Ukraine’s negotiating conundrum: Ceasefire and more sacrifice

This week’s Munich Security Conference will mark the first meeting between Ukraine’s president and the new US administration. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to meet with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for what could be the beginning of negotiations to put an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

The question is, on what terms and conditions. 

Almost three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion, expectations in Kyiv are cautious. While Ukrainians keep repeating that no one wants peace more than they do, after so much loss and sacrifice, they want justice.

“It has to be a long-lasting peace and not a ceasefire which would bring a new war in five years when Russians regroup, build more tanks and more missiles,” says Evheniia Kravchuk, deputy head of the parliamentary group of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party. 

She spoke to Euronews a few hours after yet another Russian ballistic missile attack against Ukraine and its capital Kyiv, adding that Putin’s expectations haven’t changed, either.

“Putin has been ready to kill Ukrainians yesterday (and) today, and he will be ready to kill Ukrainians tomorrow. We do not see any intentions from the Russian side to end this war of aggression and these killings.”

And even if the negotiations agree on a ceasefire, no one in Ukraine now believes it will last. Just like after the first invasion of 2014, Russia will regroup and come back in a few years “with more tanks and more missiles,” Kravchuk says.  

 “I don’t want my kids and the kids of other Ukrainians to have another war when there will be either another dictator in the Kremlin or enough tanks and planes to invade.”

“Moreover, next time Russia would mobilise Ukrainians too from the occupied territories to go to war against their own country,” she says, pointing out that over a million Ukrainian children remain on the occupied territories.

“They’ve been militarised, they’ve been weaponised. Their Ukrainian identity is being erased. They are being turned into Russians and told ‘you have to fight your own relatives,’ basically.”

Possible territorial concessions

One of Ukraine’s biggest concerns is whether Kyiv will be forced to concede its territories, which Russia currently occupies. 

In 2014 Russia illegally annexed Crimea and occupied some parts of eastern Ukraine. Eight years later, Moscow started the full-scale invasion and captured more lands, flattening cities and settlements in the south and east of Ukraine. 

Would Washington now try to force Ukraine to concede these territories altogether?

Andrew Novo from CEPA’s Transatlantic Defense and Security programme says there is a difference between “a de jure concession and a de facto concession”.

“For example, during the Soviet period, the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic states, and those Baltic states were de-facto part of the Soviet Union. They were never de jure a part of the Soviet Union. And the United States and many other countries never recognised them as part of the Soviet Union,” Novo explains.

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“When the Soviet Union collapsed, those countries gained or regained their legal independence from the Soviet Union and de-facto independence from the Soviet Union.” 

Novo told Euronews that it would be very hard for Ukraine to physically reclaim that territory under the present circumstances. “But if Ukraine can avoid a de-jure solution that gives territory to Russia, it can at some point in the future reclaim that territory”. 

In a sense, this could act as “a peace dividend” that will help the country “rebuild and move forward knowing that it is still possible, as in the case of the Baltics, to reclaim the physical territory that was taken by the invasion.”

Yet, Novo admits that, unlike with the Soviet Union, the question about the Russian regime is “a much different kind of speculation in terms of how stable it is and how likely it is to maintain its power domestically and its ability to project power internationally into Ukraine.”

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“It would be pure speculation to say that the Putin regime has five years left or 20 years left, or that a new government in Russia would change would change its policy.”

And this is why security guarantees are key to any possible deal. 

Ukraine and the history of security guarantees

Last autumn, the Ukrainian president shocked his Western allies, saying it was either NATO or nuclear missiles for Ukraine and that there was no third option.

“Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons and that will be our protection or we should have some sort of alliance. Apart from NATO, today we do not know any effective alliances,” Zelenskyy said.

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The presidential office and Zelenskyy himself later had to reiterate many times that Ukraine does not have any plans to return to nuclear weapons. “What I meant is that today there is no stronger security guarantee for us besides NATO membership.”

Zelenskyy had to explain further that he was illustrating how dire things were for Kyiv by referring to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which saw Ukraine give up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees from major nuclear powers, including the UK, the US and Russia. 

Yet, Russia went back on its word and invaded its neighbour just two decades on.

Despite that bitter experience, Ukraine tried to negotiate with Russia after the first invasion in 2014. Those attempts resulted in the Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 agreements, which Moscow did not respect, followed by the full-scale invasion mere years later. 

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‘We don’t want another Minsk, but we also don’t need another Budapest’

Thus, “we don’t need another Minsk, but we also do not need another Budapest memorandum,” Kravchuk says, adding that this is why the guarantees should be coming from the US too, not just the EU. 

She pointed out to Euronews that Washington was not part of the Minsk agreements. “it proves that this format, just Europe without the involvement of the US presidential doesn’t really work.”

When asked if Europe could step in enough to replace the US, Novo told Euronews, “Obviously, Europe wouldn’t be able to make up for it for the United States, either politically or in practical material terms.”

He explained further that from a negotiations standpoint, it just reduces Ukraine’s negotiating power. “If Ukraine is negotiating with Europe behind it, it can get certain concessions from Russia, and can establish a certain kind of stabilisation of the situation.”

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“If Ukraine is operating without the United States and only with Europe, that starting point would be lower. If it operates with the United States and Europe, then it has greater potential for a better solution from the Ukrainian perspective.”

Munich and the start of the negotiations

US President Donald Trump said he wants the negotiations to start as soon as possible, with the Munich Security Conference being the first step to put an end to what he calls a “senseless war that is causing massive casualties and destruction”. 

Novo admits he doesn’t necessarily expect a big breakthrough from the meetings at the end of the week, but some ideas will be put forward.

“I would expect the new administration, through the representatives that they have at the Munich Security Conference, to at least put forward some ideas for how they want to start negotiations, how they want to start to move some sort of peace process in Ukraine forward,” Novo explains.

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Kravchuk, who will be in Munich herself, says Ukraine is in a different situation this year, with Kyiv now controlling parts of Russia’s territory in the border Kursk region, which gives Kyiv more leverage in any possible negotiations. 

But what she says is the most important for ending the war is the unity of Ukraine’s allies. 

“This is what Russia is actually afraid of. They want to disunite partners.”