Is a peace deal possible in Ukraine?

9 March 2025, 09:30 | Updated: 9 March 2025, 11:44

During his election campaign, Donald Trump said that he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours.

Now that US negotiators are meeting next week with counterparts from Russia and Ukraine in Riyadh, President Trump’s optimism is about to be tested.

Bringing the parties to the negotiating table is the easy part. Trump has bullied the Ukrainians into starting talks by publicly haranguing President Zelensky and cutting off military aid.

By contrast, he has secured the Russians’ interest by dangling the carrot of lifting sanctions.

US involvement in peace negotiations is highly significant because Russia wants to talk to the US not just about Ukraine but about European security in general.

Trump has turned US policy on its head by positioning himself as a neutral broker between Putin and Zelensky. The Ukrainians understandably fear that he is anything other than neutral because of his obvious dislike for Zelensky and his well-documented admiration for Putin.

In addition, his administration’s disregard for its European allies and NATO make Kyiv feel that its security could be sacrificed for the benefit of improved relations between the US and Russia.

The only deal on offer is a ceasefire that could be a bridge to long and difficult negotiations on a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine. Not all wars end with a peace treaty. The Soviet-Japanese War never concluded formally after 1945, and nor did the Korean War after 1953.

Ukraine and Russia can both continue fighting for a while. The Ukrainian army faces an increasingly serious manpower problem and if US military aid remains cut off, it could struggle to hold its lines by the summer against its numerically superior adversary.

Yet the Russian army’s heavy losses of man and equipment are catching up with it. If it were to advance further into Ukraine, it would need additional manpower. This would require further mobilisation that the Kremlin would like to avoid because of the unpopularity of the war.

Trump might be lucky with his timing. Both sides can see the benefit of a ceasefire to re-build their armies and prepare for a possible next phase of the war.

The challenge is to agree a framework that will ensure the truce holds. Zelensky correctly pointed out during the explosive meeting in the White House that Russia has a very poor record of observing ceasefires in Ukraine.

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John Lough is the Head of Foreign Policy at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre.

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