Russia: Stand Firm or Capitulate

Russian President Vladimir Putin is counting on the incoming US administration to do his bidding by pushing for a settlement to the Ukraine war largely on the Kremlin’s terms, even if this does not happen, as Donald Trump has promised, on his first day in office. Trump’s stated objective to end the war is noble, but Putin will accept little beyond capitulation to his demands. A change to the bleak status quo in the US-Russian relationship is, therefore, unlikely unless the United States throws Ukraine to the wolves, turns a blind eye to a Russian sphere of influence along its periphery, removes sanctions on Russian individuals and entities, and accepts a loss of leadership in Europe. For accepting those terms, the United States would receive little benefit except marginal savings to taxpayer resources. Washington would also damage its national security. The second Trump administration should accept that, under wartime conditions or with an unjust peace, salvaging the relationship with Russia is neither possible nor desirable. Instead, it should use all instruments of state power to counter Russian aggression. 

All or Nothing

There are two impediments to reaching a quick deal with Russia on Ukraine—one temporal, one philosophical. 

The temporal obstacle is that Putin, buoyed by battlefield successes and the support of his enablers worldwide, will likely have little incentive to come to the negotiating table in good faith in early 2025. He will prefer to continue his military’s meatgrinder approach to acquiring as much territory as possible to maximize his leverage in any peace talks, especially while his allies and partners appear more than willing to assist him with putting soldiers’ lives on the line, keeping his military stocks full, and evading Western sanctions. Putin likely wants to avoid another mass mobilization of Russian men after hundreds of thousands of casualties already. Instead, he is orienting state resources toward rallying Russians around their flag. In 2024, the Kremlin spent nearly one-third of its budget on the war. It has also silenced dissent and exploited relative economic stability and an extensive propaganda apparatus to maintain popular support for the conflict. Putin’s presidential longevity and legacy also play a role. History demonstrates that military success is good for autocrats who cling to power at all costs. Further ahead, should Putin ever voluntarily relinquish his office, the complex web entangling Russian security services, oligarchs, and political decisionmakers offers no guarantee that his successor will be any less beholden to hard-right nationalist factions that oppose any conciliatory position toward Ukraine and the West.

The philosophical obstacle to a deal is Putin’s ambition, which extends beyond subjugating Ukraine. Russia’s war is part of a greater aspiration to assert its domination over a perceived sphere of influence, which includes regions of NATO member states with ethnic Russian populations. The Kremlin also aims to degrade US leadership and NATO capabilities in Europe. Russian military doctrine, after all, makes clear that the United States is the primary adversary. Russia could use negotiations on Ukraine to try to restructure Euro-Atlantic security architecture so that it weakens NATO capabilities and the allies’ commitments to one another. Russia has tried this once before. In 2009, after a contentious two-year period during which NATO agreed to install missile defense sites in the Czech Republic and Poland, and Russia invaded Georgia, Dmitry Medvedev, then Russian president, tabled a draft European Security Treaty that sought to subsume NATO allies’ security to Russian interests. Such a pact would have effectively nullified NATO’s Article 5 collective security commitment, allowed for military intervention by one party nation in another, and effectively given Russia a veto over the development and deployment of American and European forces. It also offered no meaningful arms control mechanisms to offset Russia’s decision to suspend its conventional arms control obligations. The proposed treaty could have given Russia the pretext to subjugate—by military means, if necessary—neighboring nations while curbing American and NATO capabilities in Europe.

A peace negotiation over Ukraine offers Russia an opportunity to push similar demands. Russia’s insistence on Ukrainian neutrality would effectively be a veto of NATO’s “Open Door” policy. And Moscow’s almost-certain refusal to accept meaningful NATO and Western security guarantees for Ukraine would reflect an effort to leave a rump of the country largely unprotected and exposed to future attack. Russia could also seek commitments from NATO to reduce its footprint on its Nordic and Baltic flanks while resurrecting long-standing grievances about the alliance’s missile defense instillations. All this, again, would come in the absence of arms control mechanisms that allow for transparency and verification of Russian force deployments and movements.

