Since Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2024, speculation has been mounting about a potential peace deal that would end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With Russian forces now enjoying the initiative on the battlefield, and doubts about the U.S.’s continued support for Kyiv, many observers believe Ukraine may have no choice but to accept the Kremlin’s highly unfavorable peace terms. Russia’s terms would likely include the loss of territory, along with complete disarmament and the imposition of a permanent neutral status.
The consequences of such a shameful peace for Ukrainian statehood would be catastrophic. And the damage would not be limited to the violated borders of Ukraine. On the contrary, the consequences of abandoning Ukraine will reverberate throughout the world for many years to come, undermining the foundations of international security.
If this happens, Ukraine’s fall may not be immediately obvious. Indeed, it may even be temporarily disguised by face-saving talk of pragmatism and compromise. But a demilitarized, divided, and internationally isolated post-war Ukraine without credible security guarantees will have little chance of surviving for long. Beyond the diplomatic platitudes, it will be painfully obvious that Ukraine is now entirely under Putin’s thumb. In such circumstances, another Russian invasion will only be a matter of time.
The spirit of the 1938 Munich Agreement hangs over the promising U.S.-brokered peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. With pressure mounting on Ukraine to make concessions to the aggressor, it is no surprise that many are comparing the current situation to the ugly deal between Western leaders and Nazi Germany that sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia and set the stage for World War II. Just as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich waving Hitler’s useless signature and proclaiming “peace for our time,” critics now fear that similar attempts to appease Putin will pave the way for further Russian aggression.
The demise of Ukraine as an independent state would confirm the failure of the existing international security architecture. Instead, we would enter a new era of international relations dominated by a handful of great powers seeking to establish their own spheres of influence, with smaller countries reduced to the role of buffer states. A climate of insecurity would take root from the Baltics to the Balkans and would soon spread to the entire world.
The collapse of the rules-based international order will inevitably undermine trust in the West. Meanwhile, authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea will be significantly strengthened. Moscow will almost certainly intensify its ongoing hybrid war against the democratic world and may seek further territorial gains in Central Asia, the Caucasus, or Eastern Europe. Autocrats in Beijing, Tehran, and beyond will draw the logical conclusions from Putin’s victory in Ukraine and adopt their own expansionist foreign policies.
With the sanctity of international borders no longer guaranteed, countries around the world will rush to rearm. Most importantly, Russia’s successful use of nuclear blackmail against Ukraine will convince many countries to acquire nuclear weapons of their own. This will lead to a nuclear arms race that will quickly escalate, undoing decades of nonproliferation efforts. With dozens of countries pursuing nuclear status, the odds of nuclear war will increase dramatically, as will the likelihood of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of rogue actors.
Today’s international security crisis did not emerge overnight. The security climate has been steadily deteriorating since 2014, when Russia first seized the Crimean peninsula and invaded the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. The inadequate international response to these watershed acts of Russian aggression was interpreted in Moscow as a green light for further action, setting the stage for a full-scale invasion in 2022 and setting the stage for what has become Europe’s largest war since World War II.
If Western leaders now decide to sacrifice Ukraine in a misguided attempt to appease Putin, the transition from a rules-based international order to the law of the geopolitical jungle will be complete. This transition will be extremely expensive, as countries around the world will be forced to dramatically increase defense budgets to levels that dwarf the current cost of military support for Ukraine.
Of course, none of this is inevitable. It is still entirely possible to secure a just peace for Ukraine that contains the Russian-led axis of autocrats and restores faith in a rules-based international system. But it will require a degree of resolve and political will that few Western leaders have been willing to demonstrate since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022. For nearly three years, the West’s response has been marked by excessive caution and a paralyzing fear of escalation, which has only emboldened the Kremlin.
Putin is clearly counting on the West’s continued weakness as he seeks to crush Ukrainian resistance in a grueling war of attrition. He is now more confident than ever of victory and has little interest in negotiating anything beyond the terms of Ukraine’s surrender. This is the unfortunate reality that Donald Trump will face when he returns to the White House later this month. Unless he and other Western leaders insist on peace through force, Ukraine will have little chance of survival, and the entire world will face a Hobbesian future of instability and aggression.
Viktor Lyakh is the CEO of the Eastern Europe Foundation .
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