Russia Isn’t Asking for ‘Too Much’ in Ukraine
Here’s the cold, hard truth: Washington can’t stop the fighting.
President Donald Trump quickly discovered that it would take more than 24 hours to bring peace to Ukraine and Russia. Indeed, Vice President J.D. Vance recently acknowledged that the conflict is “not going to end any time soon.” As for who is most to blame, the administration has recently been directing its fire at Moscow.
Trump admitted, speaking of Russian President Vladimir Putin: “It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along.” Vance allowed that Russia is “asking for too much.” (He also said the same about Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.) The result, Vance opined, is a “big gulf” between the combatants. However, such a gap is natural. The two governments have been at war for more than three years. As the increasingly bitter battle proceeded, both sides expanded their war aims and became less willing to consider concessions.
Had the allies been willing to negotiate before the invasion, commitments from Kiev to drop its request to join NATO and alliance members to withdraw their membership offer might have satisfied Putin. After Moscow failed to collapse the Zelensky government, Ukraine’s neutrality remained the Kremlin’s most important demand during talks between Moscow and Kiev just weeks after the Russian invasion. Since then, however, the Putin government has added territorial and other conditions.
Ukraine has undergone a similar transformation. Initially, the Zelensky government realized that it was lucky to have survived Russia’s initial onslaught. Kiev focused on survival, not recovery, in its early negotiations with Moscow. However, its dramatic battlefield successes ended its willingness to even negotiate, when it demanded that Moscow first evacuate all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea and the Donbass, lands that few military analysts believed Kiev could forcibly recover. Only after Trump took over and targeted Ukraine did Zelensky’s official attitude toward diplomacy soften. Even now, however, the Ukrainian president may be only play-acting in hopes that the frustrated American president will switch his ire to Moscow and reinvigorate U.S. aid for Ukraine.
War often hardens combatants against the compromises necessary for peace. In World War I Europe’s two contending blocs demanded ever more concessions as their losses and costs rocketed upward. Even during the conflict’s final months, with American soldiers flooding into France, the German army leadership continued to demand control over Belgian and French territory. Only after the Kaiser fired the obstructionist commanders did Germany agree to an armistice and, ultimately, peace.
In most conflicts negotiating peace takes time. There are almost always neutral powers and special envoys visiting combatants and promoting peace. However, governments which went to war demonstrated that they believe their interests to be important, if not vital. Moreover, as the human and material carnage rise those who chose war and managed the conflict feel increasing pressure to justify their decisions.
Which explains the reluctance of both sides in the Russo-Ukraine conflict to choose peace. Had Zelensky negotiated before Putin attempted his coup de main, Ukrainians likely would have avoided hundreds of thousands of casualties and multiple billions worth of destruction, while losing little additional territory. Now, if Zelensky is forced to yield even more land to win peace, his people will likely ask, why did he wait? The Russian president faces a similar dilemma. In 2022 Kiev clearly had moved into a Western orbit but had done nothing that presented a legitimate casus belli, let alone justified a conflict so costly in materiel and people. To lose what Russia had previously won would be judged a catastrophic failure. Even the status quo, with minimal gains over the last three years, would also be a bitter disappointment to many Russians. Hence, he is asking for a lot.
But is it really “too much”?
How should we define too much? Too much to get a negotiated agreement? That is not Russia’s objective. Putin tried diplomacy, and when that failed, he went to war. He would have preferred to achieve his ends without combat. However, now he is likely ready to compromise only if he can achieve his fundamental ends at lower cost. Ultimately, he, or the Russian people more broadly, not Trump, must decide what is too much. What the U.S. president believes is irrelevant—unless he is prepared to intervene in a way likely to change Russia’s decision.
Joe Biden was not prepared to do that. And so far Trump isn’t either. It isn’t easy to find even a card-carrying neoconservative who is ready for nuclear war with Moscow over Ukraine. Russia’s aggression was murderous, unjust, and reckless, but neither this belligerent nor conflict are unique. After all, the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq was based on a lie and caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, ravaged vulnerable religious minority communities, spawned new terrorist groups, and destabilized much of the Middle East. That doesn’t excuse Putin, but the U.S. is in no position to throw stones.