The China Factor

For the incoming Trump administration, which wants to prioritize countering China, letting Russia win in Ukraine will neither pay off in the Pacific nor drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing. This is not Henry Kissinger’s 1970s, when the Nixon administration pursued rapprochement with China to triangulate against the Soviet Union. Historical mistrust may linger between Russian and Chinese decision-makers, but the former have little incentive to pivot away from the latter. Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, share an authoritarian affinity, strive for multipolarity, and are willing to trade oil, gas, and military technologies to oppose American hegemony. Selling out Ukraine could even embolden China, which, despite Trump’s anti-Beijing rhetoric, could then perceive American isolationism as a weakness and accelerate plans for unification with Taiwan.

Worth the Effort?

The instinct to normalize and stabilize relations with a nuclear power such as Russia is understandable. But it would cause Europe to be less safe and less peaceful, with the threat of Kremlin aggression looming over several US allies that Washington is committed by treaty to defend. American isolationists may be unconcerned about European security, but a strong relationship with Russia offers little benefit to US interests. Bilateral trade, even before sanctions began to be put in place in 2014, was small. Additionally, Russia’s oil and gas industry competes with its American and European counterparts when Washington aims to increase energy production, particularly that of liquefied natural gas, for export to Europe. The United States and Russia operate at cross-purposes in the Middle East, where they have long been on opposite sides of conflicts in Israel and the occupied territories, Syria, and Yemen. Russia also devotes ample resources to countering American interests in Latin America, Africa, and other regions. On top of all that, Russia’s alliances with China, Iran, and North Korea are becoming more entrenched while its operations to interfere in elections and destabilize societies continue unabated (these trends were ascendant during Trump’s first term, too). The United States should count on Russia’s maintaining a united front with its allies and partners to oppose American interests everywhere, especially if the conflict in Ukraine ends on Russian terms.

Policy Recommendations 

A second Trump administration must adopt a hardline policy against Russia. Laudable as the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine has been, the innumerable conditions it imposed on Kyiv’s use of American military equipment, and its piecemeal approach to providing more sophisticated military capabilities, prevented Ukraine from making more gains when it had the battlefield advantage. That approach also bought Russia time to recalibrate, mobilize, and expand its economic and military resources. Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s enablers continued to support Moscow largely unabated. That must now change. The Trump administration should implement a policy of peace through strength to increase the likelihood of a just and lasting peace in Ukraine that defends American interests and that, in the long term, could change Moscow’s strategic calculus so that US-Russian relations can slowly stabilize.

The administration should:

• work on a bipartisan basis with Congress to pass a new military assistance package to Ukraine without any restrictions on the usage of US-provided equipment. Should Russia decide to negotiate in good faith, it should come to the table without the leverage it currently enjoys on the battlefield. Trump should use his proclaimed personal rapport with Putin to defuse Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling while not falling for his threats of escalation. Moscow simply cannot afford a war on multiple fronts, particularly one with the United States and NATO.
• insist that European allies match or exceed the US aid package and make clear that future US packages will not exceed Europe’s. Collective security must continue to involve equitable burden sharing. A US cap on Ukraine aid, tied to European investments, could reduce a backlog in US weapons production and a subsequent prioritization problem. Some analysts are warning that the United States may not be able to equip Ukraine and Taiwan simultaneously.
• restrict Russia’s revenue sources by expanding the sanctions regime to include its state nuclear energy agency, Rosatom, and third-country entities that help Moscow evade sanctions. The administration should work with G7 allies specifically on lowering the current $60 per barrel market price cap on Russian oil exports. This would hit Russia’s bottom line.
• target Russia’s enablers in the West. Russia’s ability to circumvent sanctions does not rely just on the largesse of authoritarian allies. Kremlin actors also take advantage of Western nations’ policy and legislative loopholes, as well as legal and financial professionals throughout the transatlantic community, to shelter their money abroad. The Trump administration should work with Europe, including the United Kingdom, to stop this. GMF Senior Fellow Josh Rudolph has written about the magnitude of this problem, and a Royal United Services Institute policy brief outlines several policy steps the incoming administration can adopt to solve it. 
• propose a vision for a lasting peace in Ukraine and the terms for greater security in Europe. The administration should signal to Moscow the conditions under which it would suspend military assistance to Ukraine and remove sanctions on Russian entities but emphasize that these steps are reversible in case of Russian violations of a negotiated settlement. It may be naive in the current environment to consider arms control mechanisms, but Washington should also aim, with Europe and Russia, for greater transparency in military movements. The administration should propose resurrecting an arms control regime that factors in conventional and nuclear capabilities, and emerging technologies such as drones.