Almost three years after Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s troops to invade Ukraine, the war is entering what could be its final phase, and a deal to end it seems likelier than ever.
Ukraine is struggling: It has been steadily losing ground since the summer, its army faces an increasingly severe shortage of soldiers, and Russia has gained six times more territory so far this year than it did in all of 2023. After long vowing not to cede any territory to Russia, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, recently acknowledged that Ukraine’s army right now lacks the strength to liberate all of the land Russia occupies and broached the idea of postponing that goal in return for NATO membership. A recent Gallup poll revealed that some 52 percent of Ukrainians favor a quick, negotiated end to the war, compared with only 27 percent last year.
Ukrainians are battle-weary, but Russia, too, has problems. Ukraine and its allies estimate that the Russian Army’s dead and wounded could be around 700,000, and geolocated tallies have suggested that more than 14,000 pieces of Russian military equipment have been destroyed. Casualties — which Britain’s ministry of defense estimated to average around 1,500 a day in the first half of November — and losses of weaponry on this scale cannot be sustained indefinitely.
Russia’s economy is also showing the strain. The Russian central bank projects that growth will fall sharply next year, to as low as 0.5 percent. The central bank says inflation is 8.54 percent — it raised interest rates to a punishing 21 percent in October — but some private surveys suggest it may be at least twice that. At the end of November the ruble dropped to its lowest level since March 2022. The cost of basic food items such as butter, cabbage and potatoes has soared, and some stores have started storing butter packets in locked cabinets to prevent theft.
Despite pouring vast resources into the war, Mr. Putin still does not control all of Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces in Ukraine, which, together with Luhansk, are part of his declared goals. He, too, has begun to outline his terms for a cease-fire — even as his troops push forward and before he has managed to fully eject Ukrainian troops from the parts of Russia’s Kursk province that they overran in an audacious gambit in August.
Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House has put everyone on notice. Mr. Trump has vowed to end the war quickly and will not lack leverage to do so — he can halt military aid to Ukraine if it won’t negotiate and increase it if Mr. Putin refuses to come to the table. But, though various proposals for a deal have been floated privately and publicly, it’s not clear that Mr. Trump has a workable plan.
Still, a deal will eventually be done, so it’s time to plan for the postwar phase. Whatever is agreed, Ukraine will continue to adjoin a large and powerful neighbor that could attack again. Talk has therefore turned to security guarantees if Mr. Putin flouts the terms of a political settlement. When Mr. Zelensky met with Mr. Trump and President Emmanuel Macron of France in Paris this month — Mr. Zelensky’s first in-person meeting with Mr. Trump since the election — he apparently used the opportunity to press the importance of such assurances.
Here are four possible scenarios for Ukraine’s future security.
Mr. Zelensky wants NATO membership, but this hope will probably remain unfulfilled. Unanimity is required to admit a new member to NATO, and the closest the alliance has come to being of one mind on Ukraine was in 2008, when it announced that Ukraine would join its ranks at some unspecified future date. That vagueness owed to divisions that persist today: At least seven NATO countries are reported to oppose Ukraine’s entry or want to defer it indefinitely, including the United States — Mr. Trump’s top advisers have said that membership is off the table.
Alternatively, a coalition of the willing could pledge to protect Ukraine. The trouble is that Ukraine will want the United States to be among the guarantors. It views NATO as essentially a U.S. guarantee of protection and won’t consider any coalition reliable unless it’s fortified by American troops and weaponry. Mr. Trump, who seeks not only to end the war without making any promise to protect Ukraine, but also to reduce America’s security commitments in Europe in general, is unlikely to sign off on any such arrangement.
Mr. Trump’s statements and the people he has picked for the most senior positions in foreign policy and national security suggest that American military power will increasingly be directed toward the Asia-Pacific to counter China. Moreover, for simple geographic reasons, Ukraine’s security will always matter more to Europeans than to Americans. It’s therefore prudent to anticipate a reduced American military role in Europe that will require Europeans to, at minimum, carry more of the burden for their defense, perhaps even the primary responsibility for protecting Ukraine.
What might an endgame in which Europe takes the lead look like? Several European nations have discussed the possibility of stationing troops in postwar Ukraine. Last week,Mr. Macron, who has stressed that Europe must do more for its own defense, met with Poland’s president, Donald Tusk, to discuss deploying European soldiers in Ukraine following a peace settlement. Mr. Tusk later said his country was “not planning any such actions,” even following a cease-fire. In short, there have been talks about a European security guarantee, but no decision.
Another possible model — call it armed neutrality — will be the one Ukraine least prefers. It would require Russia to pledge not to attack Ukraine and for Ukraine to forswear both NATO membership and the deployment of foreign troops and armaments on its soil. Armed neutrality would leave Ukraine more vulnerable compared with the other solutions. It may also be the most achievable outcome. Mr. Putin has said neutrality is essential for “good-neighborly relations.” It may be hard to imagine good-neighborly relations in any circumstances, but Russia’s significant battlefield successes, particularly in the past few months, mean that Mr. Putin will be able to drive a hard bargain.
Ukraine cannot rely on a Russian promise of nonaggression and should maximize its security if armed neutrality is the outcome. It can and should reject any limits on the size of its army — something Russia insisted on during failed negotiations in 2022 — or on the conventional weapons that it can acquire or build. European countries, which are already training Ukraine’s troops and investing in its defense industries, can do more on both fronts. Ukraine has demonstrated it is a formidable adversary, and if its experienced, battle-tested army can be made stronger and better equipped, Russia will have to reckon with a much more powerful adversary.
After more than 1,000 days of a war that has killed thousands, displaced millions and destroyed large parts of Ukraine, the end may be approaching. But for a durable peace, rather than a freeze that’s just long enough for Russia to regroup and reattack, it’s what comes afterward that counts.
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