Four Years Into Russia’s Invasion, U.S. Course Correction Needed To End War in Ukraine

Exactly four years since launching its full-scale invasion, Russia has still failed to subjugate Ukraine. Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin has not abandoned that goal. He now aims to achieve at the negotiating table what Russian forces were unable to do on the battlefield.

Whereas the Biden administration focused mainly on means — how to support Ukraine and pressure Russia — but lacked a vision for how to end the war, the Trump administration suffers from the opposite problem. It rightly seeks to broker a peace settlement, but it rushed headfirst into that effort without first devising and resourcing a strategy to achieve its goal. If peace talks are to succeed, a course correction is needed.

Russia Incapable of a Military Breakthrough

Although Russian forces have held the strategic initiative since late 2023, they have proven unable to achieve an operationally significant breakthrough. Ukraine, despite a serious shortage of infantry, continues to hold Russia to incremental, costly gains. Russia can probably sustain the war at least through much of 2026, but Moscow is still unlikely to achieve its minimal military objective of seizing the rest of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region within that timeframe.

Nevertheless, Putin stubbornly refuses to abandon his maximalist demands, apparently still believing — or choosing to believe — he can grind down Ukraine’s will and capacity to resist. The Russian autocrat insists that Kyiv not only cede the rest of Donetsk but also foreswear NATO membership and the right to host Western troops, accept limits on its military size and capabilities, and adopt legal protections for Russian influence. In short, he remains obsessed with securing Russian suzerainty over Ukraine.

Peace Talks Stuck

President Donald Trump re-entered office believing he could quickly broker a peace settlement thanks to his personal relationship with Putin. Rather than proactively bolstering his economic and military leverage over Russia to set the conditions for diplomacy, Trump took the inverse approach. He immediately pursued negotiations while slashing military assistance for Kyiv, eventually applying sporadic, half-hearted pressure on Russia only after met with Kremlin intransigence.

More than a year of diplomacy has yielded scant progress on core issues. The Trump administration’s answer is to press Ukraine for territorial concessions in Donetsk in exchange for Western security guarantees. U.S. officials risk inadvertently fueling Kremlin intransigence by echoing Putin’s argument that Russian leverage will grow with time.

While the Ukrainians are willing to entertain a U.S. proposal for a demilitarized “free economic zone” in Donbas, Kyiv refuses to cede control over land Russia cannot take by force. Most Ukrainians view that as capitulation, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has no interest in political suicide. Moreover, Kyiv worries that the Ukrainian defense would be left vulnerable if a ceasefire collapses after Ukraine has surrendered its “fortress belt” of defensible cities and towns in Donetsk Oblast.

Course Correction Needed: Bolster Ukrainian Military, Increase Economic Pressure on Russia

While correct in its pursuit of peace, the White House is fixated on the wrong objective. The fundamental obstacle to a settlement is not Kyiv’s unwillingness to cede territory, but rather Putin’s refusal to soften his terms so they are commensurate with Russia’s military means. Moscow has made clear that if Ukraine relinquished the rest of Donetsk, it still would not be enough.

Getting Putin to make significant compromises will be no easy task. The best chance is to convince him that Russia will remain unable to break Ukraine’s defense and that the war is unsustainable.

Rather than reducing military aid for Kyiv, Washington should resource Ukraine’s efforts to exhaust Russian offensive potential and to impose greater costs through long-range strikes. In concert, the Treasury Department should launch a full-force economic pressure campaign, starting with aggressive, consistent enforcement of existing sanctions on Russian oil exports.

John Hardie is deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Keti Korkiya is a research analyst. For more analysis from the authors and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow John on X @JohnH105. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.