Peace negotiations in the Russo-Ukrainian war (2022–present)

Based on Wikipedia: Peace negotiations in the Russo-Ukrainian war (2022–present)

The War That Nobody Knows How to End

Here is a puzzle that has consumed diplomats, presidents, and foreign policy experts for over three years: How do you negotiate peace when one side wants territory it doesn't control, and the other side refuses to surrender land where its citizens still live?

This is the fundamental deadlock of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Russia's Vladimir Putin demands that Ukraine hand over not just the land his forces occupy, but entire provinces his army has failed to conquer. Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy insists that Russian troops must leave, that stolen children must be returned, and that war criminals must face justice. Between these positions lies a chasm that no amount of shuttle diplomacy has managed to bridge.

The negotiations have stumbled forward in fits and starts since February 2022, moving from Belarus to Turkey to video calls, producing draft agreements that collapsed, moments of hope that evaporated, and a growing graveyard of diplomatic efforts. Understanding this story requires understanding not just what happened at the negotiating table, but the deeper history that brought both nations to this impasse.

The Promise That Was Broken

In 1994, Ukraine possessed the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Thousands of Soviet-era warheads sat on Ukrainian soil, leftovers from the collapse of the Soviet Union three years earlier. The United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom desperately wanted those weapons gone. The prospect of a newly independent nation with more nuclear firepower than Britain, France, and China combined made Western leaders nervous.

So they struck a deal.

Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons. In exchange, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest Memorandum, a political agreement providing security assurances to Ukraine. They promised to respect Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. They pledged not to use force against the country.

Russia reaffirmed this promise in 2009. Five years later, Russian troops seized Crimea.

When confronted with this apparent betrayal, Putin offered a novel legal theory. The 2014 Revolution of Dignity, he claimed, had created an entirely new political entity in Ukraine. The government that emerged was, in his telling, not the same government that had signed the memorandum. Therefore, any prior agreement was void.

This argument convinced no one outside Russia, but it illustrated something important: Putin views international agreements as obstacles to be circumvented rather than commitments to be honored. Military analysts have documented 190 separate agreements that Russia has broken with Ukraine and the international community. This track record would become relevant when negotiators later tried to craft a peace deal. How do you trust promises from a government that has made an art form of breaking them?

The Strategy of the Frozen Conflict

To understand Russian diplomacy, you need to understand a concept called the "frozen conflict." This is a situation where active fighting has stopped, but no political resolution has been reached. The conflict remains technically unresolved, frozen in place like ice that could melt at any moment.

Since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Russia has engineered frozen conflicts throughout its former sphere of influence. There's Transnistria in Moldova, a sliver of territory that declared independence in 1990 and still hosts Russian troops. There's Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, regions that Russia recognized as independent after a brief war in 2008. These territories exist in diplomatic limbo, neither fully independent nor reintegrated into their parent countries.

The strategic purpose is straightforward. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, known as NATO, will not admit countries with unresolved territorial disputes. Neither will the European Union. By creating and maintaining frozen conflicts, Russia effectively blocks its neighbors from joining Western alliances.

In 2014, Russia applied this playbook to Ukraine. It orchestrated separatist movements in the eastern Donbas region, and Russian proxy forces began what would become known as the Donbas war. When Ukraine started winning back territory that summer, Russia intervened with its own conventional military forces.

This led to the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015, negotiated ceasefires that had the potential to freeze the conflict. But sporadic fighting continued. Russia-backed separatists kept launching small offensives. The agreements limped along for years without genuine implementation.

Here's the part that still infuriates Ukrainian officials: Russia was a signatory to those Minsk agreements. But later, when held accountable for violations, Russia claimed it had only been a mediator between Ukraine and the separatist forces. It denied having any obligations under the agreements it had signed.

This is the context in which the 2022 peace negotiations took place. Ukrainian negotiators sat across from representatives of a government that had broken nearly 200 agreements and would later deny its own commitments even when its signature was on the paper.

The Invasion and Its Justifications

In the months before February 2022, Putin escalated his rhetoric about Ukraine to extraordinary levels. He published a lengthy essay titled "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians," arguing that there was "no historical basis" for Ukraine to exist as a separate nation. Ukrainians, in his telling, were simply Russians who had been confused by Western manipulation into thinking otherwise.

This wasn't just historical revisionism. It was a justification for conquest.

