Ukraine will have to cede more territory than it would have in April 2022 — when the US and UK talked it out of a peace deal — but it will gain sovereignty and international security arrangements.
There should be little doubt about how a lasting peace can be established in Ukraine. In April 2022, Russia and Ukraine were on the verge of signing a peace agreement in Istanbul, with the Turkish Government acting as mediator.
The US and UK talked Ukraine out of signing the agreement, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have since died or been seriously injured. Yet the framework of the Istanbul Process still provides the basis of peace today.
The draft peace agreement (dated 15 April 2022) and the Istanbul Communique (dated 29 March 2022), on which it was based, offered a sensible and straightforward way to end the conflict. It’s true that three years after Ukraine broke off the negotiations, during which time the country has incurred major losses, it will eventually cede more territory than it would have in April 2022 – yet it will gain the essentials: sovereignty, international security arrangements, and peace.
In the 2022 negotiations, the agreed issues were Ukraine’s permanent neutrality and international security guarantees. The final disposition of the contested territories was to be decided over time, based on negotiations between the parties, during which both sides committed to refrain from using force to change boundaries.
Given the current realities, Ukraine will cede Crimea and parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, reflecting the battlefield outcomes of the past three years.
Such an agreement can be signed almost immediately and, in fact, is likely to be signed in the coming months. As the US is no longer going to underwrite the war, in which Ukraine would suffer yet more casualties, destruction and loss of territory, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is recognising that it’s time to negotiate.
In his address to Congress, President Donald Trump quoted Zelenskyy as saying, “Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer.”
Security guarantees
The pending issues in April 2022 involved the specifics of security guarantees for Ukraine and the revised boundaries of Ukraine and Russia.
The main issue regarding the guarantees involved the role of Russia as a co-guarantor of the agreement. Ukraine insisted that the Western co-guarantors should be able to act with or without Russia’s assent, so as not to give Russia a veto over Ukraine’s security.
Russia sought to avoid a situation where Ukraine and its Western co-guarantors would manipulate the agreement to justify renewed force against Moscow. Both sides have a point.
The best resolution, in my view, is to put the security guarantees under the authority of the UN Security Council. This means that the US, China, Russia, UK and France would all be co-guarantors, together with the rest of the UN Security Council. This would subject the security guarantees to global scrutiny.
Yes, Russia could veto a subsequent UN Security Council resolution regarding Ukraine, but it would then face China’s opprobrium and the world’s if Russia were to act arbitrarily in defiance of the will of the rest of the UN.
Regarding the final disposition of borders, some background is very important. Before the violent overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, Russia did not make any territorial demands vis-à-vis Ukraine.
Yanukovych favoured neutrality for Ukraine, opposed NATO membership, and peacefully negotiated with Russia a 20-year lease for Russia’s naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea, home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet since 1783. After Yanukovych was toppled and replaced by a US-backed, pro-NATO government, Russia moved quickly to retake Crimea, to prevent the naval base from falling into NATO hands.
From 2014 to 2021, Russia did not push for annexing any other Ukrainian territory. Russia called for the political autonomy of the ethnic Russian regions of eastern Ukraine (Donetsk and Luhansk) that broke away from Kyiv immediately after Yanukovych was toppled.
The Minsk II agreement was to implement autonomy. The Minsk framework was inspired in part by the autonomy of the ethnic Germany region of South Tyrol in Italy. German Chancellor Angela Merkel knew the South Tyrol experience and viewed it as a precedent for similar autonomy in the Donbas.
Unfortunately, Ukraine strongly resisted autonomy for the Donbas, and the US backed Ukraine in rejecting autonomy. Germany and France, which ostensibly were guarantors of Minsk II, stood by silently as the agreement was thrown aside by Ukraine and the United States.
Following six years in which Minsk II was not implemented [despite its endorsement by the UN Security Council], during which the US-armed Ukrainian military continued to shell the Donbas in an attempt to subdue and recover the breakaway provinces, Russia recognied Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states on 21 February 2022.
The status of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Istanbul process was still to be finalised. Perhaps a return to Minsk II and its actual implementation by Ukraine (recognising the autonomy of the two regions in the Ukrainian constitution) could have been ultimately agreed. When Ukraine walked away from the negotiating table, alas, the issue was moot. A few months later, on 30 Septsmber 2022, Russia annexed the two oblasts as well as two others.
The sad lesson is this. Ukraine’s loss of territory would have been averted entirely but for the violent coup that toppled Yanukovych and brought in a US-backed regime intent on NATO membership. The loss of territory in eastern Ukraine could have been averted had the US pushed Ukraine to implement the UN Security Council-backed Minsk II agreement.
The loss of territory in eastern Ukraine could probably have been averted as late as April 2022 in the Istanbul Process, but the US blocked the peace agreement.
Now, after 11 years of war since the overthrow of Yanukovych, and as a result of Ukraine’s losses on the battlefield, Ukraine will cede Crimea and other territories of eastern and southern Ukraine in the coming negotiations.
Baltic concerns
Europe has other interests that it should be negotiating with Russia, notably security for the Baltic states and for European-Russian security arrangements more generally.
The Baltic states feel very vulnerable to Russia, understandably so given their history, but they are also gravely and unnecessarily adding to their vulnerability by a stream of repressive measures taken against their ethnic Russian citizenry, including measures to repress the use of the Russian language and measures to cut their citizens’ ties to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Baltic state leaders are also provocatively engaging in remarkable Russophobic rhetoric. Ethnic Russians are about 25% of the population of both Estonia and Latvia, and around 5% in Lithuania. Security for the Baltic states should be achieved through security-enhancing measures taken on both sides, including the respect for minority rights of the ethnic Russian populations, and by refraining from vitriolic rhetoric.
The time has arrived for diplomacy that brings collective security to Europe, Ukraine and Russia. Europe should open direct talks with Russia and should urge Russia and Ukraine to sign a peace agreement based on the 29 March Istanbul Communique and the 15 April 2022, draft peace agreement.
Peace in Ukraine should be followed by the creation of a new system of collective security for all of Europe, stretching from Britain to the Urals, and indeed beyond.
This article was originally published in Common Dreams, republished from Consortium News 6 March, 2025
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as Special Adviser to three UN Secretaries-General. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, Building the New American Economy, and most recently, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism.