After nearly four years of war, an estimated 1.5 million casualties, devastation and near-crippled economies on both sides, a resolution between Russia and Ukraine remains elusive.
The drive for the right mix of concessions and security guarantees will bring political and military leaders together for talks in Paris on Tuesday. Europeans officials are discussing a peace strategy they hope can win the backing of US President Donald Trump. On the front line, questions swirl on both sides about how they want the war to end.
Ukraine has signalled that it is willing to accept a ceasefire – a concession that includes losing a fifth of its territory – provided it receives firm security guarantees from America that will deter any future Russian attack. The bigger question is whether Moscow wants peace while its leaders believe there is a chance of more land being seized, even if it comes at a terrible cost.
Added into the mix is America's more aggressive stance following its Venezuela operations and belligerent talk of annexing Greenland, which could well change geopolitical dynamics.
Corrosive effect of talks
Analysts told The National that discussing a truce demoralises Ukrainian troops as the thinking is “why go to the front line and be the last to die in the war?”
Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine forum at the Chatham House think tank, recently returned from the country where she found the peace process was having a corrosive effect. “A lot of people are asking, why should I volunteer? Why should I mobilise if maybe peace is around the corner?” she said. “This is part of Russia’s game to undermine Ukraine internally.”
Bob Seely, a former British Conservative MP who visits Ukraine frequently, argued that dragging out talks helps Moscow by making the Kremlin appear reasonable, while also sowing division between Europe and the US and buying it time in the ground war.
“These peace processes are also useful for the Russians because they demoralise the Ukrainian armed forces,” Mr Seely added. “If you can convince yourself that the war is ending in a month’s time, why die before armistice day?”
Delaying sanctions
But there is one country that could, almost on its own, bring the fighting to an end. While Mr Trump can be commended for driving forward a peace deal, experts argue that, if he were to impose hard “secondary sanctions” on Russian oil exports coupled with allowing Ukraine to use its long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, Russian President Vladimir Putin would rapidly conclude negotiations.
“The elephant in the room is that the Americans and the Ukrainians can agree all they want, but unless Putin actually wants to stop invading Ukraine, I can’t see how it’s going to happen,” Mr Seely said. “The best you might end up with in 2026 is a temporary ceasefire.”
There is growing suspicion that the talks are merely part of the Kremlin’s procrastination strategy, stringing Washington along for as long as it can to delay harsher sanctions.
Lynette Nusbacher, a former military intelligence analyst, was direct about Moscow’s thinking on the negotiations. “Absolutely nothing has changed from a Russian point of view,” she said. “They made their demands in June 2024 and it is Trump’s responsibility to deliver Ukrainian acquiescence to those demands.”
Mr Seely suggests Washington's optimism regarding a deal “may well be very misplaced”.
“The Russians are fundamentally trying to play a very clever game to ensure that the Americans don’t put on secondary sanctions, or those sanctions are delayed as long as possible and want to draw out these negotiations for as long as possible,” he said.
Drone warfare
Despite Moscow’s claims of victory – which it allegedly tried to strengthen by getting its soldiers to enter a town and take pictures of Russian flags before leaving quickly – its advances have come at great cost. The latest UK Ministry of Defence intelligence shows that, since it invaded in February 2022, Russia has suffered more than one million casualties, including an estimated 300,000 dead.
“The Russians repeatedly demonstrate that they are winning just scraps of territory in order to achieve a political victory based on non-existent military victory,” Ms Nusbacher said.
She argued that Ukraine could be viewed as winning tactically because it was forcing Russia into “the single most costly thing you can do in war, which is to attack a well-dug-in position and the Russians are paying a horrific price for it”.
As long as Ukraine continues to “exact that price, they are winning the war” unless they suffer a huge withdrawal of western support, particularly US intelligence help. “The Ukrainians are perfectly capable of continuing to achieve battlefield victory as long as the Russians keep on charging into their drones and guns,” she added.
It is a view shared by former army officer Ben Barry, a Russia expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank. “The Russians still grind forward very slowly on enormous casualties,” he said.
The problem for Kyiv is not battlefield collapse, but manpower and time because, as Ms Nusbacher puts it, “as long as Putin keeps thinking he’s winning, and as long as Russian elites are unable to disagree with him, I don’t expect to see any change”. That is especially true with the “relentless” domestic messaging that success is inevitable.
Economy wobbles
Ms Lutsevych said Mr Putin “simply has to run out of money”, which would make it a struggle to get more recruits, forcing him to order an unpopular nationwide mobilisation.
While the Russian economy was “clearly under considerable pressure”, Mr Barry said, it had not yet cracked, showing a resilience that has likely led to Mr Putin’s refusal to compromise.
Lame ducks
Key to imposing those sanctions is what happens in the White House. “This current administration is just unwilling, for whatever reasons, to be tough on the Russians,” Mr Seely said.
But that could change as Mr Trump heads towards becoming a “lame duck” president, especially as Republicans are likely to lose control of the House or Senate in the autumn midterm elections.
“There is then the possibility that fairly broad American support for Ukraine might tend to push Trump towards a more traditional, adversarial approach to Russia,” Ms Nusbacher said.
What next?
To end the conflict, Ukraine would reluctantly agree to a ceasefire along the current front line, because its war-weary population accepts that “if you lost the battle, you lost the territory”, Ms Lutsevych said. “People would reconcile with that.”
The most optimistic scenario, Mr Barry said, would come when Mr Putin recognised that further battlefield gains were too costly. “Getting him to compromise could be accelerated by more American pressure is a possibility”, although there was little sign of that yet.
The experts' overall outlook for 2026 was bleak, with Russia failing to win decisively but also not being forced to halt, while Ukraine was under immense strain. “In very simple terms, somebody will have to tell Putin that he cannot win militarily,” Ms Lutsevych said. “Until then peace will remain elusive.”