When Russian forces crossed the border on February 24, 2022, the Kremlin announced several demands. Ukraine must recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea, which had occurred eight years earlier. It must recognize the independence of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic, the separatist territories Russia had created in 2014. And it must undergo "demilitarization" and "denazification."

Those last two terms deserve attention because they reveal something about Russian propaganda. "Demilitarization" meant, essentially, that Ukraine should disarm itself. "Denazification" was more insidious. Russian state media had spent years falsely claiming that Ukraine's democratically elected government consisted of neo-Nazis who were committing genocide against Russian speakers in the Donbas. The claim was absurd on its face. Zelenskyy himself is Jewish, and his grandfather fought against actual Nazis in World War Two. Ukraine's far-right parties consistently poll in the low single digits.

But the term "denazification" served a darker purpose. An editorial published in Russian state media during the invasion's early weeks explained what it actually meant: the eradication of Ukrainian national identity. Genocide scholar Eugene Finkel read the document and called it an admission of intent to commit genocide against Ukrainians. Whether the editorial reflected official policy remains unclear, but its timing, appearing around the same time as evidence emerged of mass killings in Bucha, made its implications chilling.

The First Days: Talks in Belarus

Four days after the invasion began, Ukrainian and Russian officials sat down together for the first time.

The meeting happened near the Belarus-Ukraine border, in a location called Liaskavičy. Getting there had required delicate choreography. Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko had promised Zelenskyy that all Belarusian aircraft, helicopters, and missiles would stay on the ground while the talks were underway. Belarus was nominally neutral but had allowed Russian forces to use its territory for the invasion. The promise of grounded weapons was meant to provide at least a minimal guarantee of safety.

The Ukrainian delegation included Davyd Arakhamia, a close Zelenskyy ally, along with Oleksii Reznikov and Mykhailo Podolyak. The Russian side was led by Vladimir Medinsky. Ukraine's stated goals were simple: an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian forces.

The talks ended without agreement.

A second round took place on March 3rd in Kamyanyuki, Belarus, closer to the Polish border. The two sides agreed on one thing: humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from the fighting. But Russia's demands remained unchanged. Recognition of Crimea. Independence for the separatist regions. Demilitarization. Denazification.

Behind the scenes, however, something interesting was happening. As Russia's military position worsened, its negotiating stance began to shift.

The Battle for Kyiv Changes Everything

The invasion had not gone according to plan.

Russian forces had expected to capture Kyiv within days. They had reportedly brought dress uniforms for a victory parade. Instead, they met fierce resistance. Ukrainian forces, armed with Western anti-tank missiles and fighting for their survival, inflicted devastating casualties on the advancing Russian columns. The famous convoy north of Kyiv, stretching for miles, became a symbol of Russian logistical failure.

By late March, the Russians were in trouble. Their attempt to seize the capital had failed. They were taking heavy losses. And suddenly, they were ready to negotiate more seriously.

Years later, Deputy Kremlin Chief of Staff Dmitry Kozak would reveal that he had actually negotiated an agreement with Ukraine within the first few days of the invasion. The deal would have ended hostilities in exchange for Ukrainian guarantees not to join NATO. But Putin rejected it. He wanted more. He wanted territory.

A Kremlin spokesman denied this account, but additional reporting from the New York Times in December 2025 filled in more details. Kozak, it turned out, had been categorically against the full-scale invasion from the start. He understood the scale of resistance the Russian army would face. On February 25th, the day after the invasion began, Kozak had called Ukrainian government representatives trying to reach a ceasefire. Putin was furious. He saw it as disobedience. He insisted he would only accept Ukraine's surrender.

Kozak was sidelined. The war continued.

The Istanbul Moment

The most serious negotiations of the war took place in late March and early April 2022, with Turkey serving as the primary venue and mediator. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu shuttled between the parties, hosting talks in Antalya and later in Istanbul.

A framework began to emerge. Ukraine would declare itself permanently neutral, abandoning any plans to join NATO. It would accept limits on the size of its military and the types of weapons it could possess. Foreign troops would not be stationed on Ukrainian soil. In exchange, Ukraine would receive security guarantees from Western countries, including potentially the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and others. These guarantor nations would be obligated to come to Ukraine's defense if Russia attacked again.

Crucially, the draft agreement would not require Ukraine to formally recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea. The peninsula's status would be set aside for future diplomatic negotiations, to be resolved within fifteen years.

