Negotiation sprint or Running in Circles? Kyiv, the Kremlin, and the White House at the end of the first year of the war under Trump

The Compromise Formula and its Blind Spot

The 20 points of the ‘peace plan’ announced by Volodymyr Zelensky on Christmas, allegedly agreed upon by Ukraine, its European allies and the US, does little to clarify the prospects of the negotiation process. 

It appears to be a modification of an earlier proposal developed by special envoys Kirill Dmitriev and Steve Witkoff, which became the starting point for the current marathon of negotiations, to a version that appears acceptable to both Ukraine and Europe. However, the very characteristics of the plan that make it acceptable to them make it unacceptable to the Kremlin. 

Meanwhile, the US administration's attitude towards the plan remains unclear: its representatives have not commented on Zelensky's “20 points”, neither confirming nor denying them.

The Trump administration’s initial negotiation formula, proposed in November as a starting point, was based on Ukraine withdrawing its forces from northern Donbas. 

Washington presented this as a compromise: if Russia gained full control over Donbas, it would formally renounce claims to the other occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which the Kremlin has already formally incorporated into Russia. 

As compensation for the territorial concession in Donbas, Ukraine should, on the one hand, receive some ‘security guarantees’ from the US and, on the other hand, permanently renounce NATO membership, according to the American formula. 

Russia, for halting hostilities and giving up claims to additional territory, would see most sanctions lifted and roughly 200 billion dollars in frozen assets unfrozen.

However, the question of what security guarantees Ukraine would receive in exchange for renouncing NATO membership and making territorial concessions was never specified by the American side, at least not publicly. The Dmitriev-Witkoff plan, leaked by Axios, only stated that Ukraine would have to pay the US for these guarantees and that if it attempted to change the situation by force, it would lose these guarantees.

This omission is in itself an eloquent indication that the US is seeking to avoid any clear commitments on this issue. And this makes the new promises too similar to the Budapest Memorandum, when Ukraine's unilateral and irreversible concessions were exchanged for verbal assurances that had no legal consequences. 

Only one thing has been said definitively about Russia's responsibility in the Dmitriev-Witkoff plan: in the event of a breach of the agreement, sanctions against Russia will be reinstated. In other words, according to the plan, Russia will receive territories and part of the frozen assets, and in the event of a breach of the agreement, it will simply return to the same situation it is in now.

Six Iterations of the Negotiation Process

Formally, the negotiation process around the new formula began in Geneva on November 23 and went through six iterations over the course of a month. The Geneva negotiations, in which Secretary of State Marco Rubio played a leading role in the American delegation and Andriy Yermak, head of President Zelensky's office, led the Ukrainian delegation, were followed by negotiations in Miami on November 30, where the Ukrainian side was represented by Rustem Umerov, and the American side by Rubio, the pro-Moscow Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. After that, Witkoff and Kushner travelled to Moscow, where, according to media reports, they had a five-hour conversation with Vladimir Putin, the results of which are virtually unknown.

The next round of negotiations took place in Berlin on December 14–15, but the key news came in between, on December 11. This was preceded by Zelensky's meeting with the leaders of the ‘big European trio’ — the heads of the United Kingdom, Germany and France in London on December 8 — and a telephone conversation between the latter and Trump. This conversation took place against the backdrop of Trump's irritated remarks, conveyed through White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and accompanied by a demand to agree on a deal by Christmas, according to Axios. 

However, it was after this conversation that Zelensky first stated that ‘the US had presented an improved proposal on security guarantees’ and that ‘they would go to Congress.’

The Berlin round of negotiations took place without the participation of the US Secretary of State, but it was during this meeting that two sources in the US administration confirmed to Politico that Trump was ready to approve the security guarantees provided to Ukraine with a document that would be approved by Congress, noting that the Ukrainian delegation was ‘pleasantly surprised’ by this. 

On December 16, Zelensky stated that ‘he has an agreement with the US to make security guarantees legally binding through a vote in Congress,’ and a Politico source called the guarantees ‘similar to those contained in Article 5 [of the NATO Charter].’ (On December 23, Zelensky clarified that ‘security guarantees will include a bilateral security agreement with the United States, approved by Congress, as well as European military assistance.’) 

However, the credibility of these promises appears limited at this stage: neither Trump nor key participants in the negotiations on the American side have publicly confirmed them. Anonymous ‘leaks’ may turn out to be a tactical move and be disavowed at the next stage.

