There is still reason for optimism that the Trump administration can bring the war in Ukraine to a diplomatic end. But insubstantial promises of a fast, smooth sailing solution have splintered against the solidity of reality. Campaign promises of a day became goals of a hundred. As the hundredth day appears on the horizon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the U.S. is still far from securing a diplomatic solution and that there is no guarantee that there will be one.
Though Western politicians and media are quick with the claim that the war was unprovoked and that it is simply the expression of Putin’s imperial ambitions, the real causes were always different, deeper, more real and more historically entrenched. They were always going to be harder to solve, and they were always going to take longer than a hundred days.
Dizzying talk of Trump simply calling Putin and Zelensky on the phone, and the three presidents agreeing to end the war has yielded to the sober reality that there are substantial issues that led to the war and that need to be resolved. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov explained in an early April interview that Russia takes Washington’s diplomatic efforts seriously, but that they cannot accept them “as they are” because they have not yet addressed “Russia’s core demand, that is, the need to resolve the issues stemming from the root causes of this conflict.”
Western commentators and advisers are quick to point out that Washington needs to exert leverage on Moscow or to complain that Washington has less leverage against Moskow than against Kiev, but both miss the point. There is little that leverage can accomplish in the Kremlin. Russia went to war, in large part, to make NATO keep its promise not to expand to Ukraine and to make Ukraine keep its founding promise not to join NATO. Both NATO and Ukraine have said as much. The Russian armed forces are decidedly winning on the battlefield. Russia is not going to agree to withdraw from Ukraine until NATO guarantees that it will not expand into Ukraine. Putin will not surrender Russia’s core demand at the negotiating table when he can impose it on the battlefield.
Russia will continue its war to push NATO out of Ukraine and away from its borders until that core requirement is promised it in writing at the negotiating table.
Negotiations have slowed against the tide of incompatible demands. Zelensky insists on a European and American security force in Ukraine that is NATO by another name, and Putin insists that there be no NATO in Ukraine. There are ways to resolve the paradox. The security force that monitors the peace need not be American or European. There are other nations in the world. The peacekeepers could be provided by Global South countries who are not a threat to Russia but who, at the same time, have an interest in Russia not breaking a peace. More creatively, and more promisingly if the peace is to be real and the peace is to be permanent, would be, not negotiating a peace along the Russia-Ukraine border, but, negotiating the broader European security structure that should have been built at the end of the Cold War.
Russia will not surrender its battlefield advantage until it is convinced that its core demands, no NATO membership for Ukraine and protection of ethnic Russians in Ukraine, are assured and the security paradox is resolved. These core demands will be achieved at the negotiating table, or they will continue to be pursued on the battlefield.
And though the West may rail at Russia, rightly or wrongly, for dragging its feet or for resisting, Russia seems to retain the support of powerful countries in the multipolar world, not for its invasion, but for its demand for a serious and lasting solution to the security problem in Ukraine, in Russia and in Europe.
Chinese President Xi Jinping will go to Moscow on an official visit in May. “China-Russia relations will not stand still,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, “but will only become broader and broader.”
Wang echoed Ryabkov’s remarks, affirming that diplomatic efforts to end the war are “worth taking” but that a diplomatic solution was still “far away” because “the causes of the crisis are extremely complex.” Crucially, he then said that China “advocate[s] eradicating the causes of the crisis through dialogue and negotiations” as the means to “achieving a fair, long-term, binding peace agreement acceptable to all parties involved.”
Though not directly expressing support for Moscow’s insistence on permanently resolving the “core” issues and “root causes of this conflict,” India, too, has suggest support for Russia. After a pause in the protocol of annual visits, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Russia in 2024, but he has not invited Putin to India since Russia invaded Ukraine. That has now changed. On March 28, Moscow announced that Putin has accepted an invitation to visit India.
In announcing that preparations are underway for the visit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov thanked Modi for taking “a balanced position on the Ukrainian crisis and advocat[ing] its resolution through dialogue and the elimination of the root causes of this conflict.”
The war in Ukraine was not ended within 24 hours of Trump taking office, and it will not be ended in one hundred days. But there is still hope that the Trump administration will facilitate its ending at the negotiating table. For that to happen, there has to be the will to deal with reality, including the reality that a diplomatic settlement is “far away” unless “root causes of this conflict,” including Ukrainian neutrality and an authentic security architecture are finally on the table.
Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.
