• Russia
• Ukraine

Likewise, Trump scolds and praises Russian President Vladimir Putin for “killing a lot of people” while dropping the demand for a cease-fire and spewing happy-talk about business deals with Russia. Trump publicly rebuked Putin for Russia’s increasingly deadly barrages on Ukrainian cities—writing in April on Truth Social: “Vladimir, STOP!”—and subsequently imposed 50 percent tariffs on India (but not Russia or China, its main backer) partly over its Russian oil imports. Such chaotic vacillations have muddied the outlook and slowed progress to the end goal. Trump variously raises and lowers expectations about which side needs to make the most concessions, which makes diplomacy a guessing game and increases the risk that Washington simply walks away.

Scholarship on how wars end offers insights on charting a clearer path. Wars reveal information that was previously uncertain about the true balance of power and will between the combatants. A bargaining space only starts to open when beliefs about what is achievable on the battlefield change. As Russia’s war against Ukraine shows, the path to convergence of updated expectations is often long and tortuous, as the belligerents struggle to gain advantage and avoid worse outcomes after the initial battles. Diplomacy then codifies the new reality and if possible adds enforcement. Third parties such as China, Europe, North Korea, and the United States matter mainly insofar as they provide or withdraw concrete support that shifts battlefield expectations or credibly backstops a settlement.

In Ukraine, convergence is visible enough to attempt a deal. Kyiv’s prospects for retaking all occupied territory have dimmed; Moscow’s hopes of compelling capitulation at a bearable cost in a short time frame have, too. Russia’s advances are incremental and slow yet still cost roughly 1,000 casualties per day. Notwithstanding some technological adaptations, the Russian army has replicated many of the deficiencies of its Tsarist and Soviet predecessors, particularly in terms of combined arms operations. Russia’s strategy of bombarding Ukrainian civilian targets and infrastructure also has a poor track record of forcing capitulation, as U.S. strategic bombing in World War II showed—at least absent the use of nuclear weapons, an option that Putin is evidently unwilling to exercise in the current situation. Meanwhile, ordinary Russians are increasingly feeling the impact of the war, not least the growing fuel shortages brought about by Ukraine’s recent campaign targeting refineries.

A closer view of the Ukraine map in the Oval Office on Aug. 18 shows the percentages of territory under Russian control according to the White House. White House

Expectations for a territorial agreement are thus converging around the current line of control—except the Kremlin is demanding additional land that it has already annexed on paper but has been unable to take by force. Putin set out these territorial conditions as part of a proposed peace deal in June 2024. Kyiv rejected them, still hopeful that Western military support and punishing sanctions would turn the tide. Now victory is not imminent for either side and the war has become attritional. Given the stalemate on the battlefield, policy should be guided not by maximalism but by realism.

Three policies could translate Trump’s so-far-unfocused peacemaking instincts into a workable endgame.

Lock the line of control, refuse a de jure surrender of territory, and allow the Kremlin to sell it as a victory to Russians by redrawing Ukraine’s internal map.

Kyiv can give the current front line greater salience by immediately passing legislation that redraws its internal oblast borders so that Ukrainian-held portions of illegally annexed regions are incorporated into the adjacent, unannexed Ukrainian oblasts: the unoccupied part of Donetsk into Kharkiv oblast; unoccupied Zaporizhzhia into Dnipropetrovsk oblast; the right-bank slice of Kherson into Mykolaiv oblast.

This internal administrative switch would do two things at once. First, it relieves Kyiv of surrendering any territory not already lost in battle while avoiding any de jure recognition of annexation. Second, it lets Putin claim the headline—the four oblasts he demands—while the actual boundaries are de facto shrunken and annexation remains internationally unrecognized.

Once Kyiv has anchored the lines with rapid parliamentary approval, Trump can present this revised map to Moscow as the basis for an armistice or a nonrecognition peace settlement. If the Kremlin balks, the White House can pair the offer with a coercive ladder—renewed enablers for Ukraine’s long-range strikes on Russian logistics and infrastructure, transfer to Ukraine of a scalable portion of Russia’s frozen funds, tighter secondary sanctions, and pressure on energy intermediaries—so that delay is costly.

No one should expect Putin to abandon his mythmaking about “historical Russian land” to justify Russian expansion. Russia cannot be trusted not to restart its war on Ukraine after a period of recovery. It also has a nasty habit of illegally moving physical border posts—for example in Georgia, which has steadily lost territory to Russian-occupied South Ossetia. The point is to codify the current reality at the lowest feasible cost while establishing snapback tools if Russia restarts its offensives.

As during the Cold War division of Germany—and akin to the Military Demarcation Line between North and South Korea—the border will require fortification and monitoring. It will unavoidably be a bitter pill for Ukrainians to swallow. The objective is to stabilize the divide while preventing the legal legitimization of aggression.

Make Ukrainian capacity and its right to self-defense—not Western promises—the core security guarantee.

Just as Putin cannot be trusted to refrain from attacking Ukraine again, neither the Europeans nor the United States is likely to provide and uphold sweeping security guarantees. Credible commitments to sustain a settlement must therefore start in Kyiv. Ukraine’s model should be Finland: militarily strong, indisputably sovereign, nonprovocative, with a successful track record of repelling Soviet conquest and subjugation, and steadily harmonizing its defenses to NATO standards since joining the European Union.

A militarily strong and sovereign Ukraine raises the costs of renewed invasion without advertising tripwires that Western governments may not produce or honor in case of renewed attack. The United States and Europe can aid with training, air defense, munitions production, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance cooperation calibrated to deter without intentional provocation.

This framework means that Trump must clearly repudiate the Kremlin’s demands—which he once tacitly supported—for Ukrainian regime change and disarmament as unacceptable, given every state’s basic right to self-defense. Trump can help Putin navigate this hurdle by underscoring U.S. recognition that Russia has legitimate security concerns that can be discussed in a renewed Euro-Atlantic security dialogue, military-to-military talks, and the expansion of current risk reduction arrangements beyond ballistic missile launch notifications and top-level deconfliction hotlines. Furthermore, Kyiv recommitted this year to holding elections once the war has ended.

Accelerate Ukraine’s integration into the European Union while parking the NATO membership question.

Washington and its European partners should extract Moscow’s formal acquiescence to Ukraine’s EU trajectory while deferring NATO debates. EU accession serves three functions: It speeds economic recovery and governance reforms; ties Ukraine into Europe’s defense-industrial base and manpower pool; and gradually shifts security burdens to Europe as U.S. commitments contract. If European rearmament of itself and Ukraine stalls, more than Ukraine’s security is at stake; if it succeeds, deterrence and European collective defense deepen. Either way, Moscow should never be given a veto over NATO decisions, nor should the NATO membership question be litigated as part of any deal.

This three-point plan can work—especially for Trump. Properly harnessed, his contradictions become negotiating assets. He can frame the clever map fix as commonsense realism to his domestic base, posture toughness toward Moscow with an explicit enforcement ladder, and still offer Putin a face-saving off-ramp he can sell at home. If Russia violates terms, the United States retains leverage—economic, financial, and in terms of military, enablers for Ukraine’s deep-strike capacity. Europe carries a growing share of the load as EU integration proceeds.

The alternatives are unpalatable for all parties. A realistic settlement that matches battlefield reality, spares Zelensky and the Ukrainian people intolerable legal concessions, and lets Moscow claim the optics it demands is the best available path to stop the killing now—without pretending that Ukraine and the West’s long contest with Russia is over.