The current round of diplomacy around the Russo-Ukraine War

Oleksandr Kyselov, “a Ukrainian left-wing activist and a research assistant at Uppsala University” has a concise, realistic summary of the current state of the peace negotiations over the Russo-Ukraine War in the social-democratic Jacobin. (1)

After nearly a year of Trump 2.0, I’m continually impressed with how Trump’s lack of diplomatic competence and missing ability to think strategically in foreign policy makes it almost unthinkable that any half-decent peace, much less a settlement, of the Ukraine conflict. Because Russia would need assurance of US buy-in on things like economic sanctions, (no) NATO membership for Ukraine, and the disposition of the frozen Russian financial assets.

And even if Puttin is almost certainly pleased at most of the chaos Trump is causing, he also surely sees that any agreement with the deteriorating Trump Russia might make could well be abandoned by the Trump Administration within a week or a month.

This English-language panel discussion from Deutsche Welle deals with the issue of Trump’s diplomacy which seems to give very high priority to business deals over broader security and strategic interests: (2)

Oleksandr Kyselov clearly isn’t happy with Russia’s position. But his description of Russia’s geopolitical attitude toward Ukraine is a basically realist one:

Russia’s fixation on Ukraine’s neutrality predates the invasion. It was articulated most clearly in Moscow’s December 2021 draft treaties, which requested that not only Ukraine but the entire former socialist bloc be treated effectively as a buffer zone. It is the main one of the “ambiguities of the last 30 years” (as the twenty-eight points call them) that the Kremlin aims to settle. This obsession with keeping Ukraine out of NATO isn’t about “indivisible security” but a Russian sphere of influence in which smaller states’ security needs are ignored. Ukraine is the test case for whether Moscow can veto its neighbors’ foreign policy, in a Monroe Doctrine with a Russian accent. [my emphasis}

I do think he overstates the idea that Moscow expected “the entire former socialist bloc” to be treated as more-or-less a militarily neutral zone. Russia wasn’t happy about NATO expansion. But NATO membership for Ukraine was the major tripwire for Russian great-power security concerns.

He gives this summary of Ukraine’s perspective of what any acceptable ceasefire agreement would have to include:

Ukraine cannot regain all occupied territories by force under current conditions. But neither can it afford to grant Moscow irreversible rights over them. Kyiv’s position is limited to refusing recognition while accepting the line of contact as a reference point for future negotiations, and excluding military means from dispute settlement.

He argues that public opinion in Ukraine has moved toward accepting a pause in the conflict as it long as it doesn’t formally recognized Russia’s conquests as formal and permanent.

By the second half of 2025, according to Kyiv International Institute of Sociology polling, popular attitudes had shifted further. While under 20 percent are ready to accept the Kremlin’s terms and only 39 percent would agree with US recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, over three-quarters could live with freezing the conflict at the current front lines.

He rightly notes that the current proposed plan central to the public discussion – at the moment cut down to a 19-point plan - could be no more that “a pause before the next war begins.”

And he also gives some practical instances of long-term ceasefires with unresolved territorial claims. None of which are terribly encouraging for Ukraine in the current situation:

Precedents exist for lasting ceasefires even when underlying territorial claims remained unresolved — Cyprus since 1974, Korea since 1953, Kashmir since 1972. But Cyprus has United Nations peacekeepers and foreign troops on both sides. Korea has one of the world’s most militarized borders. Kashmir sees regular outbreaks of violence, prevented from full war only by nuclear deterrence. None offers templates for sustainable peace in Ukraine fitting the deals [currently being] discussed. [my emphasis]

This won’t be resolved quickly. And it’s hard to imagine any practical solution being reached with Donald Trump as the head of the US government. But I would add that it makes a lot of sense for Europeans to keep in mind the possibility.

Notes:

(1) Kyselov, Oleksandr (2025): Ukraine Faces an Imperial Carve-Up. Jacobin 12/04/2025. <https://jacobin.com/2025/12/ukraine-russia-war-concessions-trump> (Accessed: 2025-04-12).

(2) Trump’s secret business deals with Putin—profit over peace? DW News YouTube channel 05.12.2025. https://youtu.be/TPaBGtAccog?si=mv0G5u8hsED-S5xi> (Accessed: 2025-04-12).