News analysis: Why Ukraine ceasefire remains elusive? Premium

Trump administration's peace initiative in Ukraine faces challenges due to divergent interests of US, Ukraine, Europe, and Russia.

During his campaign, Donald Trump famously claimed that, if elected, he would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. To his credit, Mr. Trump, after returning to the White House in January, launched a peace initiative. He spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone at least twice, and his envoy, Steve Witkoff, made several trips to Russia to explore the possibility of a ceasefire with Mr. Putin and other senior Russian officials. As part of this effort, Mr. Trump temporarily suspended weapons deliveries to Ukraine and halted intelligence sharing. Under pressure, Kyiv proposed an interim truce, which Mr. Putin rejected. In turn, Russia offered a 30-day mutual suspension of attacks on energy infrastructure. Yet, there was no significant progress toward a ceasefire.

The Trump administration’s growing frustration over its inability to achieve a breakthrough was evident in the remarks of Marco Rubio, the U.S. Secretary of State, on Friday (April 18). “If it’s not possible to end the war in Ukraine we need to move on,” Mr. Rubio stated after talks with European diplomats in Paris. “It’s not our war. We have other priorities to focus on,” he said. Later that day, at the White House, Mr. Trump appeared to endorse Mr. Rubio’s comments. “If for some reason one of the two parties (Russia or Ukraine) makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,’” Mr. Trump said. “And we’re just going to take a pass. But hopefully we won’t have to do that.” Meanwhile, in Moscow, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, announced that the 30-day pause on attacks on energy facilities had expired.

Why does the diplomatic path to ending the war remain so difficult? The answer lies in the fundamentally divergent positions of the parties involved. Mr. Trump and his top officials have argued that the Ukraine war holds limited relevance to America’s security. Mr. Trump, who doesn’t subscribe to the trans-Atlantic worldview of America’s liberal internationalists, is also seeking a reset in America’s ties with Russia. But such a reset remains impossible without first bringing the Ukraine war to an end.

The U.S. has already made some major concessions to Russia. Prior to U.S.-Russia negotiations, Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s Defence Secretary, stated that Ukraine would not be offered NATO membership. He also made clear that the U.S. would not be part of any postwar security guarantee arrangement for Ukraine, while officials of Mr. Trump signalled that Russia could keep the territories it has captured from Ukraine — which is more than 20% of the pre-2014 Ukraine. According to a recent Bloomberg report, the Trump administration was open to recognising Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Russia annexed in 2014 following a referendum, as Russian territory as part of a broader ceasefire agreement.

A brief history of the Russia-Ukraine war | Explained

On the other side, the Russians appear to recognise this is a rare opportunity to shut down the war, and are eager to engage the Trump administration. But if Mr. Trump’s focus is on achieving a ceasefire, what Russia seeks is a comprehensive” peace agreement. This means, Russia wants to address what Mr. Putin called the “root causes” of the war, not just to freeze the war along the frontline. Russia has put forward three core demands. First, Ukraine must remain a neutral country (meaning, no NATO membership and no NATO troops stationed on its territory); second, the five oblasts that Russia has annexed (Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson) must be formally recognised as part of the Russian Federation, and Western sanctions be lifted; third, Ukraine must be demilitarised. The Russians believe that they currently hold strategic momentum on the battlefield and are unwilling to surrender that advantage for a temporary ceasefire. A frozen conflict, akin to the Korean armistice of 1953, would merely perpetuate the conflict rather than resolve it.

Then there are Ukraine and its European allies. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian President, finds the Russian demands difficult to swallow. Having already lost significant portions of Ukraine’s territories, he is understandably unwilling to go down in history as the leader who legitimised those losses. It could also mean an end to his political career. Mr. Zelenskyy has repeatedly stated that Ukraine will never concede its territories, and he continues to seek credible security guarantees from the West— something Russia categorically rejects. So far, the farthest Mr. Zelenskyy has been willing to is to freeze the conflict, without surrendering the right to rearm and remobilise Ukraine’s forces. Several European countries, including France and the U.K., share this position. They believe that if Ukraine and Europe swallow Russian demands, that would effectively rewrite the security architecture of Europe, bolstering Russia’s status as a great power. Europe today sees Ukraine as a critical buffer between Russia and its mainland. A full Ukrainian capitulation, in Europe’s views, would weaken its strategic position. As a result, the continent’s major powers prefer Ukraine to continue to fight or retain the right to continue to arm itself in the event of a ceasefire rather than settle for a peace agreement with Russia.