This was significant. Both sides were making real concessions. Ukraine was giving up its NATO aspirations, something that had been in its constitution. Russia was backing away from its demand for immediate recognition of its territorial claims.

Mykhailo Podolyak emerged as the chief Ukrainian negotiator. A 15-point plan took shape. By mid-March, Zelenskyy himself was describing the talks as beginning to "sound more realistic."

Then came Bucha.

The Massacre That Changed Everything

When Russian forces withdrew from the suburbs of Kyiv in early April, they left behind evidence of atrocities. In the town of Bucha, bodies lay in the streets. Some had their hands bound. Evidence emerged of torture, rape, and summary executions. The images shocked the world.

The diplomatic atmosphere transformed overnight.

Ukraine's willingness to negotiate with Russia cratered. How do you make peace with people who did this? Ukrainian officials who had been working toward a deal now faced a domestic political reality: the public would not accept an agreement that let these crimes go unpunished.

The negotiations didn't officially end, but they lost their momentum. Talks by video conference on March 21st failed to achieve a breakthrough. The two sides continued to talk, but the sense of urgency that had characterized the Istanbul discussions evaporated.

Other factors contributed to the collapse. Russia's draft agreement included provisions that would have given Moscow a veto over Ukraine's future military decisions. Western officials expressed doubts about whether Russia would honor any agreement. The history of broken promises loomed large.

By late April, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reflected on the impossibility of neutrality in the face of mass war crimes. Ukraine had been a neutral country in 2014, he noted. That neutrality hadn't prevented Russia from seizing Crimea and invading the Donbas. What guarantee did they have that it would work now?

The War of Annexations

In September 2022, Russia held what it called "referendums" in four Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. The votes were conducted at gunpoint in active war zones, with results that no independent observer considered legitimate. Russia claimed the territories had voted to join the Russian Federation.

Putin signed annexation documents, declaring these regions Russian territory. There was just one problem: Russia didn't actually control them. Large portions of the annexed regions remained under Ukrainian control. Russian forces would suffer significant defeats in the weeks that followed, losing the city of Kherson entirely.

But the annexations changed the negotiating calculus. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced that these additional territorial claims must be recognized before any negotiations could proceed. Russia was now demanding territory it didn't hold and couldn't conquer.

In response, Zelenskyy signed papers formally applying for NATO membership. He also announced that Ukraine would not negotiate with Putin personally, only with his successor.

The positions had hardened beyond recognition.

Zelenskyy's Ten Points

In November 2022, Zelenskyy presented his own vision for ending the war: a ten-point peace plan. It was, in effect, a statement of Ukrainian war aims.

The first point called for a ceasefire and complete Russian withdrawal from Ukrainian territory. The second demanded restoration of Ukraine's pre-2014 borders, including Crimea. The plan called for the release of all prisoners and the return of Ukrainian children who had been deported to Russia. It addressed nuclear safety, particularly the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, which Russian forces had occupied. It called for environmental remediation, including demining and addressing the ecological catastrophe caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam.

And it called for war crimes prosecutions.

The plan was comprehensive, principled, and completely unacceptable to Russia. It represented everything Putin had gone to war to prevent. But it established a marker for what Ukraine considered a just peace.

The Long Stalemate

Through 2023 and into 2024, the war settled into a grinding stalemate. Ukraine launched a much-anticipated counteroffensive in the summer of 2023 that made only limited gains against heavily fortified Russian positions. Russia, meanwhile, suffered catastrophic casualties but continued to throw troops into the meat grinder.

Diplomatic efforts sputtered. Various countries offered to mediate. China proposed a peace plan that largely echoed Russian talking points. African leaders visited both capitals and achieved nothing. A peace summit in Switzerland in 2024 brought together dozens of countries but notably excluded Russia, limiting its practical impact.

Putin's position remained unchanged. In June 2024, he outlined Russia's terms for a ceasefire. He demanded all the land Russia occupied, plus all the territory it claimed but hadn't captured. Ukraine must officially abandon NATO membership. The international community must recognize Russia's annexations and lift sanctions.

Zelenskyy's position also remained firm. He would not accept a ceasefire that froze the conflict while Russia occupied 22 percent of his country. "We explained that there will be no Minsk-3, Minsk-5, or Minsk-7," he said, referring to the failed agreements of 2014 and 2015. "We will not play these games. We have lost part of our territories this way. It is a trap."

The Trump Factor

Everything changed in January 2025 when Donald Trump returned to the American presidency.

