Kyiv Won’t Compromise on Its Sovereignty Because It Isn’t Facing Defeat
Dmytro Kuleba
May 30, 2025
Ever since the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump in January, the world has been hypnotized by the prospect of a cease-fire in Ukraine. It is easy to see why. The election of an American president who wanted to act as a Ukraine broker rather than a Ukraine backer was seen as an opportunity to disrupt the status quo and stop the bloodshed.
But effective wartime diplomacy requires applying the right amount of leverage—sticks and carrots—on the right parties, under time pressure. Trump introduced the final factor by promising a swift outcome, and when that proved impossible, unsuccessfully threatening to walk away from negotiations altogether. But he failed when it came to rewards and punishments, wielding all the sticks against the country that was attacked while reserving all the carrots for the attacker. He railed against Ukraine, blaming it for the war, and at one point suspended assistance to its military. Meanwhile, he praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As a result, the world is no closer to meaningful negotiations now than it was when Trump won the U.S. presidential election in November. Countries have heard and seen a lot—Moscow’s pro-Trump messaging, Kyiv’s embrace of talks, Europe’s American outreach, and all the shuttle diplomacy. But these were less bridges to peace than attempts to flatter the U.S. president: the goal was not to end the war, but to bring Trump closer to one side and prevent him from sliding to the other.
Trump’s quest, however, was always going to be difficult. The stark reality is that neither Russia nor Ukraine has much of an incentive to stop the fighting. Moscow has built a wartime economy that allows it to keep fighting—and makes it hard to stop doing so. Ukraine is in no mood to compromise on its sovereignty, and its military remains strong enough to keep mounting an effective defense. As a result, for now, a cease-fire in Ukraine is impossible.
NO TRUMP CARD
Ukraine’s friends in the West have long been divided in their assessment of what Russia wants. According to some, Putin is pursuing a limited agenda and would settle for limited gains. By this logic, the Kremlin might be sated, for example, by a deal that accepts that the occupied parts of Ukraine are rightfully Russian and guarantees that Ukraine will not join NATO.
Others strenuously disagree. In their view, appeasing Putin will only encourage him. The Russian president came for all of Ukraine, whose very statehood is irreconcilable with his vision of his role in history. This group reinforces its position by citing Putin’s prewar treatise, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” in which he argued that Ukrainians are not a separate nationality but wayward Russians who must be brought back under Moscow’s
suzerainty. In his musings about peace talks, the Russian leader has also repeatedly said that any settlement must address the “root causes of the conflict”—that is, erase Ukrainian sovereignty.
Some Western policymakers understand this but argue that the longer the war drags on, the weaker Ukraine’s position will become and the more likely it is that it will have to eventually yield. Better, then, to accept a bad deal now than a worse one later. Trump himself appears to subscribe to this. “You don’t have the cards,” he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February.
This line of thinking may sound rational. But it misreads Ukraine’s hand. Kyiv could certainly hold better cards, but the country is not so desperate that it must fold now. Ukraine is counting on Europe to shield it from potentially dramatic changes in the war’s course resulting from waning U.S. military support. Ukraine also knows that the situation on the frontlines is not as dire as many suggest. In December 2023, Russia controlled approximately 42,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory. In December 2024, that figure had grown only slightly, to around 43,600 square miles. In the time since, Russia’s holdings have remained effectively flat. As of late May, Russia held approximately 43,650 square miles of Ukrainian land.
Analysts paying close attention to the news have read reports of the Russian army’s taking one square mile and village after another. But zoom out a bit, and the country supposedly holding all the cards has gained just 1,650 of Ukraine’s 233,030 square miles over the last 16 months. Put differently, Moscow has gone from occupying about 18 percent of Ukrainian territory in late 2023 to roughly 19 percent today. Kyiv thus believes it has time to strengthen its position, both diplomatically and on the battlefield.
