War often starts in misperception and illusion, but war can only end by the mutual acknowledgement of hard reality. Ukraine and Russia are slouching toward that state now. The moment is inflected by the election of Donald Trump, who has promised a vastly different approach to the war, opening an opportunity for the recalculation of costs and benefits for all involved.
Both sides are now feeling increasingly intolerable pain, though in slightly different forms. The pain Ukraine is feeling is more obvious. Its manpower losses threaten the future of the Ukrainian people; the U.S. has urged the draft age be lowered to 18. There are simply not enough soldiers, and Ukrainian police are dragooning young men who have not registered for the draft off the streets. Ukraine will not be receiving the equivalent of Russia’s new foreign soldiers from North Korea, although South Korea is considering sending weapons. In terms of manpower, Ukraine stands alone.
Even worse, Russia has been making new and significant territorial gains in Ukraine in recent months. In fact, November 2024 was the best month for Russian advances in two years. The U.S. supply of long range missiles, with permission to use them within 180 miles into Russian territory — plus equally controversial landmines — has not turned this tide.
Russia, of course, is also losing men— more men than Ukraine. But its population baseline was much larger than Ukraine’s, and Russian manpower has now been bolstered by 10,000 North Koreans.
There are other losses to Russia. While Russia has ways to circumvent Western sanctions, largely through arrangements with countries such as China, Iran and even India, Russia has had to accept less than optimal terms to strike those deals. And that has cost the Russians dearly.
But there are larger losses. The Syrian regime, protégé to Russia, has been vanquished, in part because the Russians must expend the bulk of their efforts on Ukraine. Ditto for Russian intervention in Africa, which is also starved due to the war effort. Finland and Sweden joined NATO quickly after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, strengthening that alliance. China is pressing for Russia to end the war, as it complicates China’s own foreign policy objectives.
Elements in Moldova, Abkhazia and Georgia are taking heart that Russian hegemony is no longer inevitable. And Armenia is leaving the venerable Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, upset that the Russians placated the Azerbaijanis in the latest outbreak of conflict with that nation. Russia’s great power status is being seriously compromised the longer this war lasts.
Both Russia and Ukraine are at the point where the losses, on the battlefield and off the battlefield, are becoming intolerable. A mutual acknowledgement of that reality is finally arriving, and so is the moment where a cold peace becomes possible.
The election of Trump arguably brings those negotiations much closer. Trump has made it plain that he believes the continued support for what Ukraine would deem victory is not in the U.S. national interest. The U.S. is not going to ensure that the Ukrainians regain their lost territory — because, realistically, they cannot regain it. Even President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has admitted as much: “Our army lacks the strength to do that. That is true. We do have to find diplomatic solutions.” The large arms deal that the Biden administration hopes to finalize before President Joe Biden leaves office will not be honored by Trump.
The endgame is now being planned by each side. Russia wants a cease-fire, with its territorial advances intact and formalized, and with no NATO membership for Ukraine, ever. The Ukrainians want a cease-fire, with no official surrender of the territories Russia has taken, plus NATO membership now, and additional arms. Under a Trump administration, the Americans appear to favor a cease-fire with a demilitarized buffer zone all along the current battlefield border, with non-American NATO forces, such as British and French troops, manning the zone to keep the peace, and with no NATO membership for Ukraine for at least 20 years in order to bring the Russians to the table. However, NATO might offer the Ukrainians a formal declaration that Ukraine within the proposed buffer zone is a “protected state” under NATO.
It is important, however, that Trump avoid the temptation to which he succumbed when negotiating a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban. As Jim Townsend, deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy in the Obama administration, commented, “He wants a quick deal. I think Trump will work the negotiations the way he did the awful negotiations with the Taliban, it will be done quietly, by a small group of Trump advisors with the closers being Trump and Putin themselves.”
However, Ukraine is not Afghanistan, and I’d argue the stakes are much higher now and Trump needs to consider the missteps he previously made in striking the Afghan deal. An ill-considered deal could literally backfire in spectacular fashion.
A cease-fire is surely coming. But cease-fires are tricky: they aren’t peace, and each side can use the time afforded to restock, rearm and prepare to resurge. But the Russo-Ukrainian war is increasingly turning into a new world war, with credible nuclear ramifications, in a context of egregious European military weakness. A deal must be struck. Let’s hope the Trump foreign policy team strikes a good one.