Why Ukraine Shouldn't Negotiate with Putin
Those promising a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine operate under the mistaken assumption that there exists some combination of territorial and policy compromises that would satisfy all sides and bring about a stable long-term peace. In fact, the conflict is more intractable than ever: Bargaining models of war termination predict that peace negotiations are likely to fail. Win, lose, or draw, the war will be settled on the battlefield, not at the negotiating table. The stakes couldn't be higher: Whether the West continues its support for Ukraine's fight or forces Kyiv to make a deal with the devil, the consequences for international security and global democracy will reverberate for years to come.
"All wars end in negotiation." This misleading cliché has regularly been heard since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. If time is not on Ukraine's side and a diplomatic settlement is the only way to end the war, so the argument goes, then it is better to face the facts and get down to the business of negotiating sooner rather than later. Since these calls often come from Western pundits, the implication is that it is time for the West to put pressure on Kyiv to come to the bargaining table and make concessions for peace. Anything less only prolongs a costly and bloody war, needlessly delaying the inevitable Ukrainian defeat.
Such views are misguided, misinformed, and downright dangerous: They reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of what Russia and Ukraine are fighting over, while reinforcing Vladimir Putin's belief that his gamble will pay off soon. If the war were truly about Ukrainian territory or NATO membership, perhaps the most skilled of diplomats could thread the needle and find a formula for peace. But the underlying reasons why Russia launched its invasion—and why Ukraine has no choice but to fight despite the staggering costs—make talk of a negotiated end to the war wishful thinking.
"Bargaining" theories of how wars start and end reveal just how resistant to political settlement is the Russo-Ukraine War today. They also point to the only way to end the war consistent with a just and durable peace that guarantees Ukrainian sovereignty and preserves international order. This war can only end on the fighting front, not the bargaining table. Russia's unambiguous military defeat by Ukraine and its allies is essential. The West must accept this reality and finally commit to supporting a Ukrainian victory before it is too late.
While some theories of international relations view the onset, [End Page 21] conduct, and termination of war as distinct phenomena, bargaining models of war see combat itself as part of the negotiation process.1 Through the act of fighting, information is revealed and the warring sides converge on a negotiated settlement that both prefer to continued fighting. Bargaining models of war recognize that war is costly, a fact that should facilitate a settlement that is preferable to war and far less costly than continued fighting. The value of the object in view and the perceived likelihood of victory are what shape a leader's bargaining range.
The bargaining model, however, also identifies three things that can prevent the finding of a mutually preferable negotiated settlement: information problems, issue indivisibility, and commitment problems. The decision to go to war is a game of asymmetric information. Putin launched his February 2022 invasion of Ukraine with information about the capabilities and resolve of his own forces—to say nothing of the will and abilities of the Ukrainian people—that was flawed and incomplete. The problems afflicting his private information were made public by the act of war, but not before this flawed information had made him unwilling to negotiate beforehand. He had believed he was going to win easily.
Even after hostilities commence, information asymmetries and misinformation continue to create uncertainty for settlement.2 Based on their always-changing assessments of capabilities and resolve, leaders will prefer to carry on fighting as long as they think they have a chance of winning (whatever they mean by "winning"). Only when both sides implicitly agree about who will win future rounds of combat do they turn to the negotiating table as the losing side foresees its defeat and seeks terms. Alternatively, if both sides are exhausted and agree that a permanent stalemate has set in, they may eventually be willing to negotiate a settlement.
The second condition hindering settlement is issue indivisibility. Some questions are "all or nothing." They cannot be bargained. While there are in theory very few things that are truly indivisible, many things over which states fight—including identity, ideas, and sovereignty—are extraordinarily difficult to divide between winner and loser. Negotiating over these binary war aims may be fundamentally incompatible with the continued existence of one or both combatant nations. Moreover, even when some war aims (land and resources, for instance) are conceivably divisible, if indivisible issues are involved then links between them and divisible issues may make finding a suitable division impossible.
