A lasting Russia-Ukraine peace requires private diplomacy, broader European security talks, active US leadership, and continued military aid to Ukraine, prioritizing stability over ideal outcomes or total justice.

    Unsurprisingly, the talks between Kyiv and Moscow in Istanbul on June 2 failed to bring the Russia-Ukraine war closer to a ceasefire. Both sides stuck to their maximal demands, with little indication of flexibility, and Ukraine still wants a ceasefire as a prelude to peace negotiations.

    Russia insists the root causes of the conflict have to be resolved before a ceasefire is put in place. Meanwhile, the fighting escalates with more intense Russian aerial bombardment of Ukraine and Ukrainian acts of sabotage deep inside Russia.

    Nevertheless, the situation is far from hopeless.

    To President Donald Trump’s credit, he has focused on the requirements for peace, even if he grossly underestimated the task’s difficulty. While the Ukrainians and Russians are separated by a chasm in their demands, there is a way forward to a ceasefire and an enduring settlement.

    What Are the Requirements for a Russia-Ukraine Ceasefire?

    First, confidential negotiations, not public spectacles such as in Istanbul, must commence in earnest.

    The sensitive compromises necessary to hammer out an agreement can only be reached in private. This does not mean there is no place for talks in the public glare. The Istanbul talks yielded valuable agreement on prisoner exchanges, but more importantly, they can cover quiet diplomacy by distracting media attention.

    Second, the talks must be embedded in discussions of European security and strategic stability questions. The war is only one aspect of Russia’s broader conflict with the West. Substantial progress in ending the war is impossible absent parallel talks on these wider issues.

    Different country configurations will be needed to handle the discrete aspects of these issues. To state the obvious, discussions of European security issues make no sense without Europe’s participation. Strategic stability talks will engage Russia and the United States most directly, and Russia and Ukraine will be the primary interlocutors on narrower issues, such as prisoner exchanges.

    Third, it follows from the prior point that the Trump administration needs to engage actively in diplomacy. US leadership will be required to coordinate talks on the war, European security, and strategic stability, if only because it is a critical player on all three matters.

    With its leverage over both parties, Washington holds the keys to an enduring ceasefire and future peace. Kyiv desperately needs its continued moral and material support; Moscow sees normalizing relations with the world’s preeminent power as critical to validating Russia as a great power. The United States, along with Russia, is the only country that can unilaterally shift the terms of European security.

    Further, Russia is one of the two great nuclear powers that determine the contours of strategic stability.

    About the war, Washington’s immediate task is to develop a framework agreement, a set of principles and parameters for a ceasefire and enduring settlement, that can bridge the Russian and Ukrainian positions. The most challenging issues will be security guarantees for both countries and the disposition of the disputed territory.

    Without the United States, the essential guarantor of European security since the Second World War, there would have been no security. Only US security assurances can reconcile both parties to a settlement of the territorial dispute that will fall short of each side’s maximal demands.

    Fourth, the United States must continue its full support of Ukraine, especially the provision of armaments. It is necessary to convince Putin that this conflict will not end in victory on the battlefield and Ukraine’s capitulation, but rather in a negotiated settlement in which each side abandons its maximal goals in favor of what is necessary for its security. A request for a new supplemental in support of Ukraine would go a long way to creating the atmosphere in which talks can progress, no matter how sharply the Kremlin would criticize such a step in public.

    America Is Essential for Peace Between Russia and Ukraine

    Even if these four steps are taken, the path to peace will prove long and arduous. The necessary compromises will not come easily. A settlement will not produce the moral clarity or clear-cut victory that Europe and Ukraine seek. Ultimately, the aggressor will not be stripped of all his ill-gotten gains, Putin will not be hauled off to The Hague to face a war tribunal, and Russia will not pay in full for the colossal damage it has inflicted.

    Instead, the United States, its European allies, and Ukraine will have to find a way to coexist with Russia. Peace is the priority.

    If there is to be justice, it will have to be pursued incrementally over time, much as during the Cold War. The immediate reward will come in the lives saved and the physical destruction averted.