Now Is Not the Time to Negotiate With Putin

As the Russian military’s slow advances in Ukraine continue, calls for talks to end the war have become common—some made by well-regarded foreign-policy specialists. Their ideas are neither prudent nor persuasive, but they should be examined in good faith rather than dismissed as appeasement.

Those urging negotiations rightly note that U.S. assistance to Ukraine on the level of the latest tranche—some $61 billion for military, economic, and humanitarian purposes—will not continue forever. Sending Ukraine another hefty sum next year will prove an even tougher sell, even if Joe Biden remains president; and if Donald Trump wins, he may end support altogether.

Still, the most recent U.S. aid package, along with the military assistance from various European countries, will enable Ukraine to fight into the next year—nearly half as long as the war has now lasted. Given this war’s twists and turns, the possibility that Kyiv could use it to rebound, while not certain, cannot be ruled out.

We can predict neither what that length of time will be nor the difference the newest batch of Western weaponry will make. Yet it’s important to keep in mind that it has now begun arriving, with the artillery and long-range version of the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) already in use.

Some claim that the best Ukraine can hope for is a deal that includes its partition. Even assuming this prognosis proves true, the nature and extent of a partition matters: There are worse and better variants. Ukraine’s ability to negotiate a postwar settlement that it can live with depends on its military performance over the next 18 months or so. In other words, negotiating from a position of strength matters.

Those proposing talks between Kyiv and Moscow tend to believe that Ukraine cannot possibly achieve anything resembling victory (such as regaining large tracts of territory now under Russian occupation); that the calendar favors Russia; and that Ukraine’s continued armed resistance will only produce more death, destruction, and territorial losses, which it can avert by reaching a settlement—soon. The war has taken an enormous toll, as I have seen firsthand during four visits to Ukraine, so the desire to end it is understandable.

Despite their good intentions, the “negotiate now” camp skirts a critical question: Who will (or should) initiate the talks? One possible answer: the United States, Ukraine’s principal supplier of weaponry—perhaps even over Kyiv’s head. But there’s virtually no chance of that happening so long as Biden remains president: Nothing he or members of his foreign-policy and national security teams have said or done suggests they plan to strong-arm Kyiv into a settlement with Moscow. The $42 billion in military assistance—part of the latest installment of American aid—is meant to keep Ukraine in the fight and will, into 2025, even if Trump wins in November.

Perhaps those advocating negotiations expect that Kyiv will conclude that continuing to fight will produce an even worse outcome and, moved by that logic, seek a compromise with Moscow. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hasn’t indicated the slightest inclination to take this step—not since the failure of the talks held in Belarus and Turkey soon after the invasion.

His goal remains retaking all lands lost to Russia since 2014—Crimea included. This objective isn’t written in stone and could change if the facts on the ground do, but so far it has not. One can dismiss it as outlandish, but what matters is that it persists.

Maybe those who recommend negotiations anticipate that Ukrainians’ war weariness will impel Zelensky to bargain with Russia. That’s possible, but for now Ukraine’s citizenry opposes a deal with Moscow at least as much as its leaders do—it’s common to be told by ordinary Ukrainians that Russian President Vladimir Putin can’t be trusted to honor the terms of a settlement. As proof, many point to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which included a pledge by Russia, one of the signatories, to respect Ukraine’s borders.

I have repeatedly asked various Ukrainians—bartenders and hotel clerks, former and current officials, soldiers on the front lines—whether the war had produced privations that were so painful that they had concluded, reluctantly, that it was time for a settlement with Russia.

Not one person said yes. Indeed, the greater the firepower Putin directs at Ukraine, the greater Ukrainians’ hatred of Russia becomes, and with it their resolve to keep resisting. Yes, there is draft evasion in Ukraine—some of it owes to the monthslong but now-resolved uncertainty about future U.S. military aid and the Ukrainian military’s subsequent shortage of critical equipment—but society at large isn’t ready to throw in the towel.

The proponents of a deal with Putin seem confident that they can divine the war’s denouement: a Russian victory—say control of Donbas, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia—and Ukraine’s subordination. Yet such surefire assertions lack an evidentiary foundation. No one can be sure how this war will end, and forecasters should be humbler given that just about every prediction thus far has proved to be incorrect.

Consider some examples.

U.S. Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, anticipated some three weeks before the invasion that Putin’s army would capture Kyiv “within 72 hours”—only to claim a year later that Russia had lost “strategically, operationally, and tactically.” Both claims missed the mark.

Early in the war, it was common to hear that Ukraine lacked the muscle to reclaim the areas the Russians had overrun by mid-2022. By year’s end, however, Ukrainian forces had expelled them from the north and northeast and in the south from the right bank of the Dnipro in Kherson province, regaining in all more than half the territory it had lost since the war began.

The failure of Ukraine’s summer-fall 2023 counteroffensive seemed to vindicate the prophets of doom, but Russia’s net gains last fall amounted to 188 square miles, just over half the land area of New York City.

Last October, a small band of Ukrainian marines forded the Dnipro River and created a bridgehead at Krynky, on its Russian-controlled bank, in Kherson province. The New York Times reported that one of them called the operation a “suicide mission.” The Times painted a pessimistic picture. Yet the Ukrainians expanded that foothold. Repeated Russian attempts to storm it failed and led to significant casualties and equipment losses and criticism from pro-war military bloggers in Russia. Two Russian generals were replaced—one soon after the Ukrainians ensconced themselves in Krynky, the other, amid mounting losses, in mid-April. The Ukrainians did evacuate Krynky that month but dug in elsewhere on the river’s Russian-held left bank.