Finally, and perhaps most perniciously, commitment problems prevent even the best and most thoughtful settlement from being realized. Even when a negotiated settlement is acceptable to both sides, there are often few ways to credibly demonstrate that each side will uphold their [End Page 22] bargain in the future. Adversaries with a long history of conflict may not trust each other's promises to lay down arms permanently. Thus, mistrust and the fear of unilateral disarmament bar a settlement even though both sides might be better off ending the war. And even if both sides sign a peace agreement today in good faith, there is no guarantee that future changes in the balance of power will not tempt one side or the other to return to coercion. This nagging doubt will always linger, making bitter enemies especially unlikely to trust each other's commitment to long-term peace.
Each of these three barriers to finding a negotiated settlement bodes poorly for the prospects of a negotiated settlement in the case of Russia and Ukraine. Our argument presented below suggests that the war in Ukraine is nowhere near ripe for a negotiated peace agreement or even short-term ceasefire. Forcing a settlement under these conditions is likely to backfire, with far-reaching consequences for international security.
War is costly and tragic, so it is no wonder there has been talk of a negotiated settlement since before the full Russian assault began on 24 February 2022. In December 2021, as Russia built up its invasion force on Ukraine's borders, Moscow presented draft "treaties" to the United States and NATO, saying that the papers would maintain peace. But each treaty was little more than a Kremlin ultimatum against Ukraine and its Western partners. Among Putin's demands were a permanent end to NATO's eastward expansion and a commitment that the United States would never establish military bases or deploy forces in any state that had once belonged to the Soviet Union (including the three Baltic states, which had by democratic means become NATO members). There was also a blanket demand that the United States and its allies would not take actions that affect Russia's security.3 In Putin's view, the price of peace was a permanent Russian veto on NATO enlargement and the solidification of an uncontested Russian sphere of influence across the post-Soviet space.
By that point, Putin had already crossed the Rubicon.4 He knew that Ukraine and the West would never agree to his ultimatum; he was going to war. His offer to negotiate was merely a ploy to buy time for more invasion preparations. Despite such displays of bad faith, those who call for a Ukraine peace settlement typically treat Putin as if he is a good-faith actor. They call for promising that Ukraine will never join NATO (leaving it part of the Kremlin's "legitimate" sphere of influence), or for letting Russia keep [End Page 23] Ukrainian territory it seized and annexed beyond the pre-2022 line of control, including the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
The idea that a compromise can be struck with Putin is a dangerous fantasy. Neither NATO enlargement nor Ukrainian territory are what Russia's war has ever really been about.5 There is no division of Ukrainian territory or set of security policies that can address the underlying causes of the war and foster a sustainable peace. In fact, ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in the first few months of the war reportedly were approaching an agreement by which Ukraine would give up its aspirations to join NATO while Russia would withdraw to the positions that it had held as of 24 February 2022.6 Yet in July 2022, Moscow dropped the talks and signaled an expansion of its war aims. And if having a NATO member on its border is such an existential threat to Russia, why has Putin stripped the Finnish border of 80 percent of its troops and equipment since Finland formally joined the North Atlantic alliance in April 2023?
Regarding territory, the annexations that Moscow has declared since February 2022 were never a primary war aim—they are a consolation prize that Putin claimed after his bid to decapitate President Volodymyr Zelensky's government failed early in the invasion. If the Kremlin could have set up a puppet regime in Kyiv without bearing the immense costs of annexation and direct rule, it would have.
The Problem of Ukrainian Democracy
It is not NATO membership or territory but Ukrainian democracy—and its fundamental incompatibility with Russian autocracy—that is at the heart of Putin's decision to go to war.7 Putin's multifaceted hybrid war against Ukraine did not start in 2022, nor even in 2014 with the invasion and annexation of Crimea. Rather, Russia has been waging a covert war against Ukrainian democracy and sovereignty since the Kremlin sought to install a loyal puppet in Kyiv by rigging the 2004 Ukrainian presidential elections.
