This series—led by the Futures Lab and featuring scholars across CSIS—explores emerging challenges and opportunities likely to shape peace negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. All contributions in the series can be found by visiting Strategic Headwinds: Understanding the Forces Shaping Ukraine’s Path to Peace.
From the beginning, Russian president Vladimir Putin believed he would win this war. Russian soldiers brought parade uniforms to the fight, not winter gear. He believed they would be in Kyiv in three days, greeted by all the Ukrainians who always wanted to be Russian.
It has been three years, not three days, but Putin still believes he can win on the battlefield. That belief will severely slow potential negotiations—as long as Putin thinks fighting benefits him, he has little incentive to make a deal. U.S. and European allies must change this calculus and change it quickly. Specifically, Western nations must signal that military assistance will accelerate in volume and capability the longer the fighting goes on. This will raise the cost side of Putin’s equation to the point that Russia comes to the table with an incentive to negotiate.
When Negotiations Work
Historically, wars end with either a complete military victory, a ceasefire, or a negotiated peace settlement. According to The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, only 16 percent of wars between 1946 and 2005 have ended in a negotiated solution. Among these peace settlements, 37 percent led to renewed conflict, often within just two years. Negotiations tend to be most successful when parties successfully establish a baseline of trust, address the root causes of the conflict, or provide a framework for future nonviolent resolution. Further, measures such as publicizing aspects of the negotiation process and involving trusted mediators can increase transparency and help insulate the peace process from potential external disruptions, increasing the likelihood of reaching an agreement.
Critical to any negotiation is that the parties want to be there. Negotiation theory describes this concept as a BATNA (bat-na): the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. In other words, if talks fail, what happens? If both sides think a return to fighting hurts their interests, the odds improve for a negotiated settlement. If, on the other hand, at least one party believes the fight is trending in their favor, and they believe they can sustain that fight for some time, the incentive structure flips. It makes more sense to keep fighting.
Putin is in that latter category, and given current trends, he is not wrong. Russia has played to type in this war. Just like in past conflicts, from World War II to the Winter War, Moscow has been willing to sacrifice stomach-turning quantities of men to achieve incremental gains. In Ukraine, it has thrown hardened soldiers and conscripts alike into a meat grinder to make minuscule territorial gains or to hold strategically pointless positions. But, over time, those gains have added up, and those defensive positions have been dug in deeply. Russia’s deep bench of men and materiel gives Moscow staying power.
Meanwhile, U.S. and European governments have slowly dripped resources into Ukraine. The aid has been enough to keep the Ukrainian patient alive but not enough to decisively shift the balance toward victory. Putin has successfully convinced Washington that he is to be feared and that he is crazy enough to drag NATO into war. Allies have let their fear of escalation overtake a winning military strategy. As a result, Putin has put a finger to the wind and sees it is blowing in his direction.
Why Talk When Russia Thinks It Can Win?
Assuming the allies continue to support Ukraine at this slow drip when the Trump administration asks Putin to sit down for peace talks in January, he’s likely to slow roll an answer. He will have no incentive to sit or to hurry at all. He cares not a bit whether more Russians (or North Koreans) die for his territorial ambitions. He likely assesses that the United States and Europe’s generosity with Ukraine is waning. He will see that time is on his side; he fights on, Zelenskyy loses more men, and Trump, eager to see his campaign promise fulfilled, cranks up the pressure. If Putin drags his feet, making vague noises about “good faith signals,” Trump might even reduce U.S. aid to Ukraine to force them to the table.
Ukraine cannot survive negotiations under those conditions. Putin will demand—and likely receive—territorial concessions. Crimea and the Donbas are guaranteed casualties. Even if Zelenskyy plays a weak hand brilliantly, he cannot ignore that his nation is increasingly fighting on fumes, against an adversary who is willing to drain national resources to win. Putin on the other hand has choices: he can either fight until he has the territory he wants, or he can send negotiators to draw out talks for years. While Zelenskyy’s BATNA is lost allies and a creeping military defeat, Putin’s is a grinding war of attrition that he is highly likely to win. As he sits in the Kremlin, that option looks pretty good.
The Clock Ticks for Everyone
The United States and Europe can flip this script by making clear that Putin’s future options are worsening, not improving. That will require resolve and turning the current IV drip of aid into a stream into a raging river.
The threat is the delivery of the weapons Ukraine needs to win, in increasing numbers and lethality as the months tick on. The Trump administration should send this threat as they send a new influx of air defense interceptors, such as Patriots and converted AIM-7, AIM-9, and AIM-120 missiles. They should also issue a timeline: next month, Ukraine gets a delivery of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, M777 Howitzers, and 155-millimeter artillery shells. Then longer-range missiles, such as ATACMS and GMLRS, then aerial support, such as armed MQ-9 Reaper drones and F-16 aircraft. The stakes go up every month Russia neglects to sign a deal. Economic sanctions should follow a similar path. Good faith negotiations result in limited sanctions relief; intransigence results in tightening the screws.
Finally, Putin himself may not want to give his own people the relief of peace, but his advisors and the oligarchs whose businesses have suffered as a result of this war are more reachable. They must believe that the picture is getting worse for Moscow, not better. Economic sanctions will continue to bite their bank accounts. More importantly, they need to fear their own population. They must believe that the Russian people will not stomach Ukrainian forces occupying Kursk, Ukrainian weapons landing on Russian barracks, and North Korean “special forces” operating on Russian soil. Perhaps most importantly, they need to believe their sons are next on the call-up sheet, and that the permissive approach toward enforcement of conscription is coming to an end. That will require an aggressive and clever information operation perhaps best run by those on Russia’s doorstep, such as the Poles, the Finns, and the Estonians. These nations have spent decades as a target of Russian disinformation; it is time the victim becomes the master.
The Cost of Forced Peace
The temptation to obtain peace at any cost is seductive. Trump has a measly few years to cement his legacy; Putin likely has a decade or more in office. He can afford to stall. In the face of that intransigence, Trump may want to just get things over with, give Putin what he wants, and force Zelenskyy into a weak peace as a rump state on the cold edge of Europe.
That would be a mistake. First, while Trump says he wants to end wars, a peace secured by handing Ukraine to Russia would only make more wars more likely. What would make Putin stop at Ukraine once he has gotten a taste of empire building? Romania, Moldova, Georgia, and the Baltics might be next on the menu. Second, Trump has said his ultimate goal is to increase the pressure on China. Giving in to Putin only emboldens Beijing in its own territorial and economic ambitions. A recovered, victorious Russia can begin to turn its energies toward repaying the debt it owes China—and Iran and North Korea—for its ongoing support. Finally, losing a negotiation like this to Putin is embarrassing for the strongest country the world has ever seen. Is Washington not clever enough to maneuver Moscow into concessions?
Just because Putin thinks he can win does not mean he can. He was wrong at the start of his “special military operation,” and he could be wrong now. But the West must be strong enough to prove him wrong.
Emily Harding is the director of the Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program and vice president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Aosheng Pusztaszeri is a research assistant with the Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program at CSIS.
