The U.S. Must Not Push Ukraine Into an Unjust, Unstable Peace
THERE’S NO WAY for me to address the reports about an apparent attempt by the Trump administration to launch a new “peace process” for Ukraine without confessing a personal bias.
Years ago, when commanding U.S. Army Europe, I worked closely with the Ukrainian army as they struggled to shed the dead weight of the Soviet military system and build something worthy of their emerging democratic nation. My closest partner in that effort was Colonel-General Henadii Vorobyov—a Ukrainian who had served years in the Soviet Army before his nation gained its independence. He believed, with passionate conviction, that Ukraine should have a capable, modern military grounded in Western values. We spent hours walking training ranges, poring over doctrine and leader-development techniques, and choosing the right soldiers to become part of a new NCO corps and the right junior officers to rise to the top of their command structure. Vorobyov is gone now, having died in 2016, but I think of him often. I imagine how proud he would be if he saw what his soldiers have endured since 2014—and how he might react to what some in Washington now propose for his nation.
Since February 2022, I’ve followed this war every day. Not casually. Not passively. Closely. I’ve watched Ukraine fight for its life in ways that remind me of why nations build armies in the first place: to defend their people, their land, their unique culture, their way of life. I’ve watched Russia shift from attempted blitzkrieg to criminal attrition, from incompetence to brutal strikes against civilians. I’ve traced the arcs of all the phases and campaigns—Kyiv, Kharkiv, Bakhmut, Robotyne, the failed summer offensives, the Black Sea successes—and often written about each phase.
And now, hearing the rumblings of a push toward a new peace initiative, something feels deeply wrong.
Reports suggest the administration is circulating proposals to “nudge” Kyiv toward negotiations. There are whispers about territorial concessions, security guarantees, and a 28-point framework that, to me, resembles the preambles to a frozen conflict. Simultaneously, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll and Army Chief of Staff General Randy George are in Kyiv meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky and his senior commanders. The official line is they are discussing support, readiness, future requirements. To me, that’s credible—because they are both serious leaders, they both understand war, and Kyiv welcomes them. But the timing, the context, and the parallel diplomatic chatter raise the possibility that they may have also been asked to deliver uncomfortable messages.
Their presence comes as others in the administration—Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who have reportedly been working intensely on diplomatic channels—seem to be pushing harder for what they see as a path toward ending a grinding conflict. Their intentions are good. They want stability. They want to prevent escalation. They want an end to the bloodshed. Those are noble aims. But—and here is where emotion meets experience—there are things they may not be considering as extensively as they should.
They do not know and they have not experienced the Russian way of war the way Ukrainians, Poles, Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Finns, and so many others have. And they do not know the soul of Vladimir Putin.
Europeans—especially those closest to Russia—do not romanticize the Kremlin. They have lived under the shadow of Moscow’s imperial appetites for generations. They have watched Russia use coercion, assassination, cyber sabotage, energy blackmail, and disinformation as casually as most countries issue press releases. They have buried the bodies. Their parents and grandparents buried more. They all know something that official visitors from the United States forget: Russia stops only when it is stopped. Never sooner.
Which is why the first and greatest danger of this reported new “peace process” is that any push for Ukraine to surrender land would reward Russia for its atrocities. And Russia’s atrocities are not vague allegations—they are documented with names, dates, photographs, and graves. Liberated towns reveal mass graves, torture chambers, and documents listing the children taken away. Apartments purposely targeted and reduced to dust. Schools destroyed. Hospitals struck. Civilians executed with hands bound behind their backs. This is not a war of confused intentions. It is a deliberate campaign of terror.
To allow Russia to keep any territory where those crimes were committed would not be a compromise. It would be a betrayal.
MY SECOND CONCERN is that Americans underestimate just how viscerally our European allies experience this war. It’s not theoretical for them. It’s not “in the region.” It’s next door. They see Russian sabotage teams caught with explosives at power stations. They see Kremlin hackers probing their parliaments. They track spies and criminals tied to the GRU and the FSB. They have lived with Russian intimidation for decades—and they know what will follow any appeasement.
When allies like Finland, Estonia, Poland, Lithuania, Sweden, and the Czech Republic say that rewarding Russia will destabilize Europe, they are not offering an opinion. They are sounding an alarm. They are warning the United States that if Ukraine is forced into concessions, Putin will interpret it exactly the way he interpreted the world’s weak reactions after Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014, Syria in 2015, and the Wagner operations across Africa: as permission.
My third concern is rooted in something deeply American. Ukraine is fighting for the values we claim as our own: freedom, sovereignty, human dignity, democratic self-determination. Every time Ukrainians clear rubble from a school, repair a substation after a missile strike, or retake a hill under fire, they are demonstrating what those values look like in action—not as rhetoric, but as lived courage. If we fail to support that, we are not merely abandoning Ukraine. We are abandoning ourselves.
Which brings me to what, in my view, must be said plainly: the administration’s desire for diplomacy is admirable. The desire to end a war is understandable. But the United States must not pressure Ukraine to give up its land, its people, or its future. That is a line we must not cross—strategically, morally, or historically.
The Ukrainians are requesting the means to defend themselves. They are not asking for American troops. They are not asking us to fight their war. They are certainly asking for equipment, but they are mostly asking for political backing. They are asking us to keep faith with the principles we proclaim at every podium where we talk about freedom.
Yes, there is fatigue in Washington and some politicians are looking for a way to declare progress. But fatigue is not a strategy. Impatience is not a principle. And convenience is not a moral compass. Russia will not stop because we grow weary. It will stop only when Ukraine, with backing, can stop it.
SOME OBSERVERS ARGUE that a frozen conflict is inevitable. But frozen conflicts are not endings—they are intermissions. They are the periods during which Russia reconstitutes, rearms, and prepares for the next assault. Ask any Estonian or Georgian how long a “frozen conflict” stays frozen.
Others say Ukraine cannot reclaim all its territory. I would counter that Ukraine has repeatedly done what outsiders claimed it could not do: defend Kyiv, retake Kharkiv, sink the Moskva, drive the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol, attack the supply lines inside Russia. Ukraine has earned the right to define victory—not the United States, not Russia, and certainly not the international chorus of tired realists.
Ukrainians want peace more than anyone. But they want a peace that honors the dead, protects the living, and prevents their children from facing the same invader ten or twenty years from now. They want a peace that reflects the world we say we stand for.
We should not try to hurry them toward something less.
And so, with all respect to those working these diplomatic channels—including Witkoff, Rubio, and others—here is a plea: Listen to the Europeans who know Russia. Listen to the Ukrainians who know the cost of freedom. And listen to the lessons of history, which tell us that pressuring a victim to concede to his attacker is not peace. It is surrender dressed in the language of statesmanship.
The world is watching what we choose to do in this moment—whether we still believe in the principles we teach our children, and whether American leadership still has a moral spine.
Ukraine has shown the world what courage looks like.
The question now is whether the United States still recognizes it.
And whether we will stand with them.
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