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Peace, postponed. As Trump fails to push Putin toward a ceasefire, what comes next for Ukraine?
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After kicking off peace negotiations in February with a phone call to Vladimir Putin, earlier this week, U.S. President Donald Trump had to call his Russian counterpart again. Months of talks, public spats, backchannel pressure, and high-stakes diplomacy have done little to move Trump’s administration closer to its stated goal of ending the Russia-Ukraine war. Nevertheless, Trump said his latest conversation with Putin “went very well,” adding that it’s now up to Ukraine and Russia to agree on the terms of a ceasefire. In recent weeks, however, it’s become clear just how far apart the two sides remain — so far, in fact, that a breakthrough looks increasingly unlikely. Meduza’s Razbor (“Explainers”) team looks at what the stalled negotiations reveal — and what they might mean for Ukraine and the future of the war.
In recent months, various theories have emerged to explain the unusual course of negotiations over the war in Ukraine — ranging from strategic political maneuvering to speculation that Putin and Trump are working in tandem to push Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky toward an unfavorable settlement. However, the simplest explanation may be that neither side in the conflict shares Trump’s apparent desire to end the war at any cost or on any terms. By continuing to engage in these ambiguous talks, both Kyiv and Moscow appear to be seeking strategic gains — or at the very least, hoping to prevent the other from gaining an advantage.
Kyiv’s aim is to convince Trump that it’s Putin, not Zelensky, who is obstructing peace. If successful, that message could theoretically lead to increased U.S. military aid and fresh sanctions against Russia. The Kremlin, for its part, is trying to portray Zelensky as unwilling to compromise — in hopes that the U.S. will disengage and end its military support for Ukraine, which would unquestionably benefit Russia on the battlefield.
Of course, both sides would agree to a truce — but only on their own terms. Ukraine, together with its European allies, presented its own proposal to Trump: freezing hostilities along the current front line, the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Kharkiv region and a small part of Mykolaiv region near the Dnipro River estuary, and the handover of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to joint Ukrainian–U.S. control. Kyiv would also receive binding U.S. security guarantees in the event of another Russian attack. Frozen Russian assets in the West would go toward reconstruction as a form of reparations, and sanctions on Moscow would be lifted in step with Russia’s compliance with the terms of the agreement.
Trump’s proposal
Trump modified this plan to make it more appealing to Putin: he removed the clause on reparations, declined to offer clear security guarantees to Ukraine, promised to lift sanctions immediately, and said he would unilaterally recognize Crimea as Russian territory. Putin, as it turned out, ultimately rejected the deal — despite Trump’s assurance that he could secure Putin’s agreement. Zelensky, for his part, opposed any U.S. recognition of Russia’s claim to Crimea.
After the Kremlin walked away from Trump’s proposal, Zelensky and several European leaders responded with an ultimatum, threatening tougher E.U. sanctions unless Russia agreed to a 30-day ceasefire. In response, Moscow scheduled a meeting with the Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul, where Russian envoy Vladimir Medinsky demanded the full withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the entirety of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions — Ukrainian territories that Russia has formally claimed in its constitution. Medinsky also said Russia was “prepared to fight forever.”
Kyiv rejects Moscow’s demands out of hand. The Trump administration, too, has called them excessive. A week before the Istanbul talks, Vice President J.D. Vance said that “Russia can’t expect to be given territory they haven’t even conquered yet.”
After the Istanbul talks went nowhere, Trump and Putin had a phone call that, according to Trump, “went very well.” It’s clear that, at least tactically, Putin came out ahead: Russia is pressing on with its war, and there has been no meaningful effort to penalize the Kremlin for it. The United States hasn't imposed new sanctions, and there is no discussion in Washington about increasing military aid to Ukraine. All of this makes a compromise-based end to the war in the coming months appear increasingly unlikely.
Why Putin won’t compromise — and why Zelensky is holding firm
Dan Reiter, a political science professor at Emory University and author of How Wars End, has studied the conclusions of military conflicts through the lens of game theory. According to Reiter, at the start of a war, both sides have incomplete information about their opponent and their own capabilities. As the fighting progresses, each side gathers some of that missing information and reassesses whether its goals remain attainable. Naturally, these goals may be adjusted.
In the first years of the full-scale invasion, both the Kremlin and Kyiv came to the same core realization: a rapid, total conquest of Ukraine and regime change in Kyiv — Putin’s original objective — were out of reach. At the same time, Ukraine retaking all the territory it had lost since 2014 was equally unlikely. But this mutual understanding didn’t bring peace.
Instead, with both sides abandoning hopes for a swift victory, the conflict shifted into a war of attrition. Russia, with its greater resources, is now betting — using Putin’s own words — that it can “grind down and finish off” Ukraine. Kyiv, meanwhile, is trying to prove that the cost of doing so will be too high for Moscow to bear.
