A Long-Term Plan to Secure Peace for Ukraine
The brutal, yearslong war might end in 2027—if the White House plays its cards right.
After months spent cheering Ukraine’s so-called turning of the tide, the fall has brought with it a more sober reality for Kiev and its European partners. Ukraine has now lost whatever momentum it had and faces a shortage of funds and a lack of air defense, while also being blockaded from the sea and barraged by drone and missile attacks that threaten to severely disrupt daily life in major cities.
Sensing Ukraine’s desperation, Washington has half-heartedly restarted attempts at deescalation, with calls for an energy ceasefire or a truce in the Black Sea to facilitate grain exports. An initiative aimed at brokering the latter led jointly by Turkey and the UN is expected to intensify this month. Unfortunately, these and other similar efforts come too late and are likely to fail, leaving Kiev facing a difficult and punishing winter.
There is, however, something that Ukraine’s partners can do to help: start planning now for a serious push to end the war in 2027. To be successful, a future diplomatic campaign would have to look very different than past attempts to broker peace. Specifically, Kiev, Washington, and European capitals will need to internalize three lessons they have stubbornly ignored to this point: Shifts in momentum are temporary; more time will not fundamentally improve, and likely worsens, Ukraine’s negotiating position; and any peace will require painful and unpopular concessions by Kiev.
It is hard to say exactly when the narrative that Ukraine had recaptured the initiative and turned the tide of the war began, but by June the belief was widespread among Ukraine’s supporters in Europe and the United States. Early that month, Jack Watling, a senior fellow at RUSI in London, published a widely cited article in Foreign Affairs in which he argued that Ukraine now had a real chance of forcing Russia into a ceasefire. The article maintained that Ukraine had not only stalled Russian offensives but was now gaining territory on the frontline and imposing casualties at rates that exceeded Russia’s capacity for recruiting and reconstitution. He and others further suggested that Ukraine had regained the technological advantage in drone production and was successfully using mid-range strikes to interfere with Russia’s logistics.
Other observers pointed to Ukraine’s successful campaign of drone and missile attacks on Russian oil refineries as the source of Kiev’s new momentum, optimistically fantasizing that the deep strikes would bleed the Russian economy and dry up funding for Putin’s war machine while also bringing the conflict and its consequences home for Russian citizens. Reports of widespread gas shortages and long lines at petrol stations across the country were taken as confirmation that the strategy was working.
Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign even impressed Kiev’s most important audience in the White House, President Donald Trump. At the July NATO summit, Trump seemed more supportive of Ukraine than he had been in months prior. As one NATO diplomat explained: “It’s relatively simple. Trump likes winners. And Ukraine, recently, has started winning.” To give Ukraine time to build more leverage at the negotiating table, serious efforts at diplomacy were put on hold, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated that Washington supported Ukraine’s decision to escalate its attacks inside Russia.
But even if Ukraine’s tactical successes made the war feel different, the underlying fundamentals never changed. While the Western media reported widely on Ukraine’s achievements and Russia’s setbacks, they failed to report accurately on the reverse—Ukraine’s struggles and Russia’s successes. If Ukraine held its own along parts of the frontline and even made some costly advances, it continued to lose strategically important territory elsewhere. By the middle of July, Russia had overcome challenges to its battlefield logistics, but this development and Russia’s growing momentum garnered little attention.
Russia’s retaliation for the deep strikes into its territory also worsened the economic situation in Ukraine, especially as Kiev started to run out of air defense interceptors. Attacks on Ukraine’s petrol stations and logistics warehouses, framed as tit-for-tat responses to strikes on similar targets in Russia, created obstacles to military transport and disrupted civilian livelihoods. At the same time, Russian strikes on port infrastructure—launched in response to Kiev’s attacks on oil tankers in the Black Sea—cut off Ukraine’s access to maritime transport routes for its grain and other exports, putting a stranglehold on its economy.
Ukraine’s own leaders are beginning to acknowledge the severity of their country’s current difficulties. As Russia has expanded strikes to hit bridges and key energy, water, and sewage infrastructure in Kiev, the mayor warned residents that the city could no longer pretend “that we can live as we would in peacetime.” President Volodymyr Zelensky too has been signaling his concerns to the international community, warning of Russian escalation while also pleading with global partners to provide more support, including air defense and money. In August, Zelensky revealed that the government had already spent its military budget for the summer and winter of this year, accruing a $30 billion deficit that he expects European partners to fill.
So far, though, Ukraine’s partners have failed to react with the urgency Zelensky desires. They have attached economic reform demands to Ukraine’s requests for additional funding, and new supplies of air defense have been painfully slow to arrive. Poland and Romania have denied requests to accept more of Ukraine’s grain exports. Peace seems no closer and Ukraine’s situation considerably worse than in the spring of this year, before Kiev “turned the tide.”
Right on schedule, as Ukraine’s position has deteriorated, the U.S. and others have started talking seriously about diplomacy again. Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner traveled to Moscow and then to Kiev in September, close on the heels of a surprise trip by CIA director John Ratcliffe. In the wake of those meetings, efforts to broker an energy ceasefire or a deal to reopen grain export routes in the Black Sea picked up steam. At one point, frustrated by high oil prices, Trump declared that the two sides had already reached an energy truce, though no such agreement had been achieved. Kiev has expressed interest in these proposals, but Moscow’s reception has been unsurprisingly lukewarm.
