The Trump administration’s week of Russian-Ukrainian diplomacy yielded mixed results. At his Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump treated an imperial dictator and indicted war criminal like a revered dignitary. His main goal for the summit—a cease-fire—was rejected outright by Putin, and his most modest objective for the meeting—a commitment by Putin to meet directly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with Trump in attendance—has thus far been rebuffed by Moscow, as well. A subsequent summit in Washington, attended by Zelensky and other European leaders, was more productive, as the group discussed potential U.S. and European security guarantees for Kyiv. Before that meeting, the American commitment to security guarantees was ambiguous.
Trump’s intuition that a deal will require land swaps and security guarantees is correct; Putin will agree to end the war only if he feels that he has won Ukrainian territory, and Zelensky will never agree to cede territory without the promise of protection from a future Russian invasion. But Trump’s improvisational attempt to negotiate over both subjects at the same time, with the same groups of leaders, is wrong-headed. Rather than discussing these two issues with everyone all at once, Trump needs to organize two sets of separate negotiations. The order in which these negotiations occur will be key to their success. Trump and his team must first reach an agreement on security guarantees among Ukraine, other European countries, and the United States. Only then should Washington encourage a conversation between Zelensky and Putin about de facto territorial concessions that could bring an end to the war.
Such a diplomatic two-step will not be easy. Indeed, the United States and Europe may have to present a security guarantee convincing enough to get Ukraine to agree to an unpopular compromise: the continuation of Russian occupation of Ukrainian land. But if Trump and European leaders can hold successful negotiations with Zelensky before the Ukrainian president sits down with Putin, they have a chance to craft a lasting peace.
TAKING THE LEAP
An agreement to bring an end to the war hinges on the ability of Putin and Zelensky alone to reach an agreement on borders and land swaps. Neither European leaders nor Trump should be involved in these discussions; neither has the authority to give away Ukrainian land.
The negotiation will be very difficult. Putin would have to abandon his maximalist position that Ukraine withdraw its soldiers from the parts of the Donbas that it currently controls. Zelensky will never agree to cede territory to Russia formally—doing so would be political suicide and could even trigger a coup by his own soldiers—but he could instead commit to pursuing reunification only through peaceful means. In other words, Russia would retain its currently conquered territory for now and potentially for much longer. But the de facto ceding of territory temporarily is preferable to the de jure handing over of land permanently. In fact, it is a necessary condition for an end to the war.
Still, agreeing to cede any amount of land to Russia would be an immense political risk for Zelensky, one that could easily lead to his ouster in the next Ukrainian presidential election. The idea remains extremely unpopular among Ukrainians. For Trump to convince Zelensky, his government, his generals, and the Ukrainian people to accept such a sacrifice, the Ukrainian president would need something substantial in return, and he would need it up front.
INSURANCE POLICY
Before Trump can entice Zelensky to risk his political future on a potential land swap, he must convince him that the United States and its allies in Europe are willing to credibly deter a future Russian invasion. Trump has regrettably already taken off the table NATO membership for Ukraine, which would represent the most credible security guarantee, since Moscow has never attacked a NATO member. So for now, the best options are security guarantees negotiated between a coalition of the willing and Ukraine, which must include Washington and European countries pledging to help make the Ukrainian army the best-armed fighting force on the continent, and a commitment among all the parties to the agreement that they would consider an attack on Ukraine to be an attack on all of them. To make the security guarantee credible, European soldiers should be stationed in Ukraine, and American fighter aircraft and other weapons should be repositioned closer to Ukrainian borders in Poland and Romania.
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff reported that Trump and Putin discussed security guarantees in Alaska. But if the United States and Europe are to offer Ukraine a truly credible deterrent, Russia cannot be involved in these talks. Trump and European leaders should not repeat the disaster of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for a toothless assurance that Russia would not attack it (and would, in fact, protect it). Seeking Moscow’s permission for security guarantees would also signal weakness from NATO members and represent a tacit acceptance that Ukraine is part of Putin’s sphere of influence. Russia’s demand that it be included as security guarantor against its own aggression must thus be rejected categorically.
A precedent exists for ironing out European security arrangements without consulting Moscow: Washington and Europe did not ask Stalin for the Soviet Union’s permission to found NATO in 1949. Six years later, the alliance extended an invitation to West Germany without seeking Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s blessing, despite opposition from some American strategists, most vocal among them former ambassador to the Soviet Union George Kennan, who feared it could provoke a major conflict between the Soviet Union and NATO. President Bill Clinton did not give Russian President Boris Yeltsin a veto over adding new members to NATO. Nor did President George W. Bush seek Putin’s permission to expand NATO membership to the Baltic countries and others.
ORDER OF OPERATIONS
Negotiations over security guarantees must be completed before Zelensky agrees to a prolonged Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory. The details of a deal could be kept secret until the border negotiations between Putin and Zelensky are completed and then announced after the new dividing line between Ukraine and Russia is established. But Zelensky and the Ukrainian people cannot agree to such significant concessions without knowing what they are getting in return. Zelensky and his citizens have good reason not to trust the United States right now, given that Trump has periodically cut off military assistance to Ukraine and has thus far not implemented new sanctions on Russia. The United States and its allies must commit to providing meaningful security guarantees before any progress is made on the borders. Forcing Ukraine to cede territory before negotiating security guarantees could embolden Putin to restart the war to derail further talks.
Negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine remains a long shot. But if any diplomatic resolution brokered by the United States and Europe is to have a chance, it will require an approach from Trump more disciplined and creative than he has shown so far. He must not only convene two separate negotiations; he must get the order right.
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