Nor does Washington have any reason to choose war; Ukraine’s status has never been a significant security issue for America. Nor do any of the allies want to defend Kiev, other than, perhaps, the Baltic states, which have de minimis forces and would leave the fighting to America. That’s why NATO’s 2008 commitment to induct Ukraine has gone unfulfilled for 17 years. The promise was meant to be a pat on the head, not a legal obligation, since in practice none of the member governments were prepared for war with a nuclear-armed power over interests that it viewed as existential.
The other option would be to strengthen sanctions already applied against Russia. Trump has threatened to do so, warning that perhaps Putin “has to be dealt with differently, through ‘banking’ or ‘secondary sanctions.’” However, economic penalties aren’t likely to cause any Russian government to yield on what it views as security essentials. And targeting other states, most importantly oil consumers through secondary sanctions, would have potentially catastrophic diplomatic impacts. Neither China nor India would likely yield, at which point Washington would risk wrecking an already challenging relationship with Beijing and an increasingly important partnership with New Delhi. And if they successfully resisted Washington’s diktat, other governments might follow. Even the Europeans have tired of successive U.S. administrations’ use of even minor financial ties to force compliance with American policy.
More fundamentally, such a policy would further enmesh the U.S. in the ongoing proxy war against Russia, thwarting Trump’s well-founded desire to get America out. Trump has opined: “I’m not happy about” Putin’s resistance to Washington’s ceasefire demand. However, Trump’s satisfaction is irrelevant. Attempting to impose his will would mean a continuing financial drain on the federal budget, already running $2 trillion annual deficits. It would mean continual diversion of sophisticated weapons from U.S. forces. It would mean underwriting a conflict that continues to ravage Ukraine and destabilize Europe. It would ensure essentially permanent hostility with Moscow, pushing the latter into an ever tighter embrace with China and more active alliance with North Korea. And, most importantly, it would present the continued danger of escalation by funding a deadly proxy war-plus against a nuclear power over interests far more important to the latter than to any American. In short, committing more completely to Ukraine’s cause would push costs and risks to well above any possible benefits and justifications.
Washington can and should encourage peace between Russia and Ukraine. However, it is not capable of forcing peace at acceptable cost and risk. Thus, the Trump administration should focus on American, not Ukrainian and Russian, policy. And that means withdrawing from the conflict.
Then Ukraine and its European backers could decide how to respond. They could press on with the war, with Kiev seeking the return of conquered territory and Europe increasing sanctions. However, they would have to bear the entire cost of doing so. Indeed, more realistic Ukraine advocates recognize that concessions to Russia are inevitable and urge Kiev to accept reality. Historian Mark Galeotti declared that “trading land for an end to the fighting is ‘not fair’ but may now be necessary.” If so, Galeotti writes, the Europeans should then ensure “that the mutilated country that emerges is truly sovereign, democratic and above all secure.”
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In any case, Washington should move ahead and seek to restore a modicum of civility to its relationship with Russia. To start, the U.S. should press Moscow to limit its ties to North Korea, especially aid for the latter’s missile and nuclear programs. Moreover, by relaxing diplomatic and financial pressure on Moscow, the Trump administration would offer Russia alternatives other than subservience to Chinese political and economic assistance.
U.S. policymakers should have no illusions about dramatically reshuffling the international balance, as did President Richard Nixon in visiting Mao Zedong’s China. Rather, Trump should seek a modest, long-term shift in America’s direction. That would lower the small but real risk of a catastrophic break in ties with Moscow.
Putin is not asking for “too much” in Ukraine. Only Russia’s government can decide what it requires to end the war. The Trump administration can encourage Moscow to moderate its demands but should not escalate its involvement in an attempt to force its way. Washington’s main job is to promote American interests. And today that is best achieved by gradually withdrawing the U.S. from the Russo–Ukrainian imbroglio.