READ MORE ABOUT THE TALKS
Reiter notes that even when both sides develop a clearer understanding of their relative strength, that alone isn’t enough to end a war. The most critical factor, he argues, is the presence of credible guarantees once a peace agreement is reached. The only absolute guarantee is the total destruction of the enemy — something that has been essentially off the table for centuries.
Other forms of guarantee — such as occupation or an externally backed government (as in postwar Germany or Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein), or a shared interest in avoiding future conflict (as in the case of Korea) — tend to be unreliable. And for Putin, the outcome of the Syrian war may now serve as a cautionary tale: once Russia and Iran’s military presence weakened, their ally Bashar al-Assad’s regime quickly collapsed.
Today, it remains entirely unclear how either Russia or Ukraine could receive reliable guarantees of a lasting ceasefire or peace — even if both sides were to agree to halt hostilities. Western powers have shown little interest in offering Ukraine the kind of security guarantees that would commit them to war with Russia in the event of a breach. For Putin, the only acceptable form of guarantee appears to be a radical weakening of the Ukrainian Armed Forces — similar to the terms his delegation proposed during the 2022 Istanbul talks — and/or a complete halt to Western military aid.
In his book, Reiter also highlights the role of international coalitions in sustaining a war effort. In this regard, the future of U.S. support — and more broadly, the cohesion of the Western coalition backing Ukraine — has become the greatest source of uncertainty, especially with Donald Trump back in the White House. That uncertainty is now a key reason why both sides lack a full picture of the situation.
Three possible outcomes are now shaping the negotiating landscape. Ukraine might receive significantly more aid than it did under President Biden; it might receive the same amount; or Trump could cut off aid entirely. Both the Kremlin and Kyiv are trying to steer negotiations toward the scenario that favors them.
Trump’s team initially planned to use a carrot-and-stick approach to push the warring sides toward peace. In 2024, Keith Kellogg — Trump’s envoy for Ukraine negotiations — outlined the plan in an article. If Zelensky resisted a peace deal, he wrote, the U.S. would threaten to withhold aid, and if Putin obstructed peace, Washington would expand its support for Ukraine.
In practice, Trump hasn’t applied this strategy with any consistency. The lack of predictability has added to the uncertainty surrounding the negotiations, complicating efforts to reach a peace deal, as both Kyiv and Moscow continue to hope that Trump will ultimately side with them.
historical comparisons
Whose side is Trump more likely to take?
Trump has shown little interest in expanding U.S. aid to Ukraine — a stance that marks a clear departure from President Biden’s policies. He has repeatedly claimed that supplying weapons to Kyiv will not bring about a Ukrainian victory and could instead escalate the conflict and drag the United States into a world war. As a result, the White House is not currently considering any plans to increase military support.
At the same time, both domestic and international factors may limit the likelihood of a complete cutoff in U.S. aid. A temporary freeze on deliveries during a dispute with Zelensky in late February triggered a diplomatic rift between the United States and the European Union.
Legally, a total withdrawal of support would be difficult for the White House. Roughly half of the pledged military assistance falls under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which allows the administration to transfer existing weapons and equipment from U.S. military stockpiles at its discretion. But the other half comes through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which relies on binding contracts with American defense manufacturers. Once signed, that equipment legally belongs to Ukraine. To cancel those deliveries, Trump would need to convince Congress that the weapons are urgently needed by the U.S. itself for other purposes.
At the end of last year, Biden authorized the maximum amount of aid allowed under both programs. As a result, unless Trump takes specific action to limit shipments, Ukraine is set to receive more military aid by value in 2025 than it did in 2024. Moreover, the flow of weapons won’t fully stop in 2026, though it will certainly become less flexible. Rapid deliveries from U.S. stockpiles under the PDA program will end, but weapons production under long-term USAI contracts will continue. This means Ukraine will keep receiving missiles for air defense systems, HIMARS rockets, howitzer shells, and other critical munitions. However, the supply of armored vehicles — infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers — will likely dry up. And the U.S. remains Ukraine’s primary source for armored vehicles (excluding tanks).
Another point of uncertainty is the re-export of U.S.-made weapons by third countries. These shipments — which make up a significant share of support from the broader Western coalition — require U.S. approval, and that approval has proven unpredictable as Trump’s administration vacillates. One example: for several months, the U.S. held up Australia’s request to transfer 49 promised Abrams tanks to Ukraine. The green light came just ahead of Trump’s scheduled call with Putin.
Against the backdrop of slow-moving negotiations, the most likely scenario remains a continuation of U.S. support at current levels, with a gradual decline as the Biden-era contracts are fulfilled. Europe, too, is unlikely to pick up the slack. E.U. countries are currently focused on rearming and strengthening their own militaries rather than significantly expanding aid to Ukraine. Even if they wanted to help more, they wouldn’t be able to replace U.S. deliveries in several critical categories — including air defense missiles, long-range strike systems, and armored vehicles.
More on sanctions
How long can Ukraine hold out — and how long can Russia keep fighting?
