{"id":356785,"date":"2025-12-18T21:40:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T21:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/356785\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T21:40:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T21:40:11","slug":"hope-for-imminent-russia-ukraine-peace-is-out-of-touch-with-reality-expert-says-harvard-gazette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/356785\/","title":{"rendered":"Hope for imminent Russia-Ukraine peace is out of touch with reality, expert says \u2014 Harvard Gazette"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the eyes of some, an end to the Russia-Ukraine war may be closer than ever. Officials from the U.S., Ukraine, and the European Union met this week in Berlin and came away from the talks sounding optimistic<\/a> about a reaching a deal, in part because Ukraine has reportedly<\/a> backed off its long-held ambition to join NATO, a concession Russia has long sought. In exchange, Ukraine would receive what\u2019s described<\/a> as a \u201cNATO-like\u201d security guarantee, though specifics remain vague and Russia, absent from the talks, has not signaled its approval.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ivo Daalder<\/a> does not expect a breakthrough any time soon.<\/p>\n

In this edited interview, Daalder, who served as the U.S. ambassador to NATO from 2009 to 2013 and is now a senior fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School<\/a>, outlines key tensions between Russia and Ukraine and explains why he\u2019s skeptical that these latest negotiations, however productive, will culminate in a ceasefire in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

The president of the European Commission praised the talks as cooperative, saying that the parties had made \u201creal and concrete progress<\/a>.\u201d Do you see signs of real progress on a deal?<\/p>\n

I see signs of closer alignment between Ukraine and Europe on the one hand and the United States on the other hand. But I don\u2019t see that as progress toward ending the war, because the fundamental problem isn\u2019t an alignment between Ukraine, Europe, and the United States; it\u2019s an alignment between Ukraine and Russia. And that alignment is as far away today as it has been in any time in the last four years. So yes, there\u2019s progress on one side, which is important, but there\u2019s no progress getting to an end of the war.<\/p>\n

Russia and Ukraine have fundamentally opposite goals. Russia wants to subjugate Ukraine \u2014 control its future from Moscow. It wants to deny its sovereignty and independence, as well as take chunks of its territory. And Ukraine wants to be a sovereign country that has control over all its territory. That\u2019s what this war is about. The war is not about whether the United States and Europe and Ukraine can agree. The war is about who decides the future of sovereignty of Ukraine \u2014 is it Ukraine or Russia? And that fundamental conflict is as big today as the day the war started.<\/p>\n

What do you make of President Zelensky\u2019s willingness to set aside Ukraine\u2019s hope to join NATO, at least for now, in exchange for a security guarantee?<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s a good-faith effort, but he also realizes two things: that making concessions to the United States isn\u2019t about getting to a peace deal, it\u2019s about demonstrating to the United States that Ukraine is not at fault. That\u2019s No. 1. No. 2, saying that Ukraine is not going to be joining NATO anytime soon, is just reality because the United States is opposed. The decision on whether Ukraine joins NATO is not Moscow\u2019s \u2014 but it\u2019s not Kyiv\u2019s either. It is the decision of NATO\u2019s 32 member states, one of whom happens to be the United States.<\/p>\n

Control of the Donbas region<\/a> remains a sticking point. Do you see any scenario in which Ukraine or Russia might compromise on this point?<\/p>\n

Not at present. Sometime in the future, when one or both sides have decided that a negotiated peace that includes some territorial concessions is preferable to continuation of the war, you might get there. But today, you\u2019re nowhere near that.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the best potential outcome for Ukraine? What\u2019s realistic?<\/p>\n

The best outcome is a ceasefire along the current line that is monitored by international capabilities, whether that\u2019s the U.S. or others, with a commitment from the United States and Europe to back Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty up to and through the ceasefire line, and that commitment made conditional on Ukraine not trying to change the status quo through the use of force. So that\u2019s the best they can hope.<\/p>\n

How likely is that?<\/p>\n

Ukraine is prepared to do that today, so it really depends on Russia. The question is, at what point does the cost of continuing the conflict to Russia outweigh the benefit of stopping? Today, they believe they\u2019re winning and are economically still capable of producing the equipment and paying for the manpower to continue the fight. It\u2019s only when you run out of people or the cost of getting people to the front is too high and\/or imports to equip their forces become too high. The likelihood of that happening sometime in 2026 or early 2027 is high if the United States continues to put pressure on the oil sector, which has had a significant impact on Russian revenue streams. The goal for Ukraine and the Europeans is to convince President Trump that this entire problem is made and continued by Russia, and that the only way to get the solution he wants is to pressure Russia. That\u2019s the goal. It\u2019s not to get to a peace agreement because they don\u2019t believe there\u2019s a peace agreement today. Down the line, yes, but not now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the eyes of some, an end to the Russia-Ukraine war may be closer than ever. Officials from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,1076,3,13353,21212,21,19,22,20,25,24,176798],"class_list":["post-356785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-europe","tag-news","tag-qa","tag-u-s-politics","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-world-politic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}