The war in Ukraine has been going on for three years and has reached a stalemate. Huge losses are being sustained by both sides in fighting over small villages and metres of ground. Most of the West’s policy effort has gone into how to fight the war and support Ukraine. Comparatively little thought has been devoted to how to bring the war to a fair and stable conclusion. The primary reason for this is that the West—in particular the US —has deferred to Ukraine on all such matters, and Russia, as well as Ukraine, have shown little interest in negotiations toward a settlement/peace agreement.

This situation has changed dramatically with the arrival of President Trump in the White House. He has signalled less support for Ukraine and a strong push for a rapid end to the war. Trump has cast aside the Biden policy of no talks about Ukraine without Ukraine in the room and begun high-level bilateral negotiations with Russia on the problem. The immediate effect of this appears to be an improvement in US-Russia relations, which might well be a prerequisite for finding a satisfactory end to the war. Obviously, interested European nations, and especially Ukraine itself, must have a role in finding this solution and in its implementation.

Trump will probably quickly find that there are huge obstacles to negotiating a comprehensive solution, and negotiations will be both long and difficult. Without waiting for such negotiations to bear fruit, it is important and urgent to implement a ceasefire, both to stop the massive and largely indiscriminate destruction and killing and to improve the atmosphere in which to carry out these comprehensive negotiations. This paper focusses on achieving such a ceasefire.

A primary task will be drawing a line of control/line of contact. It must be made clear that this line will be drawn without prejudice to a final territorial solution. However, any interim boundaries will inevitably influence the final demarcations, as well as being of considerable importance to people living in these disputed areas. Since nearly all the disputed territory is legally Ukrainian, efforts should be made to favour Ukrainian control as much as possible. However, the facts on the ground indicate that Crimea and most of the Donbas will be under Russian control during this interim period. These are the areas with the greatest separatist tendencies and the strongest support for the Russian language and culture. Some of these areas are also already receiving substantial Russian reconstruction efforts and Russian passports..

The other major task will be to ensure that the agreed ceasefire will be observed and both sides can feel secure. The obvious way to achieve this would be the deployment of a substantial Peacekeeping Force under UN, or perhaps OSCE, supervision. It will be essential that the composition, rights and obligations of this force be clearly spelt out and agreed upon. Ukraine wants such a force to be drawn exclusively from its Western supporters—i.e., NATO. Even in the unlikely event that Russia agreed to this, it would likely lead to a highly militarised border with risks of a direct NATO-Russia confrontation and extremely dangerous clashes. The Peacekeeping Force should be neutral and multilateral (although much of the world would view its role as primarily protecting Ukraine). Any aggression by Putin against this force would put him into conflict with essentially the entire world, including China.

Read the report.

The European Leadership Network itself as an institution holds no formal policy positions. The opinions articulated in this policy brief represent the views of the author rather than the European Leadership Network or its members. The ELN aims to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security policy challenges of our time, to further its charitable purposes.

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