Trump had long expressed skepticism about American support for Ukraine. During his campaign, he had claimed he could end the war in 24 hours, though he never explained how. His administration's approach to the conflict diverged sharply from that of his predecessor.

Where Biden had provided weapons, training, and diplomatic support to Ukraine, Trump's team showed more sympathy for Russian positions. The administration broadly agreed with Russian proposals for ending the war, including territorial concessions and restrictions on Ukrainian military capabilities.

European countries reacted with alarm. They had been the backbone of Ukrainian support alongside the United States. Now they faced the prospect of their most powerful ally cutting a deal over their heads.

European leaders began planning for a future where they might need to guarantee Ukrainian security without American involvement. Talk emerged of a "coalition of the willing" that would station troops in Ukraine to enforce any ceasefire. The details remained vague, but the shift was unmistakable: Europe was preparing for the possibility that America might abandon its role in the conflict.

For his part, Putin seemed uninterested in negotiating even with a more sympathetic American administration. He repeatedly refused calls for a ceasefire. He spurned direct talks with Zelenskyy. In June 2025, he declared that Russians and Ukrainians were "one people" and therefore "all of Ukraine is ours."

This was not the statement of a man looking for compromise.

The Fundamental Incompatibility

Strip away the diplomatic language and the positions of the two sides are fundamentally incompatible.

Russia wants Ukraine to cease existing as an independent nation capable of making its own choices. Putin's essay on historical unity, his statements about "one people," his demands for demilitarization and neutrality, all point in the same direction. He believes Ukraine belongs in Russia's sphere of influence, subordinate to Moscow's will.

Ukraine wants to exist. It wants to choose its own alliances, its own trading partners, its own future. It wants the return of its territory and its people. It wants justice for crimes committed against its citizens.

These are not positions that can be split down the middle.

Any agreement that leaves Russia occupying Ukrainian territory rewards aggression. Any agreement that forces Ukraine to abandon its defensive alliances invites future aggression. Any agreement that ignores war crimes establishes impunity for atrocities.

Yet any agreement that requires Russia to withdraw completely and face war crimes tribunals is one that Putin will never accept. The war would have to be lost militarily before such terms could be imposed.

The Lessons of History

Peace negotiations in this war have failed for reasons that echo throughout history. When one side believes it can achieve its goals through force, it has little incentive to compromise. When agreements are routinely broken, trust evaporates. When the crimes committed during war become too horrific, public opinion turns against negotiation.

The closest the two sides came to agreement was in those chaotic weeks of March and April 2022, when Russia's military failure in Kyiv had temporarily humbled its ambitions. Even then, the deal fell apart. Putin wanted more than Ukraine could give. The massacres at Bucha poisoned what remained of the diplomatic atmosphere.

Perhaps the most haunting detail to emerge from later reporting was Kozak's rejected deal. Within days of the invasion, a settlement was possible that would have ended the war with minimal territorial changes. Putin rejected it because he wanted conquest, not compromise.

Three years and hundreds of thousands of casualties later, the fundamental dynamic has not changed. Putin still wants conquest. Ukraine still refuses to surrender. And the diplomats keep trying to square a circle that may have no solution.

What Comes Next

The war continues. Neither side has achieved a decisive military victory. Neither side shows signs of exhaustion sufficient to force capitulation. The front lines shift by kilometers while the death toll climbs by thousands.

Periodically, there are rumors of new negotiations. Intermediaries float proposals. Foreign leaders offer to mediate. The basic problem remains: Russia wants things Ukraine cannot give without ceasing to exist as a meaningful nation, and Ukraine wants things Russia will not give without admitting defeat.

The historical pattern of frozen conflicts offers one possible future: a ceasefire that leaves territory contested, borders disputed, and the underlying conflict unresolved. This is what Zelenskyy fears when he talks about not playing the Minsk games again. A frozen conflict would give Russia time to rebuild its military while keeping Ukraine permanently locked out of Western institutions.

The alternative is a war that continues until one side breaks. That could take years. It could cost hundreds of thousands more lives. And even then, the underlying tensions that produced this war would remain.

The peace negotiations of 2022 through 2025 have produced few results but many lessons. Trust matters, and Russia has squandered it through decades of broken agreements. Timing matters, and the window for compromise closes when atrocities become undeniable. Power matters, and negotiations only succeed when both sides believe the alternative is worse.

Somewhere in that calculus lies the path to peace. No one has found it yet.