David Ignatius: A way around the Russia-Ukraine deadlock

Chess players sometimes fall into a situation they call “zugzwang,” in which any move worsens their position. The impasse in the Ukraine peace talks feels like that. But unlike chess players, statesmen aren’t bound by rules. They can escape disaster.

Here’s the deadlock: Ukraine and its European supporters want a peace deal, perhaps freezing the current front line, so long as Kyiv gets “security guarantees” for the future. But Russia demands that the West first address “root causes” of the war, which amounts to its own version of a security guarantee.

President Donald Trump has tried to find an exit. But his attempts to mediate the conflict by ingratiating himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin have so far been a flop. He’s now considering walking away from negotiations, which would be a severe personal failure for him and a disaster for Ukraine and Europe. Meanwhile, the bloodbath continues.

Let’s think about ways out of this deadlock, building on the core question of guaranteeing security. It’s bizarre to talk about security as a future issue when both sides urgently need it now. Ukraine’s civilians are terrorized by drone and missile attacks. Russia has lost more than 1 million dead and wounded, and its economy is slowly bleeding dry. Russia is the aggressor, but its security matters, too.

One tough Western approach would be reciprocity. If Putin continues to attack cities and civilian infrastructure across Ukraine, then Kyiv’s allies would give it the means to respond in kind. The weapons are ready: Anglo-French Storm Shadow cruise missiles with a range of 155 miles; German Taurus cruise missiles with a 300-mile range; U.S. ATACMS and Precision Strike ballistic missiles with ranges of 250 miles.

Trump last week bluntly stated the logic of matching Russia’s assault capability: “It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invaders country. It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of winning!”

Trump is probably right. But realistically, he and European leaders seem unlikely to enable an all-out offensive on Moscow. A potent but more palatable alternative might be a defensive guarantee.

Ukraine’s allies could announce unilateral steps to limit the suffering in Ukraine if the war continues. I can imagine a range of military options – from a no-fly zone over Ukraine, to a rotating training and advisory force inside Ukraine, to new retaliatory capabilities if Russia keeps attacking civilians or energy infrastructure. These would be security guarantees – not for the future, but immediately.

“A truly convincing security guarantee would be deploying troops to the front lines of Ukraine,” said Gen. David Petraeus, a former U.S. commander in Iraq and Afghanistan. Short of that, he told me, Kyiv’s allies should increase economic sanctions and provide “more of every category of weapons that can enable Ukraine finally to stop the Russians cold on the current front lines – and counterattack if feasible.”

A robust security guarantee, whenever it comes, will be enhanced by the Trump administration’s willingness to provide “strategic enablers,” including satellite intelligence and air defense, as reported Tuesday by the Financial Times.

The mere discussion of such options would make the Kremlin howl. Putin has asserted a right not just to attack Ukraine, but to limit how it responds. But let’s be honest. Russia has a right to be concerned about its security, as does every nation. A sensible approach to peace would invite Russia to present its list of desired security guarantees. That wouldn’t stop Ukraine’s allies from moving unilaterally to protect Ukraine’s population, by offensive or defensive means. But it makes sense to encourage Russia to join in a security discussion, even as the war continues.

Putin would surely demand as his first security guarantee that Ukraine stay out of NATO. Trump, for better or worse, has already signed off on that. I could accept it, too, so long as Kyiv gets “NATO-like” guarantees of its security, now and in the future. Putin might also insist on limiting NATO weapons inside Ukraine that can target Russia. That’s trickier. The issue should be reciprocity. Russia should agree to whatever limits it demands from Ukraine and NATO.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this month proposed that negotiators return to what he described as a Ukrainian plan for mutual security guarantees that was floated in April 2022 in Istanbul, two months into the war, and then abandoned. “The Ukrainian proposal clearly meant that these guarantees would be equal, the security of all interested parties, including Ukraine’s neighbors, would be ensured on an equal and indivisible basis. And that approach at that time … was supported by the Russian side,” Lavrov said.

Let’s talk about it. There are many potential snares in this approach, but Graham Allison, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, explains the rationale of reciprocal security guarantees. “Russians, even if paranoid, are concerned that Ukraine in NATO would be a threat to them. If we’re prepared to recognize that concern as part of mutual security arrangements between Russia, Ukraine and Europe, we might get beyond the current stalemate.”

Embracing what Allison calls “applied history,” we can see that security guarantees have helped stop wars for more than two centuries. An initial European framework was laid by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The great nations sought a “balance of power,” and for nearly a century, diplomats were able to avert most conflicts through treaties, economic sanctions or threats of intervention.

After two catastrophic world wars, a new system of “collective security” evolved through the United Nations. Thanks to the nuclear balance of terror, big powers avoided major wars. When they got near the brink in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated mutual security guarantees – Russia pulled its nuclear missiles from Cuba in exchange for America’s pledge not to invade the island (and to secretly remove nuclear missiles from Turkey). The Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnia war in 1995 had a framework for security guarantees through a U.N.-backed peacekeeping force.

The strategist Fred Iklé wrote a brilliant little book called “Every War Must End,” during the agonizing final years of the Vietnam conflict. Two comments seem especially appropriate now. “Inflicting ‘punishment’ on the enemy is … an ineffective strategy for ending a war,” Ikle cautioned. To end conflicts, he said, “nations on both sides tend to see a peace settlement that will bring greater and more lasting security than existed before the fighting broke out.”

If Russia chooses unwisely to fight on, then Europe and the United States should begin providing security guarantees for Ukraine now, not later. This isn’t chess. When a game is heading toward defeat, step away from the board.