The National Interest How Trump Can Benefit from a Russia-Ukraine Peace Deal May 14, 2025 By: Michael O’Hanlo

The National Interest 

How Trump Can Benefit from a Russia-Ukraine Peace Deal

May 14, 2025

By: Michael O’Hanlon

Trump could leverage the evolving U.S.-Ukraine ties and toughen his stance on Russia to broker peace. He must balance aid, sanctions, and NATO ambiguity towards Putin.

It hasn’t always been pretty to watch, but President Trump’s overall approach to ending the war over Ukraine has improved considerably in recent weeks. 

Trump began his second term with a correct premise: that the war is stalemated mainly, and that ending it is more important than helping Ukraine pursue some remote hope of liberating all occupied territories. 

Trump’s Transactional Benefits for a Russia-Ukraine Peace Deal

Subsequently, in recent weeks, Trump has repaired his relationship with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky while beginning to recognize that Russian president Vladimir Putin is the perpetrator here, not only in terms of responsibility for starting the war but in his current unwillingness to end it. The recent U.S.-Ukraine mineral deal that creates a joint investment and oversight board brings the two countries together more closely in political and economic terms. 

Further American aid and intelligence continue to flow to Ukraine despite earlier moves to scale them back. However, European nations continue to provide even more net assistance than we collectively do.

Meanwhile, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, American General Chris Cavoli, told Congress last month that Ukraine has improved its battlefield performance in recent months. Russia still has the edge but is gaining ground only incrementally and modestly, to a few dozen square miles per month. 

Ukrainian forces have addressed demographic challenges, filled out many of their frontline fighting positions, and continued to lead the world in the military drone revolution of the 2020s. All of this, looking at the big picture, is good for Ukraine.

But sadly, the killing goes on, with huge losses on the front lines and with Ukrainian civilian casualties higher this year than last to date. For all the talk of truces, there has been no letup in the fighting.

Time is hardly on Ukraine’s side, given that Russia has four times the population and a stronger economy, not to mention a leader with little concern for human life and a twisted sense of historical purpose.

Given this backdrop, President Trump and his administration must do three things in the coming weeks and months to improve the odds of reaching a durable peace deal.

The Three Steps to Achieving a Russia-Ukraine Peace Deal

First, Trump must show that he will be willing to go to Congress to ask for more money for Ukraine. This does not need to be the same amount as the $61 billion package that former President Biden finally persuaded Congress to provide. 

Still, it needs to be in roughly the same ballpark. Otherwise, Putin will continue to believe that time is on his side and that Trump’s other priorities will supersede his current interest in ending the Ukraine war. 

The aid package should be proposed and approved soon, not only because last year’s funds are running out, but because it is the only way to demonstrate continued American resolve to stand by Ukraine.

Second, Trump needs to follow his correct instincts and show Putin how the United States and the international community might intensify sanctions on Russia should the shooting not stop soon. Notably, Brookings scholars Robin Brooks and Ben Harris have suggested how sanctions on Russia’s shadow fleet of tankers, primarily provided by sellers in Greece, could be expanded and made more comprehensive so that Russia cannot evade the price caps placed on its oil exports after February of 2022. 

Any possible U.S. trade deal with Beijing should also seek to limit China’s technology exports to Russia that wind up supporting Putin’s war machine, even if China has heeded U.S. requests not to send finished weapons.

The third is the most complicated, but essential. 

Putin needs to know that the longer the war goes on, the greater the chances that the United States will someday support Ukraine joining NATO, as Trump has opposed offering NATO membership to Ukraine so far. In that case, Trump should offer to help build a different and more inclusive security architecture for Europe that includes not only Ukraine but Russia, at least someday, in its core logic. 

NATO would continue to exist but stop growing, under this plan. 

However, Trump should also state that if peace cannot be negotiated soon, he will have to conclude that Russia has no interest in rapprochement with the West and that there is little point in not bringing Ukraine into NATO by a specific date. NATO’s Article V mutual-defense clause could be applied to those parts of pre-war Ukraine that Kyiv now controls, to make the policy realistic and control the risks of provoking war between the West and Russia.

Of course, this approach will require a significant change of heart for a skeptic of NATO like Trump. But if Putin thumbs his nose at his would-be friend in the Oval Office and continues his heinous assault on the people of Ukraine, that could change—and Trump could say so, even now.

Even with these additional elements of a comprehensive U.S. strategy for ending the war over Ukraine, negotiating a stable and durable peace will be difficult. But right now, despite the improvements in Trump’s plan, the prospects for peace remain poor. 

There is more work to be done.