Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy have ended another round of talks at Mar-a-Lago saying that a framework for ending the Russia-Ukraine war is closer than at any previous point in Trump’s second presidency. Trump said after Sunday’s meeting that the sides were “maybe very close” to an agreement, while Zelenskyy said Washington and Kyiv were roughly 90% aligned on a proposed 20-point peace framework and that the American and Ukrainian positions on security guarantees were substantially closer. Yet the remaining disagreements are also the ones that matter most: territory, particularly the future of the Donbas, the exact strength and duration of Western security guarantees, and whether Vladimir Putin will accept a settlement that does not deliver Russia’s maximal demands. Russia currently occupies roughly 19% of internationally recognised Ukrainian territory, and Moscow continues demanding concessions Kyiv considers unacceptable. After nearly four years of war, the negotiations therefore illustrate an uncomfortable truth about peace processes: agreement becomes progressively easier on secondary issues precisely because the issues left until the end are those neither side believes it can concede without changing the meaning of the entire war.
Territory is the clearest example. Russia controls Crimea and substantial areas of eastern and southern Ukraine, but Moscow has also demanded Ukrainian withdrawal from parts of the Donbas that Russian forces have not fully conquered. Kyiv can potentially accept that some occupied territory will remain under Russian de facto control after a ceasefire without legally recognising Russian sovereignty over it. That would freeze a military reality while preserving Ukraine’s legal territorial claim. What is much harder for Zelenskyy to accept is voluntarily withdrawing Ukrainian forces from additional territory Russia failed to capture through nearly four years of fighting. Such a concession would create a troubling incentive: military aggression would not merely allow a state to keep some territory it seized but could improve its negotiating position enough to obtain additional territory through diplomacy. Reuters’ account of the negotiations confirms that the territorial question remains the central unresolved obstacle.
This is why a settlement needs to distinguish carefully between ending the attempt to reconquer territory immediately and recognising conquest permanently. Ukraine could decide that recovering every occupied region militarily would cost too many lives without accepting that the territories legally became Russian. International sanctions linked specifically to annexation could remain, maps could continue recognising Ukraine’s internationally accepted borders and final territorial status could be postponed. There are historical precedents for unresolved territorial claims surviving for decades without preventing broader economic development. Such an outcome would be deeply unsatisfactory to Ukrainians displaced from occupied regions, but diplomacy often works by postponing disputes whose immediate resolution would otherwise make peace impossible.
The more important issue may ultimately be the security guarantee. Zelenskyy has said Washington is offering a 15-year guarantee, while Kyiv would prefer a substantially longer commitment. The exact duration matters less than the mechanism. Ukraine has already experienced the weakness of political assurances through the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which it surrendered inherited Soviet nuclear weapons in exchange for commitments concerning its sovereignty and borders. A new guarantee therefore needs to answer a much more practical question: if Russian forces cross the ceasefire line again, what happens during the first twenty-four hours? Does Ukraine automatically receive weapons and intelligence? Do European forces participate? Do suspended sanctions return automatically? Does America become militarily involved? A guarantee that requires another prolonged political debate after the next invasion would be much less credible than one whose consequences are established beforehand.
This is also why Trump’s repeated claim that the parties are close should be treated cautiously rather than dismissed. Negotiations genuinely appear to have progressed significantly between Washington and Kyiv, and narrowing a complex war towards a smaller number of unresolved questions is itself meaningful. But an American-Ukrainian agreement is not yet a Russian-Ukrainian agreement. Moscow continues to hold positions that differ substantially from Kyiv’s, and Putin has shown little evidence publicly that Russia is prepared to abandon its core territorial demands. A peace plan can therefore be 90% complete on paper while remaining politically much less than 90% complete if the unresolved tenth contains the issues capable of collapsing the entire settlement.
The negotiations also expose the enormous importance of credible enforcement over diplomatic wording. The Minsk agreements after Russia’s initial intervention in Ukraine produced documents, ceasefires and monitoring mechanisms without resolving the underlying security conflict. Both sides later accused the other of violating commitments, and the arrangement ultimately failed to prevent the 2022 invasion. Calling the next document a “comprehensive peace agreement” therefore will not make it durable. Russia needs to believe another invasion would leave it worse off than complying, while Ukraine needs to believe concessions made now will not simply provide Russia time to rearm. The equilibrium matters more than the title of the treaty.
Economics can help reinforce that equilibrium. Russia wants some eventual reduction of sanctions and normalisation of economic relations. Ukraine requires enormous reconstruction investment and deeper integration with Europe. Frozen Russian assets remain available as bargaining leverage. These benefits can be released gradually rather than immediately. Russian compliance could produce phased sanctions relief, while violations automatically reverse it. Ukrainian reforms could unlock additional reconstruction and EU integration. The objective should be creating a peace dividend that grows over time, so that five years after the agreement both countries possess more to lose from renewed war than they did on the day it was signed.
Ukraine’s economic future is particularly important because the strength of the post-war Ukrainian state may matter more over decades than the precise ceasefire line agreed in 2026. A secure Ukraine integrated increasingly with the European Union could attract investment, develop its rapidly expanding defence-technology sector and encourage some of the millions of Ukrainians living abroad to return. A nominally larger Ukraine living permanently under the expectation of another invasion would struggle to do any of those things. Security affects the value of every factory, house and infrastructure project because investors discount assets according to the probability they will survive. A credible peace agreement therefore creates economic value before a single reconstruction project begins simply by reducing uncertainty.
Trump’s approach remains controversial because he has consistently placed greater pressure on Ukraine than many European governments consider appropriate. That partly reflects American leverage: Washington can influence Kyiv much more directly because Ukraine depends heavily on Western military support, whereas Russia is less dependent on America. A mediator focused heavily on reaching an agreement therefore has an incentive to pressure the actor it can move most easily. The danger is allowing ease of coercion to determine the distribution of concessions. If Ukraine is asked to surrender more simply because America possesses more leverage over Ukraine than Russia, the settlement could end the current war while creating an international precedent that rewards the stronger aggressor.
Europe therefore needs to provide more than diplomatic objections. If European governments believe Ukraine should reject particular Russian demands, they need enough military and financial capacity to make rejection viable. The EU’s recent agreement to provide €90 billion in financing for 2026 and 2027 is important precisely because it reduces the possibility that Ukraine is forced into immediate concessions simply through fiscal exhaustion. European defence spending and Ukrainian domestic weapons production matter for the same reason. Negotiating power ultimately rests on the quality of the alternatives available if negotiations fail.
The latest diplomacy therefore deserves neither triumphalism nor cynicism. The parties appear closer to a framework than they were earlier in the year, and after hundreds of thousands of casualties any credible route towards ending the fighting deserves serious attention. But the final stage will be the hardest because it requires transforming military realities into political commitments that both Ukraine and Russia believe are preferable to continuing the war. Trump can facilitate that bargain, but he cannot manufacture compatible interests where none exist.
The correct test for whatever agreement eventually emerges is not whether Trump, Zelenskyy or Putin can announce that they achieved peace. It is whether Russia concludes that another invasion would be more expensive than respecting the settlement and Ukraine concludes that respecting the settlement is safer than rebuilding for another war. If both beliefs survive after the signatures and photographs disappear, the negotiations will have achieved something historic. If they do not, the peace agreement will simply determine where the next phase of the war begins.