The popular revolt by the Ukrainian people to defend their sovereign rights from Russian manipulation was just one of several "color revolutions" that swept across Eastern Europe in the early 2000s, starting with Serbia in 2000 and followed by Georgia in 2003. Putin insisted that Ukraine's Orange Revolution of late 2004 and early 2005 was a U.S.-led coup. Subsequent popular attempts at democratic breakthroughs such as the Arab Spring of 2010–11, the Bolotnaya protests in Russia in 2011–12, and the EuroMaidan Revolution (also called the "Revolution of Dignity") in Ukraine in 2014 have only hardened his stance. These democratic openings, not NATO expansion, are the true source of Putin's hostility to Ukraine and the democratic West. [End Page 24]
In Putin's mind, Ukrainian democracy poses an existential threat to his power and the survival of his regime in Russia. A prosperous, free Ukraine would set a powerful example for Russia's own citizens that democracy can succeed in an eastern Slavic country. Moreover, the Ukrainian people have time and again chosen the West over Russia. A Ukraine fully integrated into European economic and security structures is incompatible with Putin's "virtual empire" that seeks to control the post-Soviet space by pulling strings held tightly in his hands. Only by seizing for himself veto power over Ukraine's domestic and foreign policies can Putin achieve the uncontested and privileged sphere of influence that he has long sought.
Putin tried and failed to bring Ukrainian democracy to heel in 2004 and 2005, in 2014, and again with the 2015 Minsk II agreement that would have given Russia the ability to hack Ukrainian sovereignty through the back door. Had this agreement been implemented according to Russia's demands, it would have forced Ukraine to amend its constitution to become permanently neutral, granted unprecedented autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk, allowed those regions to form independent foreign relations with other countries (i.e. Russia), and given these Russian proxies veto power over major national decisions in Ukraine.8 Thwarted for nearly twenty years, by late 2021 Putin concluded that the only way to solve his problem in Kyiv once and for all was to invade, decapitate the democratically elected Zelensky government, and overthrow Ukraine's democratic regime with force.
The implications for a bargain that could end the war in Ukraine diplomatically now come into sharp relief: No degree of Ukrainian sovereignty is tolerable for Putin. Nor, in his mind, is any sliver of Ukrainian democracy something he can safely allow. For two decades, Ukrainians have been rejecting Russian hegemony. If they enjoy even a modicum of autonomy, Putin will never trust them to stay within whatever limits he sets. It is all or nothing, and he seeks to control it all—just as he does in Russia.
Likewise, no democratically elected Ukrainian leader can hand over to Moscow part of the country's sovereignty or part of its freedom to choose its own destiny, especially not after years of warfare that have taken the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. Negotiating away any degree of sovereignty would mean that they had died in vain. Ukrainians will not countenance that. And so, taking stock of Putin's unwillingness to accept anything less than full hegemony over Ukraine and the Ukrainian people's unwillingness to [End Page 25] put their fates into the hands of a foreign dictator who has slaughtered countless innocents, we can see just how intractable the heart of the conflict really is.
The Problem of Ukrainian Nationhood
As the Russian blitzkrieg was blunted at Hostomel Airport and stalled on the road to Kyiv within the first weeks of the war, forcing lumbering Russian columns into a humiliating and disorderly retreat, it became clear that Moscow's latest attempt to extinguish a self-governing, democratic Ukraine had flopped. Had Putin not been taken in by his own propaganda charging that Ukrainians are a fake nation not meaningfully distinct from Russians, he might not have underestimated the fierce resistance that Ukrainians in and out of uniform would put up as they fought and died defending their motherland. But the inconvenient fact that a democratically elected leader still stood in Kyiv, guarded by loyal Ukrainians, forced Putin to discard the myth that Russians and Ukrainians "are one people."9
When it became clear that Ukrainians would not yield to Putin's denial of their nationhood, Russian war aims escalated from destruction of Ukrainian democracy to the physical liquidation of the Ukrainian people. Leading figures in Putin's inner circle regularly call Ukrainians (once supposed to be in no way different from Russians) dehumanizing names such as "cockroaches," "lice," "rabid mongrels … choking on their toxic saliva," a "hated Nazi tumor," "nonhumans," "evil spirits," and "bloody possessed satanists" in need of extermination. An ex-leader of the Russian-backed Donetsk People's Republic told Ukrainians via Russian state television: "We will kill as many of you as we have to. We will kill one million, or five million; we can exterminate all of you until you understand that you're possessed and you have to be cured." In another appearance he declared, "the goal of the special military operation is the liquidation of Ukraine's nationhood. The existence of the Ukrainian nation in any form will always be adversarial towards Russia and the Russian people."10
Russia's eliminationist rhetoric has been backed up by actions that meet the definition of genocide found in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention: "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group." The April 2022 discoveries in Bucha, Hostomel, Irpin, and Mariupol of mass graves of Ukrainian civilians who had been bound, tortured, and executed was a sign that Russia's anger at early failures was being redirected against noncombatants singled out for their nationality.
