Motion without movement

• What negotiation looked like. March and April 2022 offer the closest precedent—the Belarus and Istanbul talks that followed Russia’s failed advance on Kyiv. Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko investigated the episode in Foreign Affairs, reviewing draft treaties and interviewing participants. The two sides exchanged detailed texts and moved toward agreement: Ukrainian neutrality, multilateral security guarantees, Russian withdrawal to pre-invasion lines. The Ukrainian negotiator Oleksandr Chalyi said later they came “very close” to a settlement. Then the talks collapsed in May—Bucha, Western pressure, shifting aims, mutual distrust. The reasons remain in dispute—but the structure doesn’t: defined proposals, exchanged drafts, movement toward convergence. It had every appearance of actual negotiation.
• What followed hasn’t. Before the invasion, Reuters reported, Putin’s own envoy Dmitry Kozak struck a provisional deal that would have satisfied Russia’s stated concern—keeping Ukraine out of NATO. Putin rejected it and invaded anyway. At Istanbul, Russia entertained talks when its leverage was collapsing—then walked away when it didn’t have to take a deal. In September 2022, Russia announced it had annexed four Ukrainian oblasts it didn’t fully control; future talks would require Ukraine to recognize sovereignty over land Russia hadn’t conquered. Putin’s demands have only expanded since: In June 2025, he declared “all of Ukraine is ours.” This week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected even an “energy truce.” Russia wants “peace, not a ceasefire,” he said—where “peace” means Ukrainian capitulation. Since Istanbul, the trajectory has run in one direction. Apart.
• The Minsk precedent. The 2014–15 Minsk agreements show what happens when both sides sign something without resolving core questions. The accords established ceasefires in eastern Ukraine while deferring sovereignty and governance to “later phases.” Both sides accused the other of violations. Implementation stalled for eight years. Then, in February 2022, the frozen conflict thawed—into a full-scale invasion. Frameworks that defer hard questions don’t eliminate them; they postpone reckoning with them.
• The framework-first pattern. The Trump administration has shown a preference, elsewhere, for agreements that prioritize signing over settling. The October Gaza ceasefire included concrete first-phase terms—hostage releases, troop withdrawals—while deferring Hamas disarmament and Palestinian governance to phases that haven’t materialized. The China trade deal that month cut tariffs in exchange for commitments Trump said would be “renegotiated every year.” Ukraine differs in important ways: no hostages forcing a quick exchange, no tariff deadline both sides want to escape. But the current proposals share a feature—vague enough that incompatible interpretations can coexist, at least on paper.
• The terminology tells you. “Free economic zone” and “demilitarized zone” aren’t synonyms. They imply different legal frameworks, different enforcement, and different futures for the people who live there. That both phrases circulate as though describing the same arrangement suggests something about the state of play. This isn’t late-stage haggling over details. It’s something earlier, or something else entirely.

Genuine negotiation produces certain things—proposals that narrow over time, compromises that move both sides off their starting positions, mechanisms for implementation, convergence. Since Istanbul 2022, the pattern has run the other way: Russia hardens its demands, expands its terms, moves further from any deal.

On the other side of the table: Ukraine discussed neutrality at Istanbul—NATO membership, security architecture—but never territory. Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace plan demands Russian withdrawal to pre-2014 borders. The referendum requirement isn’t just a procedural obstacle; it’s a way of saying this isn’t his to give. In London this week: “There is no compromise for now” on territory.

No overlap. No zone of possible agreement. No real evidence there was ever either.

Moscow and Kyiv know all of this as well as we do. So why do they keep “negotiating”?

One answer: The pressures for both sides to perform negotiation are strong, even when the prospects for agreement aren’t. Putin faces international censure; appearing to engage softens the image without requiring concession. Zelenskyy can’t refuse to show up without becoming the obstacle to peace—so he shows up, maintains the red line, and hopes to hang in. Trump campaigned on ending wars; for him, frameworks and announcements demonstrate activity, even without any real prospect of anything following. And European leaders need to show solidarity and relevance, even when they have no interest in accepting any deal on the table.

So what do we know? Russia wants to extract something from its invasion. Ukraine won’t surrender its territory or its future. The United States wants to broker a peace but can pressure only one side. These forces keep playing off one another, and what they produce is—this. Meetings. Proposals. Terminology. Headlines that say “negotiation.” Activity with the appearance of diplomacy—but not the substance, because there’s nothing for diplomacy to work with. Just war.