These efforts (which may include trilateral technical talks held by the end of the month), while well-intentioned, come too late. The time to start talking seriously about an energy ceasefire was six months ago, when the now-looming winter was a long way off and progress on the frontline had stalled. The Russian side might not have agreed to deescalation at that point, but the proposition was never tested. Instead, the U.S., Europe, and Ukraine wasted the opportunity and made the mistakes they’ve repeated several times over the course of the war: interpreting a temporary shift in momentum as a permanent one and believing that more time on the battlefield would improve Ukraine’s position at the negotiating table.
For Moscow, deescalation now brings no benefits. Russia has significant advantages and the opportunity to press them over the coming months. Ukraine’s lack of air defense, for instance, gives Russia the opportunity to maximize the effect of its ballistic missile strikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, including energy targets, bridges, and transport corridors. Its jet-powered drones, which can evade Ukraine’s interceptors, have facilitated some gains along the frontline, allowing Russian forces to overwhelm defenders. And after Ukraine reopened the maritime front with its attacks on Russian tankers, Russia has blockaded Ukraine from the sea and is choking its economy.
Moreover, Russia’s leaders have made clear that they see their own escalation as a necessary retaliation for Ukraine’s provocations. It was Ukraine that first broke the original Black Sea ceasefire, Moscow has argued, giving Russia’s leaders little incentive to forfeit their leverage and return to a deal that they expect Ukraine might break again in the future. Obstacles to an energy ceasefire are similarly daunting. To be sure, Ukraine’s deep strikes on Russian energy targets do create economic pain inside Russia. But on net, from Russia’s perspective, these costs are manageable and far less than the benefits of its own campaign against Ukraine’s power grid and critical infrastructure.
Instead of focusing on a near-term, partial agreement, then, Ukraine’s Western partners are better off looking to the future. If Moscow has little reason to stop fighting now, there are several reasons why a 2027 deal might be possible. Though economic pain is unlikely to be the reason that Moscow decides to end the war, the country’s economic situation is increasingly challenging for the Kremlin to manage. Concerns about long-term damage to Russia’s economy and permanent disadvantages in the global AI race might create momentum for ending the war in 2027.
Military and political factors might also favor a 2027 end to the war. When spring comes, Russia’s ability to strike Ukrainian energy infrastructure will matter less (with warmer temperatures), and the next winter will be months away. A deal in 2027 would allow Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to avoid an unpopular mobilization to raise more manpower for frontline offensives. It also might be Moscow’s last chance to get a deal that involves the U.S. under Trump’s leadership. As the 2028 election cycle gets under way, a distracted Washington might be less willing or able to give Russia the types of credible commitments on Ukraine’s NATO non-membership and other security matters that Putin is hoping for. Since the next president might have a very different attitude toward Ukraine and toward Russia, Putin might see benefits to seizing the closing window of opportunity that Trump’s second term presents.
The Trump administration should do five things to maximize the chances for successful diplomacy in 2027. First, it should start serious conversations with Moscow and with NATO allies about how a credible and lasting commitment promising no further NATO expansion could be structured. Not all NATO members will be interested in participating in this discussion, but several may be. Such a commitment will be an important part of any armistice agreement and is aligned with the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy.
Second, Washington will need to have a realistic discussion with Ukraine’s leaders about the grim prospects if war continues. More time will not improve Ukraine’s battlefield or negotiating position any more in the future than it has in the past. Washington will need to reiterate its commitment to a lasting peace but dispel fantasies of a just one. It can do this by working with European partners to create a set of financial and military incentives available to Ukraine only once a deal is reached. Washington will have to be ready to also withhold intelligence and other types of support, removing itself from the conflict entirely, if Ukraine resists necessary concessions.
Third, the U.S. should press Europe to come up with a plan for Ukraine’s EU integration, including some timeline and set of requirements. Washington does not have a stake in exactly how this occurs, but since EU membership is the closest thing to a security guarantee that Ukraine is likely to receive, it does have an interest in seeing some arrangement clearly specified.
Fourth, the Trump administration should push European capitals to begin more serious outreach to Russia, not to discuss Ukraine, but to focus on deescalation and deconfliction, especially along the NATO–Russia border and in the Baltic Sea. Just as the Pentagon has pressed the 3.5 percent of GDP defense spending target, outreach to Russia should be a criterion for which European allies are held accountable. This is necessary to clear the way for meaningful discussions on Europe’s security architecture as part of a diplomatic push in the future.
Finally, the Trump administration needs to build a negotiating team with the expertise and endurance to lead the next round of talks. This team will need to include technical and subject matter experts from across the U.S. government as well as individuals with experience conducting similar types of negotiations in the past. A group like this, with Trump’s political backing, has a better chance of breaking through the obstacles that have derailed past rounds of diplomacy.
These five moves alone will not end the war, and a deal in 2027 is not assured. Difficult rounds of negotiations will be necessary to hammer out arrangements for implementing and enforcing a ceasefire, and a range of other issues including Kiev’s nonalignment and military capabilities, territory, POW exchanges, and protections for language and religious rights in Ukraine and Russia will need to be addressed. But the next few months would be better spent investing in the building blocks of a successful 2027 diplomatic campaign, rather than pushing for limited ceasefires that are unlikely to be reached and even less likely to last.
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