Further, more than twenty-thousand Ukrainian children have been forcibly abducted and sent to orphanages, foster homes, or adoptive families in Russia. There they are subjected to harsh indoctrination and [End Page 26] reeducation programs that seek to erase their Ukrainian identity. For these crimes, the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia's commissioner for children's rights and engineer of the abduction and reeducation program. Lest anyone doubt the sincerity of Putin's campaign to erase future generations of Ukrainians, one only need to look at the deadly bombings of Ukrainian maternity and children's hospitals throughout the war, far from the front lines and any military targets.
Whatever Moscow's original aims, the conflict is now an ethnonational struggle, a war of peoples. As the aggressor and perpetrator of genocidal acts, Russia bears full responsibility. It has essentialized the war around identity. This puts a negotiated settlement almost beyond reach since a people's right to exist is the ultimate indivisible issue. Even if Kyiv were willing to cede the occupied territories to Moscow's control under a negotiated settlement, this would mean consigning the Ukrainians who would remain under occupation to whatever program of ethnic cleansing Russia might wish—an impossible option for any democratically elected government in Ukraine. Simply put, Ukraine has no choice but to keep fighting for future generations of Ukrainians and their right to live in peace.
It would not be easy for Russia to walk away from the ethnic war it has engineered, either. Putin understands a truth known to generations of statesmen before him: Nationalism is a powerful motivator in war and the lynchpin of the mass army in modern warfare.11 As economic conditions worsen in Russia and more Russian soldiers come home maimed and disabled (if they return at all), Putin becomes ever more dependent on a radically nationalistic ideology to fill the ranks, justify his war, and legitimize his rule. While dictators are often thought to have greater flexibility to change course and even back down, training Russian nationalists in visceral hatred of Ukrainians creates constraints for Putin that he cannot easily ignore. He has painted himself into a corner with a nationalist brush soaked in Ukrainian blood.
No wonder that civil wars in ethnically polarized societies have been found to last longer than less polarized societies: Wars over identity, once unleashed, are nearly impossible to return to Pandora's box.12 Each side has spilled too much blood in the name of identity to easily walk back from the brink, let alone negotiate a just and durable peace between societies infused with nationalist animus for the other. No peace [End Page 27] treaty—not least one forced on Ukraine under international pressure—can induce compromise when a people's existence hangs in the balance.
The Problem of Russian Autocracy
In addition to Putin's visceral hatred of a democratic Ukrainian nation, a driver of the war and roadblock to diplomacy is the form of authoritarianism that Putin has constructed to rule Russia. Since he came to power a quarter-century ago, and especially since he returned to the presidency in 2012, his regime has become a classic personalist dictatorship. The powers concentrated in his hands are overwhelming. Any decision of any political importance is his alone to make. His power and influence flow not through formal institutions but through personal ties to the individuals whom he has chosen to lead key political, economic, and military organizations.13 Their power and wealth depend on retaining his goodwill in a kleptocratic tribute system where all property is conditional on staying in Putin's good graces. That means following not a party line, but Putin's dictates.
