Russia–Ukraine Peace Compromise Is Necessary. It Won’t Be Fair

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff flew last week from Oslo, where he had held talks with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, to St. Petersburg for a meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Witkoff reportedly carried with him updated proposals for a framework agreement to end the war. Putin reportedly responded that he is ready, in principle, to resume talks with Kiev in November.

It is time for the U.S. and Europe to put every effort behind those talks.

The narrative of why the West supposedly needs to keep backing Ukraine’s war effort has evolved over the course of the conflict, from upholding international norms to regaining territory to defending democracy to protecting Europe against an imperialist Russia.

But the time has come to stop creating narratives and start accepting the painful reality that Ukraine faces existential peril if the war continues. Each new narrative only provides more time for Ukraine’s crisis to become more acute. Ukraine is bleeding land, people, and money. Its ports, bridges, data centers, transportation, mining, agriculture, industry, and infrastructure are being annihilated. It can no longer defend itself from devastating attacks on the capital and elsewhere—so an end to Russian attacks must be negotiated.

A compromise peace, rather than the total defeat of Russia, is not a fair outcome. Nor would the details of such a settlement be fair; Ukraine would have to make more concessions than Russia. But the peace cannot be fair because the war was never fair: It wasn’t fair that the more powerful Russian army illegally invaded Ukraine, and it wasn’t fair that the West used Ukraine as a proxy to fight against Russia, rather than settling the war in its early weeks when the opportunity arose.

Despite the fact that a peace deal would not be fair, it would save Ukraine and stop the war from getting worse. And although Ukraine would have to make the more painful concessions, Russia too would need to give way on some things.

Under any reasonable settlement, Ukraine would remain a sovereign country and keep most of its territory. It would be free to join the European Union and orient itself toward the West: the dream of the 2014 Maidan protests. And it would retain a large, well-equipped military to defend its borders.

NATO membership, however, is probably off the table. At the close of the Cold War, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was told that NATO would not expand eastward. In 1991, Russia recognized the sovereignty of Ukraine on the basis of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, adopted when the latter withdrew from the Soviet Union. This document stated that Ukraine “solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs.”

Ukrainian neutrality should be restored. To that end, NATO and Ukraine must both sign legally binding commitments that the latter will not become a member of the former. This concession is essential to ending the war because Russia will not stop fighting without it; indeed, it was the key reason Russia launched its invasion.

For its part, Russia has made an important concession in dropping its objection to Ukraine joining the EU. Part of the reason for Moscow’s initial opposition to this is that the EU’s Association Agreement with Ukraine was also a security agreement. It committed Ukraine to “deeper involvement in the European security area” and “military and technological cooperation.” That is now a key reason why Ukraine must be granted EU membership: With the NATO door closed, EU membership may be the strongest security guarantee Ukraine can reasonably expect to get. 

Ukraine will have to cede some territory for the war to end, though how much remains up for discussion. That would set a bad precedent for international order, yet Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine in Crimea and Donbas do deserve full protection of their cultural, linguistic, and religious rights, and Kiev’s relinquishing these territories could facilitate this guarantee. The Minsk Agreements, which ultimately collapsed, had been intended to solve this problem in part by expanding autonomy for these regions. However, Ukrainian and European leaders appear to have seen these commitments more as a way to buy time for Ukraine to rearm than as a serious solution to the problem. The idea of increased autonomy within Ukraine is now off the table, and Putin will not stop the war without directly annexing as much of this territory as possible.

By giving up NATO membership and some territory, Ukraine can survive, and eventually thrive, as an intact nation, aligned with Europe and boasting a strong military and adequate security guarantees. Any proposed security architecture should embrace not just Ukraine, but all of Europe, including Russia, finally putting in place the foundation for peace that was never established after the Cold War.

Ukrainians are suffering through a conflict that their leader, and leaders in Europe, have had difficulty stopping because of promises they made to defeat Russia. But it is time to end this war—even if that requires an unfair peace.

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