But wait, some might say: Ukraine has been in deep trouble since Russia, having captured Avdiivka this February, has continued pushing westward—and now threatens areas north and northeast of Kharkiv city. But these successes owe to Ukraine’s monthslong, dire shortage of equipment—above all artillery. Russia had a 5:1 advantage in artillery shells by March, and Gen. Christopher Cavoli, head of U.S. European Command, warned the following month that the margin of Russia’s superiority could double “in a matter of weeks.”

That has happened in some places, and Ukrainian soldiers have struggled to hold their ground, let alone counterattack, especially because the Russians vastly outnumber them.

Yet there has been nothing resembling a collapse of Ukraine’s front line or large-scale Russian breakthroughs. The speculation that Russia might retake Kharkiv city—which lies just over 30 miles from the Russian border—doesn’t take into account that Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, encompasses 135 square miles. In the adjacent provinces—Belgorod, Bryansk, and Kursk—Russia has amassed some 30,000 troops; but it would need a substantially larger force to control Kharkiv, which has a population of 1.4 million. Plus, urban warfare, a particularly bloody business, gives defenders all manner of advantages over attacking infantry.

The calls for peace talks have another defect. They enumerate the problems faced by Ukraine’s armed forces—there are plenty to point to—but omit any mention of Russia’s, which I have discussed elsewhere.

Geolocated data show that Russa has lost nearly 16,000 pieces of equipment, including more than 3,000 tanks as well as over 5,000 armored personnel carriers, armored fighting vehicles, and infantry fighting vehicles. Plus, a third of its Black Sea Fleet’s ships and submarines have been damaged or destroyed. There’s been much debate about casualty figures in this war. The U.K. Ministry of Defense reckons that Russia’s total is 465,000 dead and injured soldiers. Yet even if the true number is only one-third of that, Russia’s losses, against a far weaker adversary, have still been substantial.

Does it follow that Ukraine lacks serious problems and will surely win? No and no. It does mean, though, that confident, linear projections declaring that Russia has become a juggernaut and that Ukraine should therefore sue for peace soon are questionable.

A major flaw in the pro-negotiation camp’s reasoning is the proposed timing. Many proponents of peace talks want them to begin soon, some as early as this summer—about a month from now. But the United States and its European allies have just started delivering tens of billions of dollars’ worth of armaments to Ukraine and won’t be finished by the beginning of fall. It would be foolish to rush into negotiations before seeing what difference the infusion of additional weaponry will make, whether Russia’s military can sustain its current tempo once Ukraine has more firepower, and how successful Ukraine’s draft proves to be.

If Ukraine, bolstered by additional troops and weaponry, claws back more territory—even if the gains fall well short of Zelensky’s ambitious aims—and Putin realizes that his army won’t be able to make additional gains, Ukraine will have greater leverage than it does now to shape a political settlement.

There’s another problem with the calls for negotiations: They assume that Putin wants them. But does he? Russia’s defense budget increased by almost 70 percent this year. As a proportion of Russian GDP it will reach 6 percent, compared to 3.9 percent last year. Nearly a third of the federal budget will support defense spending, compared to 16 percent in 2023. These aren’t the actions of a leader eager to negotiate.

And nothing Putin has said suggests otherwise. Last December, at his customary year-end marathon news conference during which he fielded questions from the media and the Russian public, he stated that the mission of the “special military operation”—Moscow has since begun to call it a war—remained unchanged: Ukraine’s de-Nazification, demilitarization, and neutrality, meaning ending its quest to enter NATO.

In September 2022, following a bogus referendum, Putin announced that four Ukrainian provinces—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia—were irrevocably part of the Russian Federation. That remains unfinished business; only Luhansk is more or less fully under Russian control.

Bearing in mind the hazards of prediction, and assuming that Zelensky’s goals could prove unattainable, one can envision this war ending in at least one of three ways.

1. The Russian military takes even more land, the West succumbs to Ukraine fatigue, and Putin imposes a punitive peace on Kyiv: Parts of Ukraine become Russian territory, and the remainder, while retaining independence, reenters Moscow’s orbit.

2. Despite intense efforts, Russia controls less Ukrainian territory than it does now, Putin recognizes that his army cannot do any better and may lose more land, a political settlement follows, and Ukraine eventually joins the EU and NATO, with the proviso that Kyiv will not permit NATO bases or the permanent presence of foreign troops on its soil.

3. The war becomes a stalemate, which both adversaries conclude cannot be broken, but Putin has enough leverage to ensure Ukraine’s neutrality. Kyiv uses its own bargaining power to insist on armed neutrality, which would give it the freedom to train its armed forces in Western countries, equip its army with Western weaponry, and thus remain outside Russia’s sphere of influence.

While other scenarios are certainly possible, these, save the first, share a commonality: They require that Ukraine boost its bargaining power by ending Russia’s momentum, mounting its own counteroffensive, and retaking more territory.

This will require time, which Ukraine now has: Western arms have just started reaching the front, and their volume will increase in the coming months. Russia and Ukraine may eventually hold talks on a political settlement. But now is not the time to initiate them.