Putin alone decided to start the war, and any decision to end it will be his alone as well. Therein lies the problem. He does not have advisors who bring him competing options to weigh. There is no exchange of ideas at the top, and there are no quasi-independent power centers (in the ruling party, say, or the military) that can press him one way or another. Therefore, any settlement short of Ukraine's unconditional surrender will require Russian concessions that only Putin can—but will never—make. After twenty years of trying to control Ukraine by any means necessary, it is beyond imagination that he will back down and sign an agreement that leaves even a rump Ukraine in peace.
The highly centralized nature of Putin's personalist autocracy puts the dictator's own beliefs at the hub of every policy. Putin sees settling the Ukraine problem once and for all as his legacy-defining project and a historic achievement that will put him alongside Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and even Joseph Stalin in the pantheon of Russia's great state builders. In Putin's own mind (the only one that matters), Ukraine poses an indivisible question to which total victory is the only answer.
Putin's personal dictatorship raises another barrier to a bargained settlement: the credible-commitment problem. Even if a settlement were to be reached and signed, each side would doubt the other's long-run adherence. The Ukrainians' mistrust would be more than justified. Putin has a long history of breaking or undermining international agreements, starting with the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, a binding treaty (signed by his predecessor President Boris Yeltsin) under which Russia commits itself to "respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine" and to "refrain from the threat or use of force against [End Page 28] the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine."14 A 2004 border treaty with Ukraine bears Putin's personal signature, but that too has been treated as a mere scrap of paper with no meaning.15
This twenty-year history of treaty breaking explains why Ukraine's leadership sees little point in negotiating. The West must also face up to this hard truth and accept that pressuring Kyiv to settle with Moscow would amount to only a temporary and superficial solution that would give Russia time to recover and finish the job when the balance of forces permits.
For his part, Putin would also doubt the credibility of any commitment to peace by Ukraine and its Western partners. His hatred and mistrust of democracy are enduring. Given the extreme measures he has taken to eviscerate Ukrainian democracy, it strains credulity to think that he would ever trust the democratic process to produce what he would deem acceptable policies in Kyiv. After all, voters change their minds and freely change their leaders at regular intervals. In Putin's thinking, there's no guarantee that an agreement signed today would be followed by the next Ukrainian president unless he handpicks that person to rule Ukraine as Putin rules Russia.
Guarantees offered by Ukraine's Western allies would mean nothing to Putin either. Ever since the color revolutions, he has believed (without grounds) that the West—and the United States in particular—actively seeks regime change in Moscow. Nothing will convince him otherwise. He would reject the sincerity of any Western-backed peace agreement before the ink was dry. Pretexts would be fabricated and Ukrainian violations alleged so that the flames of war could be rekindled. This happened with the Minsk accords of 2014–15, meant to stabilize the Russian-backed conflict in the Donbas region at Ukraine's eastern end.
Might third-party monitors and peacekeepers fill the commitment gap? The failed OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine reminds us of the limits of such missions when they are not backed by powerful and impartial peacekeeping forces. But it is difficult to imagine any country or coalition with both the credibility to be accepted as legitimate by all parties and the capacity to keep the peace along a thousand-kilometer front bristling with Russian forces on one side and Ukrainians on the other. Mistrust has had years to pile so high that negotiations cannot surmount it.
The Problem of Power and Perception
Bargaining models of war tell us that, along with issue indivisibility and the unattainability of credible commitments, a third factor can block a diplomatic settlement: disagreement over the likely outcome of future fighting. The objective information that leaders have, and their subjective perceptions of it, shape this disagreement. As 2025 begins, Russia and Ukraine each believes, based on its objective and subjective expectations [End Page 29] about the future, that it still has a reasonable chance of victory. Unless and until that assessment changes, each will continue to fight.
