Predicting 2026: Will Ukraine finally get a peace deal?

Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Tuesday, December 30th. I'm Sonia Hudson, and this is your FT News Briefing. The U.S. has offered Ukraine a 15-year security guarantee as part of a peace deal. But Kiev wants one that lasts as long as 50 years to deter Russia from invading in the future. This is all according to statements from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday. He met with U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday. Now, what exactly does a security guarantee involve?

Well, according to Kiev's proposal, it would mirror NATO's Article 5 commitment to mutual defense. An attack on one country is considered an attack on all. But there's a big difference between 15 and 50 years.

So for now, a peace deal is still out of reach, which is not what the FT's Europe editor Ben Hall thought would happen in 2025. At the end of last year, he predicted there would be an agreement. Ben joins me now for the second installment of our series on predictions, where we talk about whether our colleagues were right about 2025 and if they can venture a guess about 2026. Hi, Ben. Hello.

All right, so you thought there would be a peace deal in 2025. Why did you make that prediction? Because I thought a forceful President Trump would be... rational in the way that he approached this peace deal and would, whilst trying to find some kind of compromise between Kiev and Moscow, would have been prepared to put... pressure on Moscow to bring it to the negotiating table properly with a view to sort of essentially forcing it to make a compromise to end the war. But I was wrong.

Yeah. Well, forecasting is famously a dangerous game in this profession. What do you think went wrong? Why was there no deal? I would say for precisely that reason, because Trump has never really showed... his readiness to sustainably put pressure on Moscow to engage properly, to be ready to settle for something less than its maximalist demands. And I think...

That might well be because he ultimately thinks nothing will force them to settle, and therefore you have to give them their maximalist demands. You know, three times this year, we saw President Trump. sort of shift to a position that was incredibly pro-Russian and seemed to ignore Ukraine's needs and demands for a fair and sustainable peace.

And each time the Europeans, to a greater or lesser degree, and we just don't know how sustainable it is, have sort of pulled them back to a more reasonable position. But essentially, I think I underestimated the extent to which Trump would...

have tried to use leverage on Russia. Yeah, well, get us up to speed on where things stand now. You know, there's been a decent amount of progress in the last several weeks. But you mentioned earlier, Russia has these. maximalist demands. Ukraine doesn't seem like it wants to agree to most of them. Can you just get us up to speed on where things stand now? Sure. So after this famous 28-point plan, emerged earlier this autumn, drafted between US and Russian negotiators.

which shocked very many people for being so favorable to Moscow and so unfavorable to Ukraine. Ukrainian negotiations with help from European capitals have essentially tried to sort of unpick. or try to revise this peace plan into something more favorable. And essentially the negotiation has boiled down to, as was always predictable, the two biggest sticking points.

First of all, Russia's demand for Ukraine to give up the rest of Donbass in the east of Ukraine, which Ukraine will not do for political and military reasons. And Ukraine still occupies at least some of the Donbass region, right? Correct. It occupies about 25% of Donetsk province. tiny slither of Luhansk province, and those two provinces make up the Donbass. Putin has seizing all of that as a minimum for a cessation of hostilities.

It's clear that American negotiators have been far more sympathetic to the sort of Russian point of view that this is the price of peace. And then the other question is security guarantees, which Friedrich Mertz, the German chancellor, talked about. America providing a kind of political and legal guarantee to Ukraine and to help the Europeans in their own kind of form of security guarantee for Ukraine, which might be in the form of a no-fly zone.

troop presence on the ground in in ukraine and so that In theory, sounds like we've made progress, but we haven't seen any of the details yet. And also the American officials made it very clear that that offer on security guarantees would not remain on the table forever. Unless there's a deal on territories in some form, those security guarantees from the American side will not come into play.

Okay, so it sounds like we're still pretty far away from a peace deal, but there has been more momentum in recent weeks than we've seen in the past. Do you think there's enough momentum for Ukraine and Russia to agree to a deal in 2020? Well, I think we have to remember that all of the diplomatic effort has been going from the Ukrainian European end has been to try and find a common position with the Americans. Whether Russia will accept any of that...

is highly doubtful. President Vladimir Putin, if anything, sounds even more determined to carry on with his war. So the momentum has all been on the sort of allied side, if you like, and that has been to try and... turn the americans from being independent mediators into these talks into more of an ally of ukraine and we have signs that there there is momentum there and there is possibly some success although who knows

But there has been no sign of any momentum on the Russian side, any attempt to want to try and cut a deal here. So is America's cooperation with Europe the key to getting a deal done? Well, I think... It's fundamental in the sense that it will put pressure on Moscow if America is backing a deal that is acceptable to Kiev. And although Europe would like to be able to do this on its own, it's proved to be too...

indecisive and too weak to really do that. And it's still very much dependent on America to apply a lot of the pressure in terms of arm supplies to Ukraine, in terms of military intelligence sharing with Ukraine, and obviously... in terms of further sanctions pressure, particularly on Russian oil exports. Ben, what do you think the peace negotiating process tells us about the relationship between the West and Russia?

Well, I mean, it depends. You have to distinguish between the component parts of the West. And that's part of the problem, which is that there is now... a fundamental difference between how the US sees Russia, or rather how the Trump administration sees Russia, how much of Europe sees Russia as the preeminent security threat, a force of destabilization.

with all of its hybrid operations, and a huge strategic challenge for the continent. Whereas the Trump administration takes the view that Russia is a would-be business partner.

that it's in America's fundamental interests to find, as it said in the national security strategy, a strategic stabilization with Russia. And that will be, if we follow that document, through to its logical conclusion, will drive a massive wedge between Washington and other European capitals, unless, of course, the Americans can be persuaded to view Russia.

as the threat that it really is and a threat to American interests that it really is. Ben Hall is the FT's Europe editor. Thanks, Ben. Thank you. Before we go, make sure you tune in tomorrow for the next installment of our Predictions series. The FT's national editor and columnist, Ed Luce, explains how his 2025 forecast for Donald Trump and Elon Musk turned out.

Trump loves money, let's put it bluntly, and he loves rich people. And Musk is the richest person in the world. So Trump was always going to forgive the prodigal son. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. You can read more on Ukraine and 2025 predictions for free when you click the links in our show notes.

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