How can it end? A step-by-step guide to a possible Ukraine deal

To sum up what we know at this point, here’s a guide to potential Ukraine peace talks.

Right now, Ukraine has few options for reversing Russia’s recent gains on the battlefield. That means that any deal is likely to involve painful concessions by Ukraine, which could be seen as Trump’s rewarding Putin’s aggression. It also means that Russia will almost certainly drive a hard bargain.

But Putin may have his own incentives for making a deal. Russia’s economy risks runaway inflation amid enormous spending on the war, while the military is suffering some 1,000 or more casualties a day. And a settlement over Ukraine could pave the way for a reduction of Western sanctions.

The talks would be exceedingly complicated. Many doubt that Putin will negotiate in good faith, while Europe and Ukraine fear that Trump will be tempted to strike a deal with the Kremlin over their heads.

Still, Russia and Ukraine did make headway toward striking a deal when they last negotiated directly, back in spring 2022. And some experts believe that an agreement is possible that would satisfy Putin while preserving some form of sovereignty and security for Ukraine.

Who’s at the Table?

The Biden administration sought to isolate Russia diplomatically and said any negotiations about Ukraine’s fate had to involve the Ukrainians. Trump broke from that approach Wednesday, when he discussed Ukraine in a lengthy call with Putin and then said he would “inform” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of the conversation.

Now it’s Ukraine that appears isolated. Zelenskyy said he was not invited to discussions this week between top aides to Trump and their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia.

European countries may also be cut out — even though Europe’s total aid to Ukraine since the start of the war, roughly $140 billion, is greater than what the United States has provided.

Trump said he would “probably” meet Putin in Saudi Arabia soon. Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey have been mediating between Ukraine and Russia on matters like prisoner exchanges and navigation in the Black Sea.

Territory

Ukraine has said it will never recognize any change to its borders. Russia claims not just the roughly 20% of the country it already controls, but also a swath of Ukrainian-held land in four regions that it does not fully control.

A possible compromise: freeze the fighting.

Russia keeps control of the land it has captured but stops fighting for more. Ukraine and the West don’t formally recognize Russia’s annexation, even as Russia retains its broader territorial claims. An agreement could stipulate that territorial disputes will be resolved peacefully at some point in the future — say, 10 or 15 years, as Ukrainian negotiators proposed for the status of Crimea in the 2022 peace talks.

NATO and the EU

While Ukraine wants to reclaim the territory Russia has captured, it has also made clear that its future security is at least as important, meaning protection from renewed Russian aggression.

Ukraine describes NATO membership as the key to this protection. Russia describes the possibility of Ukraine joining the alliance as an existential threat to its own security.

The Trump administration has made it clear that it expects Russia to get its way here.

Leaving open a path for Ukraine to join the European Union, but not NATO, could be presented as a compromise. Before the 2022 peace talks failed, Russian negotiators agreed to language in the draft treaty that said the deal would be “compatible with Ukraine’s possible membership in the European Union.”

Security Guarantees

Absent NATO membership, Zelenskyy has floated the deployment of 200,000 foreign troops to Ukraine to safeguard any ceasefire. Analysts say the West can’t produce such a large force. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Sunday that his country would be ready to commit an unspecified number of peacekeeping troops.

But Russia wants its own “security guarantees” to assure that Ukraine won’t try to rebuild its military capacity and recapture Russian-occupied land. It wants to cap the size of Ukraine’s military and ban foreign troops from the country.

Threading this needle is widely seen as the trickiest aspect of any negotiation. A team of experts led by Marc Weller, a Cambridge international law professor who specializes in peace negotiations, has drafted a potential agreement that envisions a compromise: deploying a small international force of 7,500 staffed by countries acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine to keep the peace at the front line.

The Weller proposal envisions immediate sanctions against either side if it restarts hostilities. It would allow Ukraine to hold limited joint exercises with other countries and cooperate with them on weapons production and military training.

Ceasefire Mechanics

The durability of any peace could hinge on the nuts and bolts of a ceasefire agreement. Thomas Greminger, a former Swiss diplomat who was involved in monitoring the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine after 2015, flags three key issues.

The first is agreeing on the “line of contact” separating Russian from Ukrainian-controlled territory. Next there would need to be a “disengagement zone,” or buffer, between opposing forces, to prevent stray gunfire or misunderstandings from flaring into combat. Third, he said, there will need to be some way to hold both sides to account for ceasefire violations.

The language in the agreements “could be very technical” on issues like the disengagement zone and ceasefire enforcement, said Greminger, now the director of the Geneva Center for Security Policy think tank. But, he said, that language could be “quite decisive over whether the ceasefire holds.”

NATO in Eastern Europe

Putin claims his war isn’t just about Ukraine, but about forcing the West to accept a new security architecture in Europe.

Weeks before the invasion, he presented an ultimatum demanding that NATO stop expanding eastward and withdraw from much of Europe. And in his Feb. 12 call with Trump, Putin warned of “the need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict,” the Kremlin said.

That means Russia is likely to make demands that go well beyond the fate of Ukraine.

U.S. allies are likely to argue that a retreat of NATO in Europe will increase the risk of a Russian invasion for countries like Poland and the Baltics. But Trump might be amenable to such a deal, given his skepticism about U.S. deployments abroad.

All this will make for an incredibly complicated negotiation. Greminger, who has been working with experts close to governments with a stake in the war to game out how the talks could go, sees at least three negotiating tracks: U.S.-Russian, Russian-Ukrainian and Russian-European.

“You have at least these three levels,” he says. “There are no shortcuts.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.