Nearly three years in, Putin gives every indication that he is confident he can outlast Ukraine and the West in both resolve and the ability to supply the fighting. While Russia's recent offensives in the Donbas and around Kharkiv have made limited gains and come at extraordinary costs, they are costs that he is willing to pay. Not since the 2022 battlefield upsets around Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson has Russia experienced the shock of a rout that might cause Putin to doubt the superiority and staying power of Russia's military. And even those embarrassments failed to budge him. He fumed and fired generals but never came close to shutting down the war or looking for an "off ramp." Putin sees no need to make concessions or even negotiate. Why should he? He thinks he is winning and will prevail in Ukraine.
Why is Putin so confident? Objectively, Russia has learned from early battlefield mistakes, put its economy on a war footing, adapted to sanctions, and received substantial direct and indirect military support from China, Iran, North Korea, and others. Buoyed by these material developments and satisfied with the resolve of his forces, he understands correctly that Russia can continue to fight for a very, very long time. The war may prove ruinous, but as Adam Smith observed, "there is a great deal of ruin in a nation," and Russia is a sizeable nation.
Ukraine will never match Russia's supply of future soldiers. Worldometer currently reckons the Ukrainian population at about 38 million, while Russia's is around 145 million. Kyiv must also spend a much larger share of its GDP on the fighting than Moscow has to. Support from international partners has enabled Ukraine to keep going, but that backing has been inconsistent and insufficient enough to fuel Putin's perception that Western resolve is weak. This perception sustains his will to fight.
Putin's personalist autocracy exacerbates the problem. He lives in a self-inflated information bubble, surrounded by "yes men" who fear even to bring him disagreeable information, let alone try to challenge his thinking. They have every reason to tell the dictator what he wants to hear. The Russian intelligence community's overly rosy assessment of chances for a lightning victory in February 2022 was among the reasons for Putin's miscalculation in giving the invasion order.16 Russia has no [End Page 30] opposition party, independent media, or civil society that can challenge Putin publicly and pierce the bubble. In these circumstances, he is likely to keep overestimating his chances of eventual total victory, future tactical losses notwithstanding.
The only thing that could dent Putin's ironclad faith in victory would be the sudden and dramatic collapse of a major front. Short of that, no one should expect him to make concessions at the negotiating table. And even a broad battlefront debacle might not be enough: He endured embarrassing setbacks at Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson in 2022 but pressed on, unshaken in his conviction that unconditional Ukrainian capitulation can be forced if Russia applies enough combat power long enough. In 2024, the Russians suffered a serious surprise when Ukrainian forces seized a portion of Russian territory near Kursk and blew up bridges to trap Russian formations with rivers at their backs, but Putin sent reinforcements—including North Korean troops—and adapted.
What Is to Be Done?
Expectations about future fighting are the only piece of the model that can be influenced from the outside today—they are the key to bringing the war to a conclusion. There are currently four broad scenarios envisioning a political-diplomatic settlement of the war in Ukraine. They are:
1). A Western withdrawal. If the West were to remove its military and economic support, Ukraine would exhaust its arms and ammunition in months and have to bow to inevitable defeat and harsh Kremlin terms. Kyiv would find itself forced to sign away the country's past, present, and future. Such a "treaty" would be a vicious form of diplomacy, but diplomacy all the same. This scenario is Putin's fondest hope. It would be a disaster for U.S. interests, European security, and international stability. The spectacle of a democracy crushed under a dictator's iron heel would be a disaster for the cause of democratic self-government under law. To believe otherwise would be the height of folly.
2). A prolonged war of attrition that Ukraine loses. This is roughly the current situation. Ukraine is getting just enough Western support to hold on, but in the longer run Russia's "meat grinder" tactics at the front and relentless aerial and rocket attacks on cities and infrastructure will prove too much. Stalemate will gradually devolve into defeat. The West has been keeping Ukraine in the fight since early 2022 but has not decisively invested in Ukrainian victory. If the West does not act quickly, the future is dire. Ukraine is closer to exhaustion than Russia is, owing to the one thing that the West would probably never send: manpower. Short of one-sided and transformative technological advances, Kyiv fares worse under a stalemate than Moscow. Putin knows this and [End Page 31] is willing to slowly bleed Ukraine dry, even as his armies struggle to make gains. He will not agree to compromises while he waits, confident of eventual Russian victory. From the point of view of all the stakes listed under the first scenario, this second scenario is just a slow-motion version of that one. Sooner or later, bargaining models suggest that an exhausted Ukraine will resign itself to defeat and accept whatever terms are forced on it by Putin.
