The new report in The New York Times that Russia is quietly signaling a readiness to freeze the war in Ukraine is both suspicious and tantalizing.

The caveats are many: An armistice would leave Vladimir Putin in control of about a fifth of Ukrainian territory. He is not trustworthy; he could use prolonged negotiations to bolster his forces for a renewed push, or to lull Western lawmakers into cutting aid for Ukraine; he may be stalling in the hope that Donald Trump, his preferred choice for president, will return to the White House and stiff Ukraine.

But if Mr. Putin turns out to be serious, Ukraine should not pass up an opportunity to end the bloodshed. Recovered territory is not the only measure of victory in this war.

A painful reality check shows the 600-mile-long Ukrainian-Russian front in a figurative and literal freeze, draining Ukrainian resources and lives without much prospect for change in the foreseeable future. The much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive of the past six months exacted a huge cost in casualties and materiel, but barely nudged the front lines. Ukraine’s top military commander has said the fight is at a “stalemate” — a notion deemed taboo not long ago — and only an unlikely technological breakthrough by one side or the other could break it. As the year draws to an end, lawmakers in the United States and Europe have separately held up critically needed aid packages for Ukraine, and there’s no certainty how they will fare in the New Year.

The conflict could still take an unexpected turn, as it has before. But the prospect at this juncture is of a long war of attrition, inflicting ever more damage on Ukraine, sacrificing ever more lives and spreading instability over Europe. The way things are going, “Ukraine will for the foreseeable future harbor Europe’s most dangerous geopolitical fault line,” argues Michael Kimmage, author of “Collisions,” a new history of the war. He foresees an endless conflict that would deepen Russia’s alienation from the West, enshrine Putinism and delay Ukraine’s integration into Europe.

That, at least, is the bleak prognosis if victory in the war continues to be defined in territorial terms, specifically the goal of driving Russia out of all the Ukrainian lands it occupied in 2014 and over the past 22 months, including Crimea and a thick wedge of southeastern Ukraine, altogether about a fifth of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.