There are, of course, factors beyond Russia’s territorial advances that could change Ukraine’s calculus—including a credible shift by Moscow to more limited goals. Kyiv might also budge if Europe fails to deliver weapons to compensate for the lack of U.S. deliveries and if Ukraine’s air defenses collapse without supplies of American-made PAC-3 interceptors. (Such missiles are perhaps Trump’s biggest source of leverage.) Kyiv might begin to contemplate concessions if its civilian infrastructure is damaged further. Putin is aware of this, which is why he is sending more barrages of drones and missiles than ever before.
But as of now, Ukraine’s air defenses are holding up. Europe is announcing new military assistance to Ukraine while investing more in defense production on the continent. Although the Russian army is not making dramatic breakthroughs, Putin has given no indication that he is moving away from absolutist aims. It is therefore impossible for Trump—or anyone else—to push Ukraine into making an unfavorable deal that it does not think Russia will honor.
SECOND FRONT
Trump’s failures with Ukraine, however, hardly mean that his Russia policy won’t be consequential for security. The president’s embrace of Moscow and corresponding pivot away from Europe is pushing the continent to become more independent and leaving its people far more exposed. European countries are working to develop more powerful militaries and a better defense industrial base, but not fast enough to meet their own needs or those of Ukraine. Trump
has said that he will not withdraw from NATO. But given his open hostility to Europe and history of withdrawing the United States from foreign wars, it is hard to imagine that American troops will be dying for Europe.
This combination of factors makes it tempting for Putin to attack a NATO ally in Europe. Unlike in Ukraine, his initial goal would not be to subjugate the country but simply to expose Europe’s weakness and the falsehood of NATO’s commitment to collective security. But the following few years could be his best shot at actually seizing a piece of NATO territory before Europe effectively fills its defense gaps and before Trump is replaced with a U.S. president who cares about the continent.
Moscow is capable of opening a new front while still battling Kyiv. It has conducted a buildup along Russia’s borders with Finland and Norway that resembles the one it established along Ukraine’s border in the spring of 2021. It has become increasingly aggressive in the Baltic Sea. It recently announced large-scale exercises with Belarus.
Putin has proved willing to make his people endure hardships on a scale unimaginable for most nations in pursuit of his military objectives. He has a tight relationship with China, whereas Ukraine’s camp is plagued with opposing reading of Russia’s end goals. And he is running a war economy. Putin, then, may be preparing to fight simultaneous wars of different scales.
Europe has imposed a suite of sanctions against Moscow, which are politically and financially valuable, in order to deter Russian aggression. But no matter how pleased the European Union may be with each new restriction, the EU cannot cripple the Russian war machine by itself. It is encouraging that the bloc is intensifying its crackdown on the shadow tanker fleet Russia is using to evade sanctions, but that won’t depress Russian oil prices enough to make a major difference.
Putin might begin to change his mind about fighting on if he sees a sustained collapse in the price of Russian oil, which would rob his war economy of financial resources. Yet effecting such a collapse requires active involvement by the United States, which holds leverage over the global market. Washington would need to impose stiffer sanctions on Russia’s oil industry and persuade Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s biggest suppliers, and India, one of the largest consumers of Russian oil, to join its effort. Such a coalition would then need to get China not to interfere, in part by making clear that its goal is the end of the war, not the end of Russia. Riyadh seems to be best positioned to try to do this, given its close relationship with both China and the United States.
But these steps are all highly unlikely. Trump has harshened his tone toward Putin but given no indication that he is ready to take strong action against him. India and Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, have no appetite to act against the Kremlin on this scale. This plainly means that Putin will continue earning enough from the oil trade to fund a war effort—and perhaps not just in Ukraine.
The era of peace in Europe thus appears to be over. The war in Ukraine is much more likely to continue than it is to stop. Putin has no reason to let up, and Zelensky has no reason to give in: the Ukrainian president believes that conceding part of Ukraine now would eventually lead Kyiv to lose all of it. For him, under these circumstances, the cease-fire at the end of the tunnel is the
light of an oncoming train. Nothing but death is predetermined. Trump and others have the power to change their opinions and tactics. But the best Europeans can do now is accelerate their efforts to arm Kyiv—and themselves.
DMYTRO KULEBA was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine from 2020 to 2024.