The beginning of 2025 has brought an extensive reshaping of the West’s political leadership. New governments are—or soon will be—installed in the United States, Germany, Canada, and Austria, with more crucial elections scheduled for later in the year. But the major problem the West faces remains the same, as Russian forces continue to advance in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed are still unable to destroy the aggressor country’s economy. US President Donald Trump has changed his timeframe for a peace deal from “24 hours” to “half a year,” but is still quite optimistic about brokering a ceasefire agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s therefore key to try to assess what this might mean for Europe and the world.
Russia’s negotiating positions are clear. Putin has reiterated many times that he is ready for the talks but they should take into account the “real developments on the ground.” It means that Russia wants to keep its territorial gains, and, moreover, to have them all—from Crimea annexed back in 2014 to the still unoccupied parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions—recognized by both Ukraine and the international community. In addition, the Kremlin insists on lifting all the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia since 2022 (if not 2014), on the unfreezing of all those assets blocked in Western countries, and, quite probably, on terminating all criminal investigations that are now under way against Russian servicemen and commanders accused of war crimes on Ukrainian territory.
Ukraine’s position these days differs hugely: Kyiv may be willing to agree to cede control over the occupied territories but most probably only as a temporary measure rather than a final and irrevocable act. The Ukrainian authorities would prefer to keep the Russia sanctions in place and would ask for continued Western military and financial support. Also, as President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly insisted, they would require binding treaties with NATO powers that would invoke a collective defense if Russia were to attempt to resume the war and to “annihilate” Ukraine, as the Kremlin leaders often voice their conviction that it has no right to exist as a sovereign nation.
Don’t Trade Territory
Today, many policymakers and strategists propose something resembling a Korean solution, with a demarcation line being drawn at or close to the current frontline and a significant number of peacekeepers—some estimates are as high as 100,000 troops—being deployed along it, and with significant continuing military support to Ukraine but without a formal peace treaty. Irrespective of how exactly these various issues are resolved, at least three issues would loom large, challenging the most fundamental pillars of the current international order.
First, the surrender of a part of sovereign territory as the result of aggression by one state against another has not taken place in Europe since the end of World War II. It nullifies the very idea of not redrawing borders by force upon which the international order has been based for decades. If Ukraine, the victim of aggression, recognizes this, or if the international community does so, it could provoke many other wars: It would encourage China to conquer Taiwan. It would fuel Turkey’s already mighty imperial ambitions. Furthermore, it could open a new chapter in the Balkan wars.
Second, any result of the war that leads to territorial losses for Ukraine and a chance for Russia to inflict enormous damage on a sovereign country without either paying reparations or facing a devastating economic blow from the international community would signal that only the possession of nuclear weapons is a guarantee against aggression.
As events since 2014 have shown, the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 which saw Ukraine cede its share of Soviet-era nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for some “guarantees” by the United States and the United Kingdom ended up being worthless. Therefore, an outcome of the Russia-Ukraine war that involved territorial losses would destroy the non-proliferation regime and almost certainly lead to Japan and South Korea acquiring nuclear weapons, to guard against nuclear-armed North Korea. Taiwan, facing increasingly aggressive rhetoric from China, could come to the same conclusion. Many other nations would follow, with the world becoming a much more dangerous place. Ukraine has already stated that it would be able to build nuclear devices similar to those it gave to Russia in the 1990s. However, when Moscow reacted by rapidly amending its nuclear doctrine, Ukraine’s Western allies advised Kyiv to soften its rhetoric.
Third, given that military aggression and the subsequent redrawing of borders are condemned by the UN Charter and other international arrangements, any peace brokered around the current frontline should be considered proof of the collapse of international law and a humiliation of both the United Nations and the system of multinational treaties of any kind.
A potential beneficiary would be NATO, since it is widely believed that membership of the alliance would prevent any attack from outside. NATO saw two new members (Finland and Sweden) knock on its doors since the start of Russia’s war, and it now covers the zone of its responsibility almost completely. However, it has little chance of projecting its functions into any other part of the world; a “global NATO” is not on the cards. In other regions, it will be up to Western powers to create multilateral regional, rather than global, security communities that would lead to a further geopolitical fragmentation and produce new hot spots in different regions across the globe.
The End of the World Order
In short, such a peace would mean the end of the world as we have known it since, if not after 1945, then since the peak of the Cold War when “the spheres of influence” were drawn up and most of the “hot conflicts” were shifted to the global periphery. President Putin has for a long time attempted not so much to restore Russia’s imperial greatness (he seems smart enough to realize it cannot be accomplished with the rather limited resources he possesses and without any kind of a universal ideology that may transcend national borders) but rather to undermine the West’s global preponderance.
When Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012, frustrated with the “Arab Spring,” his aides almost immediately produced a policy report entitled “New Rules or the World Without Rules”—and as the first option (“new rules”) seemed unrealistic, the second became his major obsession. Putin wants the world to return to a 19th-century international order when wars were routinely used for reorganizing the global community and nothing like supranational authorities or humanitarian law existed. From this perspective, the conclusion of a peace treaty with Ukraine that challenged the current order would be a good result.
Moreover, while many argue that the Kremlin is likely to only use an armistice as a short reprieve preceding a new attack (today in Europe policymakers are already drafting strategies based on the assumption Russia could invade the Baltic states, Poland, or even Germany in 10 years or sooner), this seems a wrong assumption. Russia’s economy may well function and the Russian people prefer to stay silent, but I doubt that Putin would go much further.
