Analysis: Why Ukraine’s peace push keeps stalling as Putin digs in and Washington’s back channel loops
Ten months into a U.S.-led effort to halt the war in Ukraine, talks have lurched from promise to paralysis. A draft framework now appears within reach, but the gaps that matter—territory and credible security guarantees—remain where they were at the start, while Moscow hardens its terms and presses the battlefield narrative of inevitability.
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For Ukrainians, the negotiations have unfolded against a relentless tempo of drone and missile strikes that have darkened cities and exhausted civilians through much of 2025. “We don’t have electricity, but we don’t care. It has the opposite impact,” said Mykhailo Samus, a Ukrainian defense analyst, describing nightly attacks that force people into shelters and car parks for sleep. The country has adapted with generators, he said, but the pressure is constant and deliberate.
Washington’s channel with Moscow—driven by President Donald Trump’s direct outreach to Vladimir Putin and shepherded by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—has at times been unconventional and, according to leaked transcripts of Witkoff’s calls with Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, uncomfortably collegial. European governments and Kyiv have spent months trying to bend the process away from Russian priorities, especially after a fraught Oval Office encounter between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky in February.
As the year progressed, Rubio showed more flexibility toward Kyiv’s concerns, under consistent European lobbying and a more calibrated Ukrainian approach. Yet the center of gravity in U.S. pressure has largely sat on Zelensky’s side of the table: move toward a deal now, then fill in security guarantees later. That sequencing remains the most combustible point of disagreement with Kyiv and EU capitals, which warn a bad peace could sow bigger wars on the continent later.
The core impasse is unchanged. Russia demands that Ukraine withdraw from parts of Donbas it does not occupy and formally recognize territories Moscow claims to have annexed; it also wants permanent limits on Ukraine’s armed forces and a veto on Kyiv’s NATO ambitions. For Ukraine, ceding unoccupied territory is a red line that would require a constitutional change, a parliamentary vote and a national reckoning with no guaranteed majority.
Europe has tried to build guardrails. A British- and French-led “Coalition of the Willing” of more than 30 countries is preparing to monitor any eventual cease-fire—an idea Russia opposes. European diplomats also helped refine a U.S. track that produced a leaked 28-point outline seen as favorable to Moscow. Even that proved too thin for Putin, who said it “could form the basis” of a settlement, hardly an endorsement. A revised 20-point plan shaped by Ukraine and Europe, with input from Rubio, Witkoff and Jared Kushner, appears even less likely to land with the Kremlin.
Between March and August, Russia repeatedly rejected a U.S. proposal for a cease-fire-first approach that Kyiv accepted in principle. Putin instead cast Europe as the spoiler, accusing EU leaders—whom he recently derided as “swine”—of derailing what he claims he agreed with Trump at their brief, inconclusive Alaska summit in August. In parallel, he has intensified a counter-narrative that Russia’s 2022 invasion was a defensive response to NATO expansion, recasting propaganda as official history.
The Istanbul channel this summer typified the Kremlin’s pattern: Putin offered direct talks in May, torpedoing a U.S. ultimatum and fresh EU sanctions threats; expectations rose for a leader-to-leader meeting, only for Moscow to send a second-tier delegation led by a historian who questions Ukraine’s existence. Three large prisoner exchanges emerged—enough to sustain the process—but no traction on core terms.
Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign investment fund, has become a key interface with Witkoff. The pairing looks intentional. “Witkoff, Trump generally, and Dmitriev, all three, see the war as nonsense… something destructive but meaningless,” said Pavel K. Baev of the Peace Research Institute Oslo. “For Putin, war is the thing… tactics suddenly hit the wall of Putin’s philosophy, his worldview.”
On the ground, that worldview collides with stubborn math. The Institute for the Study of War estimates Russia has gained 0.77% of Ukrainian territory this year at severe cost. Mediazona and the BBC’s Russian service put Russian military deaths in 2025 at around 19,000, and 156,000 since the full-scale invasion began. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates close to 1 million Russian troops have been killed or wounded overall. British defense analysts assessed in August that at the current rate of advance it would take more than four years—and potentially cost nearly 2 million Russian casualties—to occupy all four eastern Ukrainian regions claimed by the Kremlin.
Ukrainian defenses have adapted too. Samus describes a 20-kilometer “kill zone” for drones and anti-armor fires that forces Russian troops into small, slow-moving infantry groups. “Any mechanized units, any tank armor or vehicles will be killed immediately,” he said. The result is a grinding stalemate with modest Russian progress but no strategic breakthrough.
Putin, appearing in fatigues and huddling with commanders in December, insists time is on his side. “The goals of the special military operation will be achieved unconditionally,” he said on Dec. 17. If Kyiv refuses “substantive” talks on Moscow’s terms, he vowed Russia would “liberate its historical lands” on the battlefield. Russia’s economy has slowed but oil exports remain steady, giving the Kremlin bandwidth to sustain attrition. Ukraine does not have the same margin in manpower or financing as 2025 closes.
So far, security guarantees—the one element that could unlock painful compromises—remain vague. “There’s a question I still can’t get an answer to,” Zelensky said on Dec. 18 in Brussels. “What will the United States do if Russia comes with aggression again? What will these security guarantees do? How will it work?” Without a firm, written deterrent that binds Washington and Europe to act if Moscow restarts the war, Ukrainian officials say any deal risks being a prelude to a worse conflict.
For Washington, the back channel has produced a process where none existed a year ago. But it has also looped back on itself: every new contact with the Kremlin produces flurries of diplomacy with Kyiv and Europe, only to run up against the same wall—Moscow’s maximalist demands and Kyiv’s inviolable sovereignty. The longer the loop runs, the higher the cost in Ukrainian resilience and Western unity.
There may still be space for a cease-fire “pause,” as Baev suggests—“ugly and dirty,” and not the “beautiful deal” Trump says he wants—but even a pause would need verification on the ground and real penalties for violations. The Coalition of the Willing is one attempt to pre-build that scaffolding. Whether the Kremlin would accept monitors it cannot bend remains doubtful.
The year ends where it began: Ukraine pressing for a fair peace secured by credible guarantees; Europe trying to prevent a settlement that trades today’s quiet for tomorrow’s calamity; and Putin signaling that only great-power bargaining with Washington counts. Until the U.S. can translate that bargaining into a guarantee Kyiv trusts and Moscow respects, “one step forward, two steps back” is likely to remain the rhythm of this war’s diplomacy.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
