Negotiating an End to the Ukraine War: Is it Possible?

By Maksym Beznosiuk and Martin A. Smith

6 January 2025

2024 was another challenging year for both parties to the war in Ukraine, with severe casualties, and losses reaching record highs by the end of the year. As 2025 dawns, it is now time to seek a peace resolution on mutually beneficial terms if these can indeed be arranged. On the positive side, leaders in both Russia and Ukraine have recently indicated a willingness to negotiate and indeed compromise, although thus far only in vague and general terms and with substantially divergent views of what an ultimate peace deal should look like. This briefing paper seeks to explore the positions of both warring parties and identify potential areas for compromise on the key issues on which accommodation will be necessary if any peace agreement is to prove successful and durable. 

It is difficult but not impossible to envisage a potential peace agreement that would end the conflict in Ukraine in a way that Russia could be induced to accept and that would at the same time provide sufficient assurances of security and continued critical western support for the Ukrainian side, even without an assured path to NATO membership. The starting point for a process potentially leading to a settlement along these lines exists in the growing recognition that at the beginning of 2025, both sides find themselves trapped in what analysts sometimes call a “hurting stalemate”. It is apparent from the various failed and abortive offensives of 2022-2024 that neither Ukraine nor Russia can achieve a knockout blow in military terms. Increasingly public indications from leaders on both sides that they recognise this, give grounds for optimism that a negotiating process will get underway during 2025, a process also speeded by the catalyst of returning US President Donald Trump’s oft-stated commitment to facilitating an end to the war. None of this is sufficient to ensure success, but it is now at least possible to see how an eventual settlement might emerge.

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