National Interest

by George Beebe and Zachary Paikin

    The Helsinki Accords of 1975 show that an acceptable compromise to end the Russia-Ukraine War is possible.

    Talks to end the Russia-Ukraine war are now advancing at a frenetic pace following the August 15 summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska. Discussions continue this week as members of the “coalition of the willing” meet in Paris to deliberate on so-called “security guarantees” for Ukraine. However, it remains uncertain whether agreed-upon measures will prove acceptable to Russia. There also remains the major sticking point of Putin’s demand that Ukraine withdraw from the rest of the heavily fortified Donetsk region as a precondition for agreeing to a ceasefire.

    The Trump-Putin summit occurred, unintentionally but symbolically, just two weeks after the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act (also known as the Helsinki Accords). This document marked the high point of détente between the United States and the Soviet Union and played a major role in eventually ending the Cold War. Finland hosted a conference earlier this summer to mark the anniversary, in its role as chair-in-office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for 2025. In Washington, this significant milestone passed without much fanfare.

    The lack of celebration is understandable. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which followed decades of declining trust in relations between Russia and the West, offers a visual reminder of just how far away we are from operating a shared security system based on common tools and principles in the wider Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian space. Still, the adoption of the Helsinki Accords in 1975 offers lessons that remain pertinent to the task of achieving peace in Ukraine and stability in Europe today.

    First and most famously, the Helsinki Final Act resulted in mutual recognition between the two Cold War-era blocs and the acceptance of the post-Second World War territorial status quo. Today, we are confronted with a similar challenge: Russia’s revision of the post-Soviet territorial status quo and annexation of parts of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.

De jure recognition of these annexations should be out of the question, as they contravene the cardinal norm of territorial integrity (although US recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea has been mooted by Trump). That said, the principle remains the same: can Ukraine and Russia agree to disagree for now and defer this issue to future negotiations

    Neither Russia nor Ukraine has succeeded in realizing its territorial claims. Ukraine cannot realistically retake all of its sovereign territory by force. Meanwhile, Putin has made an initial move in the direction of compromise by dropping his previous position, outlined in June 2024, that Ukrainian forces must vacate the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions that Moscow claims to have annexed. However, his insistence on a Ukrainian withdrawal from Donetsk remains.

    Accepting this demand would be exceedingly difficult for Kyiv, especially given its strategic significance and the amount of blood that has been spilled in its defense. Given that a pullback from Donetsk would significantly increase Ukraine’s vulnerability to another Russian attack, Kyiv wants Western security “guarantees” in exchange for any territorial concessions.

    This brings us to the second lesson—the importance of diplomatic creativity and compromise. The Helsinki Final Act opened with a “Decalogue” of ten principles that all participating states were meant to uphold. Yet these principles are inherently in tension with one another: non-intervention in internal affairs and respect for human rights, territorial integrity and the self-determination of peoples. But despite enduring disagreements over the relative importance of the different principles, states in both blocs were willing to accept a package that featured disparate elements.

    By contrast, with the end of the Cold War and the advent of the “end of history,” Western countries began to view diplomacy as a reward to be bestowed upon non-democracies for good behavior—and something to be withheld in case of bad behavior. Moreover, when it came to the OSCE’s human rights and democracy norms, the West focused intensely on Russia’s failings, while often turning a blind eye when governments that were perceived as friendly—in Ukraine, the Baltics and Georgia prior to the election of Georgian Dream—failed to live up to their commitments.

    Diplomacy should not be equated with the pursuit of idealism. Instead, it should be understood as a vital tool for navigating unavoidable ambiguity and managing clashing interests short of war. Both Russian and Western elites failed to internalize this in the years leading up to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, opting instead to cite principles and grievances at one another and to reduce their diplomatic contacts to avoid the impression of “business as usual.” Years of talking past one another have culminated in hundreds of thousands of deaths, even when obvious compromises—including the Minsk agreements, adopted by the UN Security Council no less—were visible to all.

    Can a compromise be found today that allows Moscow to claim that its political aims have been met, while simultaneously enabling the West to affirm that sufficient “guarantees” of Kyiv’s security have been agreed  Absolutely. But this will require unworkable options to be discarded, including NATO membership for Ukraine and the presence of a large European force on Ukrainian soil—both of which would threaten to drag the United States into a future war.

    In exchange for offering that any European deterrent force will be stationed outside Ukrainian territory and that any outside military presence on Ukrainian soil will be limited to conducting training and repairs, Moscow could agree to scale back its demand that Kyiv withdraw from the remainder of the Donbass. An effort to ensure Ukraine’s treatment of minorities complies with OSCE commitments might also help Russia show some flexibility on territory, while simultaneously strengthening Kyiv’s EU accession process.

    Moreover, the best guarantee of Ukraine’s security will be allowing Kyiv to maintain a large peacetime military capable of deterring another Russian invasion, albeit with certain restrictions on “long-range” weapons. Pushing for Moscow to revise its demand for Ukrainian “demilitarization” in exchange for frontloading more sanctions relief is one option to consider.

    Finally, as Michael Cotey Morgan has aptly chronicled, the Helsinki Accords crossed the finish line because Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev ultimately sought a deal—one that could pave the way for the USSR’s recognition as a legitimate great power in Europe. Whether Putin similarly wants a deal or instead wishes to reestablish a sphere of influence incompatible with the norm of sovereign equality is a question with which many analysts have wrestled. But the incentives for a settlement remain strong.

    If it proves impossible to bridge the positions of all parties and the current diplomatic process fails as a result, it will rapidly become clear that a military solution remains the only option. Such an eventuality would be fraught with intolerable risks.

    Russian forces may eventually break through Ukrainian lines more decisively, imposing an even worse deal on Kyiv, drastically increasing threat perceptions across Europe and precluding a limited reset in the interest of global security between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. Alternatively, if Ukrainian forces manage to hold the line thanks to scaled-up European support, Moscow may conclude that escalation offers the only remaining pathway to achieve its political aims. A protracted war will also continue to fuel the rise of populism across Europe, transforming the EU in unforeseeable ways.

    In short, failure to find a face-saving compromise for all involved risks a drastic deterioration of the security situation in Europe, a potentially dramatic increase in loss of life on all sides, greater destruction in Ukraine that precludes a realistic pathway for it into the European Union and a long-term rupture between Russia and the rest of Europe that leaves Moscow with no other option but to be entirely aligned with Beijing.

    The diplomatic process launched by Trump has been unorthodox, to say the least. By engaging national leaders early on, he has increased the likelihood of misunderstandings that could derail the entire initiative. However, the alternative to success is painful to contemplate and ideally, it should serve to focus minds.

    As Western governments and militaries now deliberate what sort of security “guarantees” they are prepared to offer Ukraine, they must be careful not to insert any poison pills into the process that they know Moscow will not accept—or be prepared to renegotiate their initial offering in exchange for other measures that will strengthen both Ukraine’s and Europe’s security. In other words, they must rediscover the spirit of Helsinki.