NOW NEARING ITS ONE YEAR anniversary, there appears to be little hope Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, itself the latest phase of an 8-year conflict, will end any time soon.
Peace negotiations began within days of the February 24 invasion but were undermined from the start by wildly different demands, espionage and battlefield developments. By April, talks had collapsed, with Kyiv increasingly outraged by emerging evidence of Russian atrocities in parts of occupied Ukraine.
Both Kyiv and Moscow acknowledge that a negotiated settlement will likely be needed to end the conflict. But the two sides appear to be living in different, contradictory, realities. Ukraine is demanding the full withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukrainian territory per its 1991 borders, reparations, war crimes prosecutions for Russian leaders and NATO membership. Russia is demanding international recognition of its claimed annexation of four partially occupied Ukrainian territories and is still vowing to “demilitarize” and “de-Nazify” Ukraine.
Ukraine hopes that its recently proposed 10-point peace plan and a United Nations-hosted peace summit in February—both rejected by the Kremlin—will win over its key foreign partners and form a framework for eventual negotiations.
But with both sides expected to launch new offensives in the coming months, fresh talks appear a distant prospect. Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to