Finally, the last round of negotiations took place in Miami on December 19–21, with parallel trilateral talks between the American, Ukrainian and European delegations and separate consultations between Witkoff and Kushner with Kremlin representative Dmitriev. Virtually nothing is known about their outcome, although it was precisely on the basis of their results that Zelensky published his version of the peace agreement.

However, another side story in the marathon negotiations was a fierce battle over frozen Russian assets, which, according to the Dmitriev-Witkoff plan, were to be divided between Washington and Moscow. This battle ended in a draw: the EU failed to use these funds to finance Ukraine in 2026–2027, but managed to block (immobilise) them in a more reliable way, ruling out the opportunistic unfreezing of assets with the help of the pro-Kremlin faction in the EU (Hungary, Slovakia). Thus, in theory, the assets can be used in the agreement formula, but cannot be used without the consent of key European countries that support Ukraine.

Neither Trump nor representatives of his administration have commented on the document published by Zelensky, while a Bloomberg source in the Kremlin (apparently Ushakov) responded negatively to it: the Kremlin would like to return to the original plan exactly those provisions whose removal made it acceptable to Ukraine. Overall, Kyiv currently claims that it is moving towards a formula for reliable peace in mutual understanding with the White House based on its plan. 

Meanwhile, the Kremlin claims that the negotiation process is moving forward based on another version of the peace plan, also developed in cooperation with representatives of the US Administration.

After the ‘20 points’ were made public, Witkoff and Kushner held telephone talks with Zelensky on the one hand and Putin's adviser Ushakov on the other. Zelensky himself announced his meeting with Trump on December 28. 

Apparently, the threat of Trump's support for ‘Zelensky's plan’ should, according to the White House's plan, push the Kremlin to compromise by bringing together ‘Dmitriev-Witkoff's plan’ and ‘Zelensky's plan.’ 

Volodymyr Zelensky himself is fueling these expectations with statements that the most important developments may occur even before the onset of the new year.

Four Arenas of Confrontation

However, the chronology of the ‘negotiation marathon’ is in fact only one side of the process that is actually unfolding. The second — and perhaps more important — aspect remains the events in four arenas of confrontation, the outcome of which will determine the ability of Russia and Ukraine to continue hostilities in 2026.

The first arena is the Russian ground offensive in Donbas. Although Russian troops are advancing, the massive offensive has not led to a serious tactical breakthrough. 

This means that Russia will likely need at least another year of military action and a new offensive next year to fully conquer Donbas. Thus, the concession of the unconquered territory of Donbas continues to serve as a bargaining chip in the negotiation process, while Russia's advantage on the battlefield remains limited. The Ukrainian front is not collapsing.

The second arena is Russia's bombing of Ukraine's energy infrastructure. To date, this is the area where Russia has the most obvious advantage. The energy sector in eastern Ukraine is on the verge of complete destruction, virtually the entire country is in the throes of an acute energy crisis, and there is currently virtually no way to stop the Russian attacks (→ Re: Russia: Missiles, not people).

The third arena in which the parties' ability to continue the confrontation was tested is Europe. Are Ukraine's European allies capable of financing the military conflict throughout 2026 and 2027 without US assistance? The answer to this question was to be provided by the EU summit on December 18–19. The answer turned out to be mixed: on the one hand, European leaders failed to implement the least painful plan for financing Ukraine — using frozen Russian assets. On the other hand, they managed to agree on a plan for collective borrowing, through which the financing will be provided. 

However, the €90 billion borrowing plan is fraught with new political conflicts within the European community and a new wave of criticism of European governments by right-wing populists.

Finally, the fourth arena is the effect of the Trump administration's new sanctions against Russian oil. According to the latest Bloomberg reports, the price of Russian Urals oil has fallen to $33–35 per barrel. This means that the price for the actual buyer of oil in India will be just over $50 per barrel, but difficulties in finding buyers and the surplus of Russian oil already at sea are leading to huge discounts for Russian suppliers. Oil shipments are at a high level, but more than 185 million barrels remain at sea, and more than half of the tankers do not have a specific delivery point, notes Bloomberg. The double effect of excess oil supply in the market and further tightening of sanctions creates enormous uncertainty regarding Russian revenues. However, the final picture of the losses remains unclear. 

Two issues — the scale of losses in Russian exports and Ukraine's possession of long-range missiles capable of posing a threat to Russia's energy infrastructure comparable to that posed by Russia's attacks — could affect the balance of power in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

The main thing that the past year has demonstrated is the rather limited ability of Donald Trump and his administration to force both sides into an agreement that they consider disadvantageous and that does not correspond to their ideas about the real balance of power. 

Therefore, changes in this balance remain a key issue for understanding the prospects for ending the conflict.