With Donald Trump returning to the White House in the coming weeks, speculation is growing that Ukraine and Russia could soon begin serious peace talks. But there are few signs that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to abandon his goal of subjugating Ukraine. Instead, the peace formula currently being promoted by Kremlin officials is likely to pave the way for the next stage of Putin’s campaign to completely destroy Ukrainian independence.
Since the failed peace talks in the spring of 2022, at the outset of the full-scale invasion, Russia has insisted that any peace deal must include territorial concessions from Kyiv, along with Ukrainian neutrality and the comprehensive demilitarization of the country. Putin himself laid out Russia’s territorial expectations in June 2024, demanding that Kyiv cede four partially occupied Ukrainian regions, none of which are under full Russian control. This would mean handing over large swaths of unoccupied Ukrainian territory, including the city of Zaporizhia, with a population of about three-quarters of a million people.
Putin and his Kremlin colleagues have repeatedly reiterated their conditions. They include Ukraine formally abandoning its aspirations for NATO membership and agreeing not to enter into any military alliances with Western powers. Kyiv is also expected to accept sweeping restrictions on the size of its armed forces and the types of weapons systems it is allowed to possess.
These proposals are not a recipe for a sustainable settlement. On the contrary, Putin’s peace plan is in fact a call for Kyiv’s complete capitulation. Moscow’s demands are deliberately designed to leave Ukraine internationally isolated and unable to defend itself. If these conditions are imposed on the Ukrainian authorities, there can be no doubt that Putin will take advantage of any subsequent lull in the fighting to rearm before resuming the war in the coming years.
Russia's true intentions can be seen in its insistence that Ukraine abandon its attempts to join NATO and adopt permanent geopolitical neutrality. Moscow claims this is necessary to ensure Russia's national security, but Putin's own actions suggest otherwise.
When neighboring Finland announced plans to join NATO in 2022, Putin made no effort to block the process, declaring that Russia had “no problem” with Finland joining. He then went further, withdrawing most Russian troops from the border with Finland. Clearly, Putin does not view NATO as a threat to Russia’s own security. Instead, he sees the alliance as a potential obstacle to his own expansionist ambitions in Ukraine.
Russia’s demands for a neutral and demilitarized Ukraine should be equally unacceptable in Kyiv and among Ukraine’s Western partners. To accede to the Kremlin’s terms would be to leave millions of Ukrainians at Putin’s mercy, as well as to embolden Moscow and provoke further Russian aggression. From Chechnya and Georgia to Crimea and Syria, there is ample evidence over the past two decades that each successive failure to hold Russia accountable only encourages further escalations.
The West’s misguided attempts to appease Putin have already led to Europe’s largest and bloodiest war since World War II. Any further attempts at appeasement will have equally disastrous consequences for Europe’s future stability and security. Indeed, senior European officials now warn that a military confrontation with Moscow is increasingly likely, with German intelligence chief Bruno Kahl recently predicting that Russia could try to test NATO before the end of the decade.
While Russia insists on Ukraine’s disarmament and neutrality, Ukrainian officials are preparing for possible peace talks, prioritizing the need for credible security guarantees. In recent months, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signaled that the country is willing to make temporary compromises on territorial integrity to move toward a viable peace. At the same time, officials in Kyiv stress that there is no room for such compromises on security guarantees.
Ukraine's goal remains NATO membership, which Kyiv sees as the only reliable long-term guarantee of the country's security and sovereignty. However, key members of the alliance, including the United States and Germany, remain extremely reluctant to accept Ukraine's NATO aspirations.
With their country’s path to NATO membership likely to be extremely politically challenging, Ukrainian officials are also exploring the possibility of bilateral security guarantees. In a recent interview with American podcaster Lex Friedman, Zelensky said that security guarantees for Kyiv to end Russia’s war would only be effective if they were provided by the United States. He also sharply criticized the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine gave up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, which ultimately proved useless.
Given Russia’s and Ukraine’s diametrically opposed positions on NATO membership, it seems clear that security guarantees will be the most problematic issue in any upcoming negotiations to end the war. Will Western leaders be able to come up with a credible security formula that will protect Ukrainian statehood and deter further Russian aggression? If they fail to do so, Ukraine’s prospects will be bleak, and the rest of Europe will face years of costly confrontation with a resurgent Russia.
Serhiy Kuzan is the Chairman of the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation (UCSC). Previously, he served as an adviser to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine (2022-2023) and an adviser to the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (2014).
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