union—proclaimed a peacetime grand alliance, intending to use their collective power to guarantee peace and security for all countries.

That collaboration would be buttressed by multilateral institutions such as the newly created United Nations. The UN Security Council’s much-maligned veto system was designed to ensure great power consensus on critical security issues, while the Council of Foreign Ministers, established at the Potsdam conference in July 1945, was tasked to negotiate postwar Europe’s territorial-political order.

This new world order would be based on some shared values, including protections for freedom, democracy, and human rights. But none of the great powers would have the right to impose their politics and culture on the rest of the world. Free trade economics would spread but would coexist with other forms of economic organisation. Above all, this new international order would be based on one fundamental universal moral value: no more war.

Alas, this idealistic great power compact collapsed when the Grand Alliance itself disintegrated shortly after the war. A far worse alternative – the Cold War – ensued, ushering in an era of dangerous conflict and confrontation that spawned numerous wars, military interventions, brutal dictators, coups, and catastrophes, as well as the proliferation of nuclear arsenals that continue to threaten the very existence of humanity.

Any ambition that Trump harboured for a renewal of the Grand Alliance was scuppered by the Russiagate controversy. But if Trump’s recent remarks signal a revival of that project, he will find a willing partner in Putin. A yearning for a return to the Grand Alliance has been a persistent theme of Russian foreign policy. After 9/11, Putin offered such an alliance to George W. Bush, but was spurned in favor of American unilateralism in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under Barack Obama, the so-called reset in U.S.-Russian relations promised a return to collaboration, but such hopes were dashed by Western military intervention in Libya in 2011 and by Russia’s unilateral response to the Ukrainian civil war in 2014.

A new grand alliance may seem like a utopian dream. But history shows that cooperation between the world’s two great nuclear powers is both possible and necessary. President Franklin Roosevelt collaborated with Stalin to defeat Hitler. Eisenhower worked to defuse the tensions of the Cold War after Stalin’s death in 1953. Brezhnev and Nixon created the détente of the 1970s. Ronald Reagan abandoned the hardline anti-Soviet policies of his first presidential term and embraced Gorbachev’s glasnost revolution in the U.S.S.R.

Unencumbered by Russiagate, surrounded by loyal and able courtiers, and armed with a strong mandate to change the course of US foreign policy, Trump is much more able to pursue radical, global ambitions than he was in 2018.

But first there has to be peace in Ukraine. Kiev and its European allies have to be persuaded or pressurised by Trump to accept the terms of the compromise peace that he negotiates with Putin. For the sake of peace and the future of Russian-American relations, Putin will have to make concessions and take his own risks.

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By Paul Robinson, Canadian Dimension, 2/13/25

In December 1990, Serbian rebels declared independence in the Croatian region of Krajina. A year and a half of war followed, ending in a ceasefire in May 1992 that left Krajina under Serbian control. The Croats, however, refused to recognize the loss of the territory, rearmed, and in August 1995 attacked Krajina and rapidly reconquered it.

In a similar vein, in May 1994, a ceasefire brought an end to the First Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan, leaving the contested province of Nagorno-Karabakh and a large amount of surrounding Azeri territory under Armenian control. But the ceasefire did not resolve any of the underlying issues that caused the war. While Armenia enjoyed the spoils of its victory, Azerbaijan rebuilt its army and in September 2020 launched the Second Karabakh War, the result of which was a decisive Azeri victory and the restoration of Azeri control of its lost territories.

And in a more recent example, after the Syrian National Army had driven anti-Assad rebels into a small corner of Syria around the town of Idlib, a ceasefire was agreed that left the Idlib area under rebel control. In the years that followed, the rebels built up their forces with Turkish help while the Assad government sat back and did relatively little. This year the rebels struck, speedily crushed the Syrian National Army and drove Bashar al-Assad from power.

These examples demonstrate that ceasefires that fail to settle the political differences underlying a war often prove to be temporary. Often the side that came out worse in the original war takes the opportunity to revive its military and then, when the time is right, renews the war in an effort to retake what it has lost.

Knowledge of this possibility can persuade political leaders not to make peace even when it would make sense otherwise to do so. In studies of war termination, this is known as the “credible commitment problem”—warring parties will not make peace as they do not believe that the commitments others make in peace negotiations are credible. Overcoming this problem is one of the most important tasks of would-be peacemakers.

As the war in Ukraine reaches the end of its third year, the credible commitment problem provides a useful lens through which to determine the prospects of US President Donald Trump’s efforts to bring the conflict to an end. These efforts have now moved firmly beyond talk into the realm of action. This Wednesday Trump announced that he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone and that the two had agreed to commence peace negotiations “immediately.”

