Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been tirelessly promoting his “victory plan” to Western allies and partners in recent weeks. He has made no secret of his conviction that the United States holds the keys to Ukraine’s success. Washington, however, has shown no enthusiasm for Zelensky’s plan, nor has it offered its plan for bringing Ukraine’s war with Russia to a satisfactory conclusion. This is a striking abdication of responsibility for a country that boasts of its role as a global leader. 

What Explains Washington’s Reluctance?

From the very beginning of the war, the Biden administration has insisted that it is up to the Ukrainians to decide when and on what terms to talk to Moscow. They are the ones, after all, who are spilling blood to defend their homeland. Until then, the administration has pledged its support.

That position might appear to be virtuous, but it misrepresents the character of the war. The war is not simply about Ukraine’s territorial integrity and national sovereignty. 

It is embedded in a larger conflict between Russia and the West about the future of the European order. Russian President Vladimir Putin made that clear well before he launched the massive invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Two months earlier, he released a draft of U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia treaties on security guarantees for Russia, as well as other European states, in which Ukraine barely figured. His key demands were focused on neutering NATO, the key pillar of European security, which he saw as a grave threat.

In the Kremlin’s view, the United States wields NATO as part of an effort to eliminate Russia as a great-power competitor. It believes that U.S. support for Ukraine is intended to further that aim. For those reasons, the Kremlin has little interest in talking to Ukraine. It wants to talk directly to Washington to resolve both the Ukraine war and the broader issue of European security. Dealing directly with Washington would also legitimize Russia as a great power.

While the Kremlin is wrong about U.S. aims, it is right that the United States is the critical counterpart in resolving its security concerns. As the ultimate guarantor of Europe’s security, the United States, on its own, can shift the security equation on the continent to accommodate or resist Russia’s ambitions. That Ukraine is pressing for ironclad security guarantees from the United States as essential to successful negotiations only underscores the latter’s central role in ending the war. 

Direct U.S.-Russian talks are thus a necessary condition for settling the conflict. However, they are not a sufficient one. 

Any negotiations need to be embedded in a broader network of talks that include variable configurations of countries working on specific issues associated with the conflict. A Kyiv-Moscow bilateral channel, for example, is imperative for working out technical issues connected to the end of warfighting, such as the exchange of prisoners of war and the management of the line of contact separating the belligerents in Ukraine. Europeans will have to be engaged in discussions of the broader issue of European security, including possible arms control agreements to ease tension along the NATO-Russia frontier, which now extends from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea. It is even possible that non-European countries, such as China, will have to be involved as guarantors of a final settlement. 

All these negotiations will proceed at different paces. The challenge will be to keep them moving in the same direction. Here, the U.S. role will also be critical. It is the country best suited to coordinate the positions of the West and Ukraine, as it plays a central role in all dealings with Moscow.

Learning to Lead

It is hardly because Washington is confident that Ukraine can prevail on the battlefield and dictate terms to Moscow. Rather, from the very beginning, it has said that it is supporting Kyiv to help improve its position at the negotiating table.

Other considerations likely prevail. To start with, Washington does not want to bestow on a malign Russia the legitimacy that it seeks as a great power, nor does it want to magnify Putin’s role as a global leader. 

It also has no interest in fostering a settlement that almost certainly will entail Ukraine and the West’s recognition of Russia’s de facto control over a broad swath of Ukrainian territory. That would hardly demonstrate that aggression does not pay. It would allow a violation of the norms of European security, in particular, no territorial adjustments through the use of force, to stand. Spinning that as a victory in the struggle between democracy and autocracy, as President Joe Biden has framed the conflict, would be next to impossible.

Nevertheless, absent a U.S. willingness to lead and deal with Russia directly, the war of attrition will continue, with the cost to Ukraine in lives and property, and likely territory, only mounting. Given the stakes, Washington urgently needs to redefine success in a way that could be achieved at the negotiating table. 

That would almost assuredly entail shifting the focus from Ukraine’s territorial integrity to the preservation of an independent and sovereign Ukraine steadily integrating into the Euro-Atlantic community, which is achievable even if Ukraine loses land to Russia. Importantly, that would thwart Russia’s strategic design to subjugate all of Ukraine. The victory would, of course, be far from complete, but partial success, not losing, is not a small thing in any major war. 

This reassessment is not something the current administration can credibly undertake in its waning months. But it is a task the next administration should take up in earnest, that is, if it wants to show that it is a leader that can end the war with at least a partial success for Ukraine and the West.

About the Author: 

Thomas Graham is a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and served as the senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff during the George W. Bush administration.

Image: Zev Art / Shutterstock.com.