The Hard Arithmetic of Peace

Diplomacy often returns not with the sound of triumph but with the quiet admission that war has become too costly to ignore. After a nine-month pause, the United States, Russia and Ukraine have resumed US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi, raising cautious hopes that one of Europe's bloodiest conflicts since the Second World War may finally be edging toward a political pathway. Yet optimism should be tempered by reality. As the war approaches its fifth year, the principal obstacle is no longer the absence of dialogue but the absence of strategic convergence. The Abu Dhabi talks have reopened negotiations, but they have not altered the political arithmetic that continues to sustain the war.

The UAE deserves recognition for keeping diplomatic channels alive. Earlier rounds hosted in Abu Dhabi helped facilitate prisoner exchanges and humanitarian arrangements, illustrating how middle powers outside the traditional Western alliance are increasingly emerging as credible mediators in conflicts where great powers struggle to build trust. Such humanitarian achievements matter. But they also underline an uncomfortable truth. Previous negotiations produced procedural progress without political settlement. Unless the incentives driving the conflict begin to change, diplomacy risks becoming a mechanism for managing war rather than ending it.

That is because the negotiations extend far beyond Ukraine's borders. At stake is not merely the future of occupied territories but the future of Europe's security order. The central question is whether the post-Cold War architecture centred on NATO will continue to define European stability or whether Russia can renegotiate that order through military coercion and diplomacy. Every discussion on territory is therefore simultaneously a debate about deterrence, sovereignty and the rules governing European security itself.

Russia's participation should not automatically be interpreted as strategic moderation. Diplomatic engagement can consolidate battlefield gains as effectively as military advances. By entering negotiations while controlling roughly a fifth of Ukrainian territory, Moscow may seek to transform de facto military realities into politically accepted outcomes, reduce international pressure and reopen broader discussions on sanctions and European security. Its publicly stated demands, including Ukrainian neutrality, recognition of annexed territories and limits on Ukraine's military capabilities, suggest that the Kremlin continues to view negotiations as an extension of strategic competition rather than a departure from it.

Ukraine, however, faces constraints of a different nature. Kyiv's refusal to surrender territory reflects not only questions of sovereignty but also democratic legitimacy. After years of immense military, economic and human sacrifice, any agreement perceived as rewarding aggression would encounter formidable domestic resistance. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy must negotiate not only with foreign governments but also with a society determined that peace should not merely stop the fighting but prevent its recurrence. For Ukraine, credible and enforceable security guarantees remain inseparable from any discussion on territory because a ceasefire without deterrence risks becoming an invitation to future conflict.

This explains why optimism about reported private flexibility should be treated cautiously. Governments often negotiate more pragmatically behind closed doors than their public rhetoric suggests. Yet peace agreements succeed only when the perceived cost of continuing war exceeds the perceived cost of compromise for every principal actor. That threshold appears elusive. Despite growing war fatigue, both Moscow and Kyiv continue to believe that time, battlefield dynamics or external political shifts may still improve their bargaining positions. As long as that calculation persists, meaningful compromise will remain difficult.

The United States has attempted to break this deadlock through President Donald Trump's distinctive style of diplomacy, relying on trusted personal envoys and direct political engagement rather than lengthy multilateral processes. This approach has demonstrated one important strength: it has revived negotiations after months of diplomatic paralysis and created space for discussions that formal institutions struggled to sustain. Yet speed and durability are rarely identical objectives. A settlement that merely freezes violence without resolving the underlying security dilemma risks repeating the shortcomings of earlier ceasefire arrangements that postponed rather than prevented renewed conflict. Personal diplomacy may open doors, but enduring peace ultimately depends on institutions capable of enforcing agreements long after political leaders leave office.

Europe's relatively limited role in the principal negotiating format exposes another structural weakness. While Washington has consulted European allies separately, any attempt to redesign Europe's security architecture without Europe at the central negotiating table is unlikely to command lasting legitimacy. European governments are not peripheral stakeholders. They have provided much of Ukraine's military assistance, financial support and humanitarian aid, and they will bear much of the responsibility for reconstruction, sanctions policy and future security guarantees. No peace settlement can endure without the political and financial commitment of those expected to sustain it. Excluding Europe from shaping that order risks producing an agreement that proves difficult to implement.

The economic dimension is equally significant. Even if military hostilities were to diminish, the harder questions would remain unresolved: financing Ukraine's reconstruction, determining the future of sanctions, addressing frozen Russian sovereign assets and adapting to Europe's accelerated defence industrial expansion. Military ceasefires may arrive before economic normalisation, but durable peace requires both. History suggests that rebuilding economies and institutions often proves more difficult than ending battles.

From the Congress of Vienna to the Dayton Accords, durable settlements have required more than ceasefires. They have rested on political arrangements accepted, however imperfectly, by the principal stakeholders. Where such consensus is absent, agreements tend to freeze conflicts rather than resolve them.

The Abu Dhabi talks should therefore be judged by realistic rather than rhetorical standards. Success is unlikely to come in the form of a comprehensive peace treaty. More plausible outcomes include expanded prisoner exchanges, localised ceasefires, humanitarian corridors and confidence-building measures that gradually reduce the human cost of the war while preserving diplomatic momentum. Such achievements should not be dismissed. But neither should they be mistaken for a strategic breakthrough.

Peace is rarely created by negotiations alone. It emerges when power, legitimacy, security and political will begin pointing in the same direction. Abu Dhabi has reopened the conversation. It has not yet changed the strategic arithmetic. Until that arithmetic shifts, diplomacy may soften the war's edges, but it is unlikely to end the war itself.