Tactical and operational constraints have long ruled out the possibility of major breakthroughs by either army — the kind of advances that could decisively overwhelm the other side. Both Russian and Ukrainian forces deploy only a small portion of their troops to frontline positions. Offensives are typically carried out by small assault teams of three to ten soldiers. Several such groups may target positions with a similarly sized number of defenders, often just a few dozen troops.
Occasionally — when there’s a lot of open ground to cross — armored groups are used, carrying larger detachments of soldiers. But success is far from guaranteed. In recent weeks, both sides have suffered losses in equipment and personnel while attempting to breach each other’s defenses near Toretsk. Russian forces failed in an assault toward the southern outskirts of Kostiantynivka; later, Ukrainian forces lost an armored group in another attempt to push into central Toretsk.
The bulk of each army’s forces remains in the near rear, where they operate precision strike weapons, primarily drones. These drones now prevent either side from massing troops for deep advances through enemy lines. Classic military maneuvers like encirclements, breakthroughs behind enemy lines, and other sweeping operations drawn from past wars have become virtually impossible under these conditions.
In the spring, Ukraine introduced a new concept near Pokrovsk with some success: a so-called “drone line” — a concentration of precision weaponry in the form of drone regiments and brigades capable of striking targets up to 10–15 kilometers (about six to nine miles) behind enemy lines. The goal was to sever frontline units from their nearby supply and support hubs. This strategy temporarily stalled Russia’s advance toward Pokrovsk and, in some areas, allowed Ukrainian counterattacks to push Russian units back. In response, Russian commanders deployed a newly formed drone regiment of their own, which helped halt the Ukrainian counterattacks.
Russia applied the same tactic even more effectively in the Kursk sector: by early March, Russian drones had severed supply lines to Ukrainian forces near Sudzha, leading to the collapse of Ukraine’s defenses in the area.
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The growing use of drones has already reshaped the nature of the war. Artillery — once the dominant weapon on the battlefield — now plays a reduced role, which has in turn eased Ukraine’s reliance on foreign deliveries of artillery systems and millions of shells. But as Ukrainian officers have told Western experts, drones alone cannot offset Russia’s advantage in artillery and air power. Moreover, neither side has been able to maintain a long-term edge in drone warfare: every technological breakthrough — whether fiber-optic drones or large-scale drone operator units — is quickly copied. Counter-drone technologies continue to lag behind in this fast-moving arms race.
Previously, the weak point for both armies was considered to be irrecoverable losses in armored vehicles. But ironically, the rise of drone warfare has helped ease this pressure. Under constant drone attacks — and remote mining operations carried out by drones — armored vehicles have become less effective and are now used more sparingly. According to ukr.warspotting.net, Russian losses in armored equipment during the first five months of this year were less than half what they were for the same period in 2024. Russia continues to lose more hardware (based on verified footage) than it can produce from scratch. Still, it’s increasingly moving away from armored fleets. Instead, it’s relying on nimble, lightweight units on motorcycles and quad bikes — which, surprisingly, are less vulnerable to drones than heavier, slower vehicles packed with troops. Ukrainian forces, too, are now regularly deploying motorcycles in counterattacks.
In a war where both sides are technologically matched, numerical advantage becomes decisive. And according to limited data from both armies, Russia appears to be expanding its manpower edge. In mid-2024, the pace of new Russian contract enlistments dropped sharply — based on federal budget data for the first three quarters of 2024, which includes a line item for one-time enlistment bonuses. But regional data from 37 Russian regions (not all of which publish this information) suggests a sharp rebound — likely due to increased federal and local bonuses. If that trend holds nationwide, Russia may now be adding 1,000–1,500 new contract soldiers per day — roughly 30,000 to 45,000 per month. According to estimates by Meduza and Mediazona, Russia was losing 500–750 soldiers per day in the second half of 2024. By comparison, Ukrainian officials say their forces have been recruiting no more than 30,000 people per month.
At the same time, neither side currently has large strategic reserves. The only forces available for immediate deployment are units freed up after the battle for Sudzha — though some of those troops remain engaged along the border between Russia’s Kursk region and Ukraine’s Sumy region. Ukraine’s Armed Forces have already had to redeploy one brigade from Sumy to reinforce defenses where Russian troops broke through between Pokrovsk and Toretsk.
That breakthrough is reminiscent of a similar Russian offensive launched one year ago northwest of Avdiivka, near the village of Ocheretyne. What initially appeared to be a slow-moving assault eventually created serious problems for Ukraine, culminating in the loss of large swaths of territory around Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, Vuhledar, and Velyka Novosilka.
This time, the goal of the Russian advance appears to be the Kramatorsk–Sloviansk agglomeration — the heart of the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donbas. It’s unlikely that Russia will capture all of the territory the Kremlin currently demands — namely, the entirety of four Ukrainian regions — in the coming months. But further battlefield losses could sap Ukraine’s will to resist and undermine Western resolve to continue supporting Kyiv. That, in turn, could push Ukraine toward a peace deal not on its own terms.
Russia’s losses
Meduza’s Razbor (“Explainers”) team
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