3). The West sends enough help that Ukraine can defend itself while making Russia's long-run costs unbearable. In this scenario, the West boosts its aid in both quality and quantity until Ukraine can blunt Russia's advances and air attacks while making Russia pay costs for going on the offensive that Moscow cannot bear over the long term. More specifically, this means Ukraine receiving long-range Western strike weapons that it can use against military and energy-infrastructure targets deep inside Russia, plus air-defense systems adequate to deal with Russian guided bombs and rockets. On the latter score, a NATO-led and -operated missile-defense mission—based in NATO territory outside Ukraine (such as Romania or Poland) but covering at least the western part of the country—would also facilitate Ukraine's economic rebuilding, further enhancing the effectiveness of the West's critical economic aid. A better- and more fully armed Ukraine with better air defenses could offset Moscow's manpower and materiel advantages. Western-backed war-risk insurance would help attract foreign investment and make an economically stronger Ukraine a tougher nut for Putin to crack.
Eventually, strengthened Ukrainian defenses combined with the compounding costs of offensive operations for both sides could lead to a battlefield stalemate. Fighting might freeze with only occasional flare-ups such as peppered the Donbas from 2014 to 2022. Russia would keep trying air attacks, so air defense would remain an active sector for Ukraine. Even if the shooting simmers down, Putin's maximalism suggests that he would carry on his hybrid war against Ukraine indefinitely.
The unconquered four-fifths of Ukraine, meanwhile, would continue its development and integration into European political, economic, and security structures. An actual peace treaty is not in the cards. Putin will never sign one willingly. This is the Korean solution: A half-century from now, Ukraine might be living with a Russian border that looks a lot like the Korean Demilitarized Zone does today (except far longer): It would be heavily fortified and stable, with bitter enemies glaring at each other across its razor wire, tank traps, and trenches.
4). The West does whatever it takes to win. The only bargaining-model scenario that can result in a just peace for Ukraine and durable security for Europe, the United States, and the world is one in which the West finally chooses to do what is needed to defeat Russia militarily. This [End Page 32] would be a long and difficult fight. Yet a series of decisive battlefield victories and strategic breakthroughs for Kyiv could make Putin realize future combat favors Ukraine, and that he needs to "declare victory" and back out of a gathering disaster. He might, of course, never come to this realization and accept a negotiated peace. In that case, sufficiently armed Ukrainian forces would have to push forward until the Russian army retreats beyond Ukraine's internationally recognized borders.
Many have wondered whether imminent expulsion from Ukraine could lead Putin to use battlefield nuclear weapons to stave off defeat. While we should always take the risk of nuclear war seriously, we should not allow what remains a low-probability scenario to paralyze decisive action in support of Ukraine. It is widely acknowledged that the leaders of China and India have made it clear to Putin that using nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be unacceptable. With Russia's economic survival now dependent on energy sales to these countries, Putin would pay a steep cost for ignoring this warning—to say nothing of the drastically intensified international isolation that would result from Moscow's violation of the longstanding nuclear taboo. Few of the developing countries that Putin is courting for membership for his anti-Western vision of BRICS want to see a new era of nuclear proliferation unleashed. Plus, there is one thing Putin values above all else: surviving in power. As long as this is not directly threatened by Ukraine or its allies, he remains unlikely to turn to nuclear weapons as a last resort.