The timing is propitious as the military situation provides incentives to both sides to cease fighting. This is particularly true of Ukraine whose army steadily gave ground during 2024 and whose efforts to mobilize its population have fallen flat. Despite draconian conscription methods, recruitment to the army is insufficient to replace losses and desertion is increasingly common. A continuation of the war almost certainly means further losses of land, people, and infrastructure with no gains in return. Ukraine’s best option at this point is to cut its losses and make peace.

This does not mean, however, that Russia is close to what it might consider victory. The pace of its advance is painfully slow and there are currently no indications that the Russian army is capable of a major breakthrough. Given its superior resources, the attritional process favours Russia and may lead eventually to Ukraine’s “debellation.” But we do not as yet appear to be anywhere close to that. At least for the coming year, Russia faces the prospect of costly war for relatively few gains. It too would benefit from peace.

In theory, therefore, this is a good time for Trump to step forward with his peace plan. Press reports suggest that the first step would be a ceasefire, followed by a Ukrainian withdrawal from the land it holds in Russia’s Kursk province, and the introduction of a European peacekeeping force. Ukraine would be prohibited from joining NATO and would recognize Russian sovereignty over captured territories, but would continue to receive military support from the Western states and would be promised an accelerated process towards membership of the European Union.

Further clues about American thinking came on Wednesday with a speech in Brussels by the new US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. In this Hegseth declared that “we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.” Hegseth added that “the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” and that “any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission. … There will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine.”

Importantly, Hegseth showed himself to be aware of the credible commitment problem, noting that “A durable peace for Ukraine must include robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again.” The question then arises of whether his government’s plan can convince the two warring parties that this is indeed the case.

This is by no means certain due to the fact that neither side trusts the other to stand by its commitments. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for instance, has repeatedly expressed his fears that Russia will exploit any pause in the fighting to its own advantage, declaring that “A pause on the Ukrainian battlefield will not mean a pause in the war. A pause would play into [Russia’s] hands. It might crush us afterward.”

This is why the issue of security guarantees has acquired such salience. Zelensky is unlikely to make peace if he believes that the war will later resume in circumstances that are even less favourable than today. But he could perhaps be persuaded if outside powers provide guarantees that the Russians will be forced to obey the peace treaty’s terms. For Zelensky, the most solid guarantee is NATO membership. Hegseth’s rejection of this is therefore a serious blow to the Ukrainians’ ability to trust in the permanence of any ceasefire. It is not clear whether the possibility of some non-NATO peacekeeping force will be a sufficient guarantee to overcome this problem. The US government needs to be ready to do some serious diplomatic arm twisting to get Kyiv to acquiesce.

As for the Russians, their experiences with the Ukrainians have also left them with reasons to doubt whether any peace will be permanent. In August 2014, the Ukrainian army suffered a serious defeat at the battle of Ilovaisk in Donetsk province. Had Russian-backed rebel forces continued their advance, it is possible that Ukraine would not have been able to offer serious resistance. Instead, the Russians agreed to a ceasefire under the terms of an agreement signed in Minsk.

The ceasefire, however, failed to hold. Fighting continued, eventually resulting in another Ukrainian defeat in early 2015. Again, Russian president Vladimir Putin refused to exploit his advantage and agreed to another ceasefire, this time according to the terms of the Minsk II agreement. But this ceasefire also failed to hold. Meanwhile, the Russians accused the Ukrainians of not fulfilling the political terms of the Minsk agreement, above all granting autonomy to the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. At the same time, the Ukrainians rebuilt their broken army, aided by Western weapons and trainers. The final conclusion drawn by the Russians was that the ceasefire was a mistake and that the Ukrainians could not be trusted to abide by another.

Due to this, there is an extreme reluctance on the Russian side to agree to peace proposals that do not ensure that Ukraine abides by its commitments. Trump’s peace plan does address this problem to some degree, first by ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine and second by requiring that Ukraine formally recognize Russian sovereignty over its captured territories. This last point is particularly important, as if the war ends in such a way as to leave a territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine, the possibility that it will eventually resume is much greater. The prospect of Western weapons continuing to flow into Ukraine and of European troops being deployed there may well disconcert Moscow and discourage it from accepting what is on offer, but the offer is still one that gives it considerable gains. If it is wise, it should not dismiss the offer out of hand.

One of the difficulties here is that anything that reassures Ukraine that the Russians will not break the terms of any peace treaty (for example, promises of future weapons supplies) almost certainly has the opposite effect on the Russians, increasing their fears that Ukraine might eventually renew the war. The Trump peace plan goes some way towards squaring this particular circle by providing some guarantees to both sides, albeit far fewer than both would like. As such it is a reasonable compromise and a good starting point for further talks. There will be some hard diplomatic work ahead, but at least the long process of negotiation is finally about to start.

Paul Robinson is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. He is the author of numerous works on Russian and Soviet history, including Russian Conservatism, published by Northern Illinois University Press in 2019.