The NATIONAL INTEREST - Ending the Ukraine War Means Facing Hard Choices November 26, 2025 By: Thomas Graham

The NATIONAL  INTEREST

Ending the Ukraine War Means Facing Hard Choices

November 26, 2025

By: Thomas Graham

Ukraine may not be able to defeat Russia on the battlefield, but it can still preserve its independence.

The critics are right: President Donald Trump’s original 28-point peace plan was poorly drafted, internally contradictory, and so flagrantly tilted in Russia’s favor as to amount to an attempt to force Ukraine’s capitulation. If the proposal has any virtue, it is that it has compelled Ukraine and its backers to abandon rhetoric and concentrate their minds on what can be achieved at a cost Ukraine, Europe, and its US backers are willing to bear.  

It is undeniable that Ukraine needs peace as soon as possible. The war is exhausting its manpower and devastating its economy. Ukraine’s soldiers have fought with valor and ingenuity.  But even in a just cause, there are limits beyond which further resistance is no longer feasible.  To be sure, Russia is also suffering heavily because of a needless war of its own making. Its losses in lives and materiel are staggering and incurred for marginal tactical gains. Each day the war continues, Russia falls further behind the great powers it will compete against in the decades ahead. But Ukraine is losing at a much faster rate than Russia. So far at least, Russian President Vladimir Putin is right: time is on his side.

In these circumstances, Ukraine and its supporters need to focus on what they can reasonably hope to achieve in a near-term settlement. This war will not end in a just peace. Ukraine is not about to expel Russia from the territory it has seized. Putin and his circle are not going to be hauled off to the Hague to answer for war crimes. But even in an ugly peace, Ukraine can preserve what is essential to its future: its sovereignty and independence. Doing so will require hard choices on critical issues, including territory, security guarantees, and reconstruction.

On the territory, the war will most likely end with a ceasefire along the line of contact. Even Ukraine’s leaders acknowledge that, despite continued Western support, they lack the capacity to restore the internationally recognized borders of 1991. The imperative is to stop Russia’s westward advance. Indifferent to the losses, Putin will continue his assault as long as he can claim Russian forces are advancing and therefore will eventually seize the remaining territory Russia has illegally annexed. To stop him, the West will have to step up its support for Ukraine.  So far, there are a few indications that it will.

Security guarantees pose other challenges. Europeans need to face the limits of what they are prepared to do. It is time to abandon rhetoric about Ukraine’s NATO membership. If one thing has become clear since the end of the Cold War, it is that NATO as an organization and individual allies are not prepared to risk war with Russia to defend Ukraine. Indeed, with the recent exception of Finland and Sweden, since the end of the Cold War, NATO has never admitted a country that it thought it would have to defend against Russia at the time of its admission. To the contrary, the major waves of NATO expansion occurred while the organization was focused on building cooperation with Russia in the late 1990s and early 2000s. 

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To be sure, NATO should get something in return for abandoning its open-door policy in practice, if not formally. That could take the form of a Russian commitment not to expand its security zone westward and to ratchet down its hybrid war against Europe. To be worth anything, that commitment would have to come with a reliable monitoring mechanism to ensure that Russia complies or, at a minimum, gives the West sufficient advance notice to prepare a response to any violations. In addition, the West will need to deploy a formidable deterrent force to stabilize and defend the long frontier with Russia, which will stretch from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea and cut through Ukrainian territory.

Similarly, if Ukraine abandons its ambition to join NATO, it will require solid security guarantees. That could take the form of armed neutrality, as long as Europe and the United States are allowed to invest in expanding and modernizing Ukraine’s defense-industrial complex, enhancing interoperability with Ukraine, and conducting joint exercises outside Ukraine. That would help Ukraine build a military force adequate for territorial defense.

Reconstruction will require vast sums. In 2025, the World Bank estimated the cost at more than half a trillion dollars. Russia’s frozen assets in the West—estimated as some $300 billion—will only cover part of that cost. The rest will have to come from the West, and perhaps China or the Gulf states.  

European leaders are now discussing seizing the Russian assets to support Ukraine. Whatever the logic and legality of that step, it highlights a glaring deficiency in Europe’s approach. Despite resounding claims that the conflict is existential for Europe and that Ukraine’s defeat will gravely undermine its security, European leaders have proved unable to make a compelling case to their citizens that they need to make substantial sacrifices. Seizing Russian assets is the easy way out in the short term, because it requires no immediate sacrifice. But those resources are finite and will eventually be exhausted. European leaders are only postponing the moment when they must show real leadership to compel their electorates to make the sacrifices required to defend their security.  

The same applies to Ukraine’s prospective membership in the European Union. Europe’s leaders have held out this promise since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. But few have acknowledged the challenges ahead. If Europeans are unwilling to pay the price to defend Ukraine now, how likely is it that they will accept the costs of bringing Ukraine into the EU? As a poor, devastated country, it will impose severe burdens on the EU’s budget. In particular, its vast agrarian potential will have far-reaching consequences for Europe’s farmers. Polish farmers are already protesting the privileges Ukrainian producers are enjoying in Europe. Those protests will only grow and spread beyond Poland as accession approaches.  

Moreover, as the ongoing corruption scandal in Ukraine underscores, the country is far from meeting the governance standards required for accession. Yet leaving Ukraine outside the EU, after the great sacrifices Ukrainians have endured in the defense of Europe, will risk creating a resentful country that could pose challenges to European stability and security in the years ahead. European leaders will need to find ways to allow Ukrainians some of the benefits of membership before they have fulfilled all the requirements for accession.

Tough choices lie ahead; the time for rhetoric and pretense is past. The reality is that Russia will not be defeated on the battlefield. But that does not mean that Ukraine must lose. It can still preserve its sovereignty and independence, even if the war ends in a messy compromise. Achieving that outcome will require Ukraine, its US backers, and particularly Europe to abandon illusions and focus on the hard choices that must be made now and lay the foundations for a peace that preserves Ukraine’s freedom while holding open the possibility of a better future. The next few weeks will reveal whether they are up to the task.

About the Author: Thomas Graham 

Thomas Graham is a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Getting Russia Right.  He is a cofounder of Yale University’s Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian studies program and sits on its faculty steering committee. Graham was special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff from 2004 to 2007, during which he managed a White House-Kremlin strategic dialogue. He was director for Russian affairs on the staff from 2002 to 2004.

Image: UkrPictures / Shutterstock.com.