A Ukrainian military victory can still happen—if the West chooses it. But that choice requires bold action now if there is to be any chance of success in the critical months ahead. Securing long-term peace, prosperity, and democracy in Europe will require equally bold action if we hope to restore a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace. Only by making Ukraine a full member of NATO and the EU will we ensure that Russia can never make war against Ukraine again. Regardless of where the battle stands today, we must lose no time in inviting Ukraine to join both pillars of Euro-Atlantic security and begin accession talks for each without further delay. Fully integrating Ukraine into Western political, economic, and military structures would do more than anything else to alter Putin's expectations about the likely outcome of future fighting if he realizes that his adversaries have made a long-term and irrevocable commitment to Ukraine's defense. It is the only way to bring the war to a just and durable peace.
A Fatally Fateful Choice
The idea that the war in Ukraine could be settled by a gifted dealmaker in just twenty-four hours is an alluring one for a world weary of war. But it is pure fantasy based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the true causes of Russia's invasion and overlooks nearly insurmountable [End Page 33] obstacles to a negotiated peace. Putin's motivation in going to war was not to prevent Ukraine's membership in NATO or grab real estate—it was to erase a sovereign democratic Ukraine from the map, replacing it with a subservient satellite clasped tightly in Putin's iron fist.
Moscow's maximalist war aims have not moderated since the February 2022 invasion. On the contrary, they have only intensified as regime change has shifted to a genocidal quest to destroy not just the Ukrainian state but the people of its nation as well. There is no magic formula by which these indivisible issues at the heart of the conflict can be apportioned. There is no way to split the existence of Ukraine, no matter how artful the dealmaker imagines himself to be. Nor is there any formula dividing Ukraine's territory or security policies that would settle the underlying issues and produce anything more than a temporary pause before Russia's armies would return with a vengeance to finish the job.
On 10 July 2024, Putin's henchman Dmitry Medvedev said as much, declaring online via Telegram that even if Ukraine were to accept Russia's territorial demands and renounce NATO membership forever, "this will not end Russia's military operations." He went on:
Even after signing [an agreement] and accepting defeat, the remaining [Ukrainian] radicals will sooner or later regroup their forces and return to power, inspired by Russia's Western enemies. And then it will be time to finally crush the reptile. … [and] return the remaining lands to Russia's bosom.17
It is up to the West to decide whether this dark vision will remain a twisted fantasy or become a terrible reality. Time is of the essence. The choices we make—or fail to make—in the months ahead will reverberate for years to come.
Robert Person is a professor of international relations at the United States Military Academy.
NOTES
I am deeply indebted to my West Point colleague Dr. Kathryn Hedgecock for her insights and critiques throughout multiple rounds of research, writing, and revisions of this essay. It is immeasurably stronger, clearer, and sharper thanks to her efforts.
1. James D. Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organization 49 (Summer 1995): 379–414; Dan Reiter, "Exploring the Bargaining Model of War," Perspectives on Politics 1 (March 2003): 27–43.
2. James D. Morrow, "Capabilities, Uncertainty, and Resolve: A Limited Information Model of Crisis Bargaining," American Journal of Political Science 33 (November 1989): 941–72.
3. "Treaty between The United States of America and the Russian Federation on Security Guarantees," Russian Foreign Ministry, 17 December 2021, https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/rso/nato/1790818/?lang=en.
4. Alexander Bick, "Planning for the Worst: The Russia-Ukraine 'Tiger Team,'" in Hal Brands, ed., War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), 139–55.
5. Michael McFaul and Robert Person, "Why Putin Invaded Ukraine," in Brands, ed., War in Ukraine, 34–54.
6. Fiona Hill and Angela Stent, "The World Putin Wants," Foreign Affairs 101 (September–October 2022), www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/world-putin-wantsfiona-hill-angela-stent.
7. Robert Person and Michael McFaul, "What Putin Fears Most," Journal of Democracy 33 (April 2022): 18–27.
8. Alya Shandra and Robert Seely, "The Surkov Leaks: The Inner Workings of Russia's Hybrid War in Ukraine," RUSI, July 2019, https://static.rusi.org/201907_op_surkov_leaks_web_final.pdf.
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17. Dmitry Medvedev, "Will the abominable clown and former president of the former Ukraine go to negotiations?" Telegram, 10 July 2024, https://t.me/medvedev_telegram/515.
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