In this photo provided by Ukraine's 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade press service, a local resident is seen in Pokrovsk, the site of heavy battles with Russian troops, in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Thursday, March 13, 2025. (Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade via AP)
In this photo provided by Ukraine's 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade press service, a local resident is seen in Pokrovsk, the site of heavy battles with Russian troops, in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Thursday, March 13, 2025. (Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade via AP)
This is a summary of an articleoriginally published by Foreign Policy, with the subheading "Seven things for Zelenskyy to keep in mind as cease-fire negotiations start."
The author writes:
In November 2022, just nine months after Moscow’s armies invaded Ukraine, Mark Milley, then the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a talk at the Economic Club of New York. Milley understood a brute fact about war: However entertaining the theatrics and the memes, outcomes in conflicts are determined on the battlefield—not by the narratives that politicians spin about them. Dismissing Ukraine’s rhetoric about recovering all the territory Russia had seized, Milley insisted that “victory is probably not achievable through military means” and offered a detailed analysis explaining why Kyiv’s surprise counteroffensive had reached its limits. According to Milley, Ukraine now found itself bogged down in a stalemate, and its best option was to seize a “window of opportunity for negotiation.”
[A] year later, another outstanding military commander came to the same conclusion. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, then Milley’s Ukrainian counterpart, led the army that defeated Russian forces attempting to seize Kyiv in the early days of the war and drove them back in Ukraine’s counteroffensive. By late 2023, though, Zaluzhnyi reluctantly concluded that the time had come to say what in Kyiv was a forbidden word: “stalemate.”
As this war enters its fourth year, U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance are confronting the same ugly realities. Assessing the facts, they seem to agree with Milley and Zaluzhnyi. If the initiative that Milley envisaged had been undertaken and succeeded in ending the war by early 2023, what would be different in Ukraine today?More than 300,000 Ukrainian soldiers who have been killed or seriously wounded may have been spared. Thousands more civilians would still be alive. Some of the more than 2 million houses and apartments that have been damaged or destroyed might still be occupied, and around one-seventh of the country’s energy infrastructure, more than half of which is now in ruins, would still be heating and lighting homes.
After three years of war, Ukraine’s economy remains almost 10 percent smaller than prewar levels. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of its citizens remain displaced, with some 15 percent of them having left the country entirely.
As Trump told Zelenskyy bluntly in the White House last month, “you’re not winning this.” The Trump administration’s position is not up for debate. The president stated repeatedly on the campaign trail, “I want the war to stop.” Every month that the war continues, Ukraine finds itself in a worse position… At this point, Zelenskyy’s team should make its best efforts to use the few cards that it has left to negotiate an ugly but sustainable peace.
As Zelenskyy begins to accept this reality, I would suggest seven pointers.First, he needs to understand that the most important player at the table is Trump—and that the U.S. president’s views are unlikely to change.
Second, Zelenskyy should accept the geographical fact that Ukraine shares a roughly 1,400-mile border with a great power. It cannot escape the shadow of Russian power any more than Canada or Mexico can with the United States.
Third, Ukraine’s alternative to hot war cannot be the “just and lasting peace” that Zelenskyy dreams of. Instead, it will likely have to be an end to the killing in an extended cease-fire or possibly an armistice similar to the agreement that ended the Korean War.
Fourth, to achieve the best insurance that he can get against Putin using a cease-fire as a respite to rearm before launching another invasion, Zelenskyy should forget about NATO. For Trump, NATO membership for Ukraine is simply off the table.
Fifth, Zelenskyy should be realistic about the security commitments that may be available to him. Europeans are actively talking about commitments from individual countries—but, of course, talking is what Europeans do best.
Sixth, the key issue on which Zelenskyy and Trump agree is that peace (or the absence of hot war) must be sustainable—not simply a respite for Putin to rearm.
Finally, Ukraine’s larger hope for a viable future lies in its relationship with Europe. A peace agreement should confirm its right to strengthen economic relations with the European Union on a path to membership. If a lasting peace is achieved, Ukraine can hope to follow in the footsteps of West Germany, South Korea, and Finland to become a miracle of the 21st century.
Read thefull article at Foreign Policy.
Author
Graham T. Allison
Graham T. Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was the founding dean, and is the principal investigator for Russia Matters. He is a former U.S. assistant defense secretary and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
Opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author. Photo by Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade via AP.