It took more than 10 years for him to instill a deep-rooted anti-Ukrainian attitude in Russian society, and he succeeded in this primarily because the Russians felt that the territory of what is today Ukraine had been the historical source of their “civilization state”; because they felt Ukrainians were “brotherly people” just intoxicated by Western values; and because they feared that should Ukraine join NATO, anti-Russian forces would move too close to Moscow. After all, for years Ukraine has been seen in Russia as the main “traitor nation,” after it played an active role in the collapse of the Soviet Union, refused to join the Russia-led Commonwealth of Independent States and the Customs Union, and started its Westward move from 2004 onwards. The Russians, exhausted by the war and by the militarization and idiotization of their society, most probably would be happy to stop fighting if a peace were signed. I would be cautious in saying the same about other revisionist powers across the world.
Expanding Empires
China and Turkey seem to be the two major powers that might be willing to capitalize on Russia’s efforts. By the time of the Russian aggression, Ukraine was a fully recognized and well-governed state, a member of the United Nations and of numerous international organizations. Taiwan, on the other hand, is recognized as a sovereign country by only 12 relatively small states. It has been denied a UN seat for more than 50 years so far, and has been considered part of China by most of the global powers. If Russia succeeds in revisiting its imperial collapse, why should China refrain from doing the same?
The Turkish case is also tricky. The Ottoman Empire, which ruled most of the Eastern Mediterranean for around half a millennium, was dismantled after World War I. Ankara’s case for taking over Northern Cyprus perfectly fits the Russia-Ukraine example: The population there is mostly of Turkish origin, and has lived for some time under Greek rule. If the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics were allowed to join Russia after a decade of “independence,” why shouldn’t Northern Cyprus reunite with Turkey? Ankara may also have a lot of historically “justifiable” claims in Syria, and so the borders may be “adjusted” there as well, especially if the new government in Damascus fails to please all the factions and sections of Syrian society.
Problems may arise in many other regions, too—from Pakistan, where the border tensions with both Afghanistan and India could evolve into bloody conflicts, to Latin America, where not only does Venezuela lay claim to some parts of Guyana, but almost every country has a territorial conflict with another state—Bolivia with Chile, Ecuador with Peru, Guatemala with Belize, etc.
A Ceasefire Agreement Only
Against this background, the West may well champion a kind of a ceasefire agreement in Ukraine that will not regulate any issues except the cessation of hostilities. In this case, both the Russian and the Ukrainian authorities should be involved in drawing the line of separation. Ukraine’s allies may lift most of the sanctions imposed on Russia (or, conditionally waive them with the threat of re-implementing them if fighting breaks out again). Such an agreement was reached in May 1994 in Moscow between Armenia, Azerbaijan, and non-recognized Nagorno Karabakh Republic, and it secured relative peace for more than a quarter of a century, until the balance of military and economic power in the region changed and the Azeris became able to liberate their sovereign territory.
This framework should be used as the main roadmap for the future of Eastern Ukraine (as I suggested as early as 2015). Reunification could then happen under less severe circumstances: Putin’s personalist regime might collapse after the death of its founder, and Russia could sooner or later return to being a more “normal” state, which might open up paths for renegotiating the results of the current war.
However, any kind of formal acceptance of a “new reality on the ground” should be avoided by all possible means, even if the alternative were the continuation of the war. Yes, by early 2025 both Ukraine and its allies appear to be largely exhausted. The damage caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine is estimated as close to $1 trillion, and there are few chances it will be ever repaid. At least 200,000 Ukrainians—both service(wo)men and civilians—have been killed during the war, and up to six million forced to flee to neighboring countries. Around two-thirds of Ukrainians say they would prefer to exchange territories for peace under Western guarantees. Ukraine’s allies have spent close to $300 billion already in supporting the country financially and militarily and are preparing to channel no less than $200 billion in 2025 without much hope of the loans ever being repaid.
But even this price looks less than all the money that would be needed for Russia’s future containment, something that would be unavoidable if Putin is rewarded with the Russian-occupied territories and secures the lifting of sanctions against his empire. It would also be less than what would be required to counter other nations’ revisionist policies, provoked and facilitated by Russia’s success.
Russia might still be defeated on the battlefield, as happened to it repeatedly in conflicts that were not threatening its core territory (by Japan in 1905 and by Poland in 1920; Finland managed to stop the Red Army and defend its sovereignty in 1940). There is no scenario in which Ukraine’s army besieges Moscow. But increasing the supply of Western weapons now, in combination with a more intensive mobilization on Ukraine’s part, may change the course of the war. This would turn it into another interstate conflict that ends without border adjustments, as it has been happening so many times since 1945.
Facing a Choice
Western powers are facing a choice in their Russia policy that they already encountered several times in the past. If both the states of Europe and the United States had opposed the Russian incursion in Georgia in 2008 in a more straightforward manner, there would have been a good chance to counter Moscow’s rising influence in the South Caucasus, and—much more importantly— to demotivate the Kremlin from recognizing the “sovereignty” of those territories whose separatist movements it has been supporting since the collapse of the Soviet Union. If the annexation of Crimea—which became the first precedent of redrawing the borders in Europe since 1945 via territorial transfer of one sovereign state to another—had been met by a total obstruction of Moscow (including all the sanctions the EU and US imposed on Russia between February and May of 2022), both the invasion of Donbass in 2014 and the full-scale invasion of 2022 would have been prevented.
When approaching a “deal” with Russia now, the Western powers should look back and realize that any substantial concession they made to Russia has only emboldened it in its quest to destroy the global order. Doing so again now would likely have catastrophic consequences.
Vladislav Inozemtsev is an economist and co-founder of the Center for Analysis and Strategies in Europe (CASE).
