Why a Ukraine-Russia Peace Deal is Unfeasible

The Russo-Ukrainian War, having dragged on for fell over three years, is undoubtedly far from concluding due to a variety of factors.

An image of soldiers in the war launching an artillery shell across a field.

U.S. President Donald Trump, both in his 2024 presidential run and his current tenure as the president, made it clear that we would like to see an end to the war, almost immediately. Previously, he made many sharp statements like "We will end the war on Day One," and "The war wouldn't have started with me," thus contributing to his victory in the 2024 elections. Now as president, he wishes to fulfill his campaign promise of ending the war.

In order to kickstart peace negotiations, Trump first called both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky on phone, and to his fortunate got both to tout interest in returning peace in Eastern Europe. Then, in a significant shift in the timeline of the war, Trump's envoy of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz visited Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to negotiate concessions with a Russian envoy consisting of several of Putin's closest allies. Although it did not formally create a long list of concessions, both sides agreed to form exploratory committees to find some for a peace conference.

However, most drastic was Trump's meeting with Zelensky in the White House on February 28th. Initially meant to be a similar style meeting to Russia's in which Ukraine would make concessions, Zelensky instead remained optimistically resilient, offering "no compromises" to Putin, calling him the aggressor. Trump, who wanted to serve as a mediator of peace, insisted that he must end the war now, and subsequently kicked the Ukrainian President out of the White House after many disagreements over how a future peace deal. With the aftermath of this devastating conference just about reaching its climax, a key question has been raised; will the war come to an end.

As of now, with the current Trump peace plan, no. While the plan does call for both sides to make an equal number of concessions, and a subsequent compromise to be made, each side has remained unwilling to do so. Russia refuses to leave its troops from its occupied regions and promise to never attack Ukraine again; Ukraine has not pledged that it would cede occupied lands to Russia and forgo of its claims over Crimea and the Donbass region in the east. However, they have expressed interest in doing so, and Ukraine actually made some strong steps to a resolution with the United States over its war debts, like the mining of rare earth materials in its land to make up for a $350 billion lend-lease.

Also, the possible plans being made would not be enough to keep everlasting peace in the region. Let's just say that both sides do agree to a resolution, and the war concludes. Yet, in a matter of years a possible UN-controlled demilitarized zone would come to an end, the U.S. may cease funding leaving Ukraine open, and Russia could just come in and destroy an already war-torn Ukraine for a second time. The U.S., although getting rare earth materials, has not yet expressed interest in subsidizing the reconstruction process of the nation, leaving millions of people at risk to continued poverty and poor living conditions in broken buildings, damaged electricity grids, etc. Furthermore, Ukrainian companies post-war would suffer from a lack of consumer demand for their products (as their consumers would not be able to afford their products; there would also be less consumers to consume as millions would become integrated into the Russian sphere of influence), leaving Ukrainian companies at the backwater of global economics. Meanwhile, Russian companies would prosper from the abundance of resources in occupied regions, as well as the many ports which would fall under Russian control in the Black Sea, like the crucial port of Mariupol. We may see the Ukrainian GDP nominal, and even GDP per capita, fall behind the rest of the world for up to decades into the future. Ukraine may never stabilize, as the country may lose its wartime unity and Zelensky way lose support from his constituents for conceding lands to Russia.

In possibly every regard, a compromise only results in further exacerbating the geopolitical and economic situation of the region, however when the lives of people are on the line, peace will become a necessity.