President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to end the Russo-Ukrainian war, and the details of that peace are becoming clear. Washington intends to use sanctions to cajole Russia into negotiations while pressuring Ukraine to accept the loss of its illegally annexed territories. The war shall cease along current lines of control and European peacekeepers will be deployed. The use of U.S. or NATO mission forces is up for debate, with even Defense Secretary Hegseth seemingly unsure about what exactly America’s Ukraine policy is; Hegseth recently stated that it was the position of the Trump administration that Ukraine should not join NATO nor attempt to regain territory lost since 2014, but then had to walk back those comments the next day, presumably for being too concessionary to Putin.
Ukraine’s inability to regain the territories seized by Russia since 2014 or 2022 is another ‘realistic observation.’ Both Ukraine’s ineffectual 2023 counter-offensive coupled as well as the costly yet steady Russian advance since spring 2024 do not suggest that full liberation will be forthcoming. Kyiv’s difficult position is primarily the result of the Biden administration’s slow walking military aid and restricting the circumstances under which US-supplied weapons could be used, despite referencing the U.S. as the world’s “arsenal of democracy.”
Even so, Ukraine’s martial capacity to reclaim its territory must be put aside. Russia’s war economy—and thus military-industrial strength—may collapse before either the Ukrainian or Russian frontline, dramatically changing the war. That must be the backup plan when, not if Putin and his thugs prove to be dishonest negotiators. But if peace is the first plan, it must not be “peace at all costs.” If a ceasefire agreement will accept these ‘realities’ on the ground, the United States must never acknowledge Russia’s invasion as legitimate. The “temporarily occupied territories” of Ukraine, as Kyiv refers to them, must remain “temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.”
Firstly, it would be the greatest moral cowardice. Russia invaded Ukraine to destroy Ukrainian statehood, subjugate the Ukrainian people, eradicate the Ukrainian language, and exploit their land and labor. Russians have waged this war by razing cities, bombing civilians, executing and raping prisoners, and kidnapping thousands of children. Allowing that to continue unpunished in occupied eastern Ukraine and Crimea is revolting; legitimizing it would be a shame too great to consider. If the war ceases, or even pauses, along the current front, the United States and Europe must assist Kyiv’s efforts to reclaim those territories. Sanctions and other levers must remain in place to coerce and convince Moscow to relinquish the territories it has taken. If military force cannot do the job, diplomacy must, even if it takes generations.
There’s historical precedent to outright ignore Moscow’s conquests diplomatically while maintaining some diplomatic relations. After the Soviet Union occupied the independent Baltic states in 1940, as part of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the United States never ceased recognizing independent Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. When Soviet oppression retreated starting in 1990, the U.S. mission continued there as if the ties had simply been inconvenienced. Every official U.S. map should make it clear that all of Crimea, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Zaporizhia belong to Ukraine.
Leaving Ukrainian people and land permanently imprisoned within Russia is no path to peace. The United States won great political victories and made great blunders during the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. The integration of former Warsaw Pact states into NATO and the EU was a great success in pushing back against the imperialistic center that is Moscow. The Baltic States have become economic and democratic powerhouses, whose contribution to NATO is often underappreciated, as detailed in a report by the Congressional Research Service. At the same time, diplomatic missteps like George H. W. Bush’s “Chicken Kiev” speech encouraged Russians not to see Ukraine as a legitimate nation. Moscow sold the lie to its citizens that it was fighting al-Qaeda equivalent extremists in Chechnya, securing domestic support at home while enabling Putin to engage in adventurism abroad, as Jeffrey Mankoff writes in Empires of Eurasia. Many Americans are familiar with the conspiracy theory that George Bush allowed 9/11 to happen as a pretext to launch a global war on terror; this is obviously on true, yet many would be surprised to learn that the Russian equivalent of 9/11, the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings which precipitated an invasion of Chechnya, were most likely carried out by the Russian government at the direction of then prime minister Putin.
If Kyiv is forced to amputate its stolen territories, there’s no excuse to withhold NATO membership. Russia’s internationally recognized borders already encompass lands that have no business being Russian. The enclave of Kaliningrad was foolishly given to the Soviets in the 1945 Potsdam declaration, when it should have remained German or at least been given back to Poland. The former option was of course unacceptable politically in 1945, and while the latter would have left the city in Communist hands until 1989, at least the city variously known as Königsberg or Królewiec would be free today. Now, instead, it is a thorn in NATO’s side. Russian propagandists regularly demand that Russia at least seize a corridor through Poland and Lithuania to unite Kaliningrad with the Russian mainland. Finland ascended to NATO in 2023, despite its historic sovereignty territory still being held captive by Russia since the Winter War of 1939. If the West must take the “realist” position in its cruel abandonment of conquered Ukrainian territory, it has no historical or geopolitical justification to leave the rest of Ukraine open to future invasion under pretenses of “armed neutrality.”
A deal that provides no peace, no security, and no justice is not a deal that’s built to last. Treaties that give recognition and breathing room to violent, expansionist tyrants are an especially dangerous risk to both national interests and honor. If Washington prioritizes ending the conflict in such a way that gives Russia free rein to continue to menace Ukraine, it will precipitate only more violence. The Russians will continue to have the strategic room to maneuver and political motivations to slice out chunks of other free nations, threatening either a wider European war or the slow extermination of freedom across their claimed sphere of influence. Neither of those outcomes is worth a temporary silence from the trenches in Donbas, Kharkiv, and Kursk.