Ukraine may have to accept territorial concessions, and Russia may have to accept a militarized Ukraine in order to reach a peace settlement.

“The toughest issue to resolve will be the status of that part of Ukraine which we do not control at the end of the conflict,” a senior Kremlin official told me shortly after President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin launched talks to settle the Russia-Ukraine War this past February. He was right. 

The Russian and US positions are diametrically opposed. The Kremlin wants a rump Ukraine stripped of its sovereignty and firmly anchored in Russia’s orbit, much like Belarus. The United States seeks a secure, fully sovereign, and independent Ukraine that will gradually integrate into the West. Even if Trump has never explicitly stated that goal, his vice president and other senior officials have. Reconciling these positions seems like an impossible task. Yet there will be no enduring settlement without it.

Adding to the challenge is Putin’s seeming confidence that he is achieving his goal on the battlefield, even if he would of course be delighted to have it handed to him at the negotiating table. By contrast, the United States can achieve its goal only at the negotiating table—even Ukrainian leaders admit they cannot defeat Russia’s armies and regain all of its lost territory. 

But Putin will consider concessions only when the Ukrainians demonstrate that they can halt Russian progress on the ground and reliably defend against aerial assault. Continued US aid is thus imperative for a negotiated settlement, and freezing the battle lines becomes the first necessary step to resolving the question of Ukraine’s status through negotiations.

Even good-faith negotiations will yield little, however, if the issue is not framed properly. Two insights are essential. First, the sovereignty issue is fundamentally a matter of security for both sides. The Ukrainians are seeking ironclad guarantees against renewed Russian aggression. The Russians are demanding credible assurances that Ukraine can never become a staging ground for a NATO attack on them. 

Second, the Russia-Ukraine issue is deeply intertwined with the broader question of European security. Russia insists that security on the continent is “indivisible,” meaning that no country can guarantee its own security at the expense of another. Europeans fear a Russian victory in Ukraine will embolden Putin to threaten other neighbors.

In this light, the task then becomes devising a formula that guarantees the future security of a sovereign Ukraine while satisfying Russia that a sovereign Ukraine does not pose a grave threat to its security.

What might that formula look like? Broadly speaking, armed neutrality for Ukraine, coupled with a Russia-West arrangement to stabilize the frontier dividing them, which would stretch from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea and would cut across Ukrainian land along a future ceasefire line.

Both Russia and Ukraine (and its Western backers) would have to make tough concessions. 

Ukraine, for example, would have to abandon its ambition to join NATO and accept the status of a non-aligned, non-nuclear weapons state. NATO would have to formally close its door to Ukraine and forswear further expansion eastward into the former Soviet space. These steps meet non-negotiable Russian security demands, and, truth be told, are not that onerous, since, as a practical matter, NATO, or at least key allies like the United States and Germany, has no intention of expanding eastward.

In exchange, Russia would be expected to drop its insistence on Ukraine’s demilitarization. As a neutral state, Ukraine needs to retain the right to build and sustain forces sufficient for territorial defense, and to expand and modernize its defense-industrial sector to provision such a force. While Russia would insist that no forces from any NATO member be based in Ukraine or conduct joint exercises on Ukrainian territory, it would have to recognize Ukraine’s right to continue receiving security assistance from Western states, as well as share the lessons it has learned from fighting Russia with its European partners.

Russia’s concern about the size and capabilities of the Ukrainian military could be addressed as part of a broader effort to stabilize the Russia-Western frontier and then defuse tension along it. This would be akin to the process that unfolded during the last phase of the Cold War, starting with the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which codified the territorial status quo in Europe, and ending with the Conventional Armed-Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, which regulated troop deployments along the NATO-Warsaw Pact frontier.

A final provision of this compromise would be the West’s commitment to lift sanctions on Russia on a schedule tied to Russian implementation of agreed-upon steps to establish a permanent ceasefire.

It is unlikely that either Ukraine or Russia would accept such a compromise at the moment. Ukrainians still hope that Europe, with US backing, will deploy a small deterrent force to Ukraine, although this is unlikely to happen. The Russians have already categorically rejected such a plan, and few, if any, European states are prepared to run the risk of war with Russia to defend Ukraine. 

Russia, meanwhile, will concede nothing as long as it believes it is winning on the battlefield, and that view will only change if the United States is prepared to help Ukraine halt Russia’s progress for the foreseeable future. But a reality check by the Ukrainians and a firm message from the United States could bring the conflict to an end much sooner than most observers anticipate.