The United States, European Union and Ukraine have progressed toward a possible peace deal, but Russia’s unwillingness to engage and the unresolved question of how to enforce any ceasefire continue to obstruct peace, said John Lough, foreign policy chief at New Eurasian Strategies Centre.
Lough said the Western powers’ growing alignment on treaty-based commitments would go “way beyond the provisions of the Budapest Memorandum.” He cautioned, however, that any such arrangement would face immediate resistance from Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin wants peace only “on Russia’s terms,” meaning Ukrainian capitulation, and is certain to reject Western-backed security arrangements, Lough said. Putin’s remarks Wednesday to his defense collegium, he added, amounted to “a really militant speech” signaling that Moscow views NATO involvement as a red line and remains prepared to prolong the war.
Lough said Russia is under greater strain than it appears, despite its rhetoric. While economic pressures alone are unlikely to change Putin’s calculus, he said, another mobilization order could risk a mass exodus.
“The last time that happened in late 2022, about a million people left the country,” he said, adding that Russian expectations the war will end soon could become politically costly if unmet.
Lough said that U.S. President Donald Trump “has put an extraordinary effort into trying to move a peace process forward,” but that the complexity of freezing the front line makes quick results unlikely. Trump, he said, is “a man in a hurry,” but enforcing a ceasefire along a front stretching more than 1,000 kilometers poses a “huge logistical challenge.”
The following interview, recorded December 17, 2025, has been edited for length and clarity. Watch the full interview.
Ia Meurmishvili, IAM editor in chief: How would you assess the peace process? Do you think we’re closer to peace in Ukraine?
John Lough, New Eurasian Strategies Centre: This week some significant progress was made on the Ukrainian-European-U.S. side. And it was fascinating to see that some common ground was clearly found between the U.S. and Europe on the much-discussed issue of security guarantees. I’m very cautious when it comes to the use of the word “security guarantee.” …
I think it’s much better to speak about … [what it will] take to deter future Russian military aggression. But be that as it may, this idea that there will be treaty-based commitments to support Ukrainian future, this goes way beyond the provisions of the Budapest Memorandum. …
So this is very much what the Ukrainians have been asking for. And to see it emerging, for me, was frankly a little bit unexpected. I thought this would take longer. And this maybe signals the fact that Washington accepts that if the Ukrainians are going to be asked to surrender territory they currently control, then they’re going to have to have something in return.
IAM: Would you explain what the treaty-based agreement means compared with the Budapest Memorandum?
Lough: It means that countries make a solemn undertaking through their parliaments. They sign an agreement that is then ratified by their parliaments that commits them to provide support. This is how the NATO alliance works.
Ukraine has asked for something akin to Article 5 guarantees — that’s from the North Atlantic Treaty. They want something that is solid and that countries simply cannot ignore. So they’re obliged by a treaty arrangement to respond to a certain situation.
One has to be cautious here in the case of the North Atlantic Treaty. The member states are not committed as such to a military response. They’re committed to a response. It was always assumed in the Cold War, because of the scenario we faced at the time, that it would have to be a military response in the case of an armed attack. But in theory, it could be a political response as well.
With all these things, I keep having to tell people that the devil is going to be in the detail. What would it actually say in that agreement between Ukraine and the United States, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, for example. … What will the United States, particularly this administration, commit itself to since it wants to get away from these entangling alliances and is really turning on its head the way it manages relations with Europe.
So it rather feels as though the U.S. administration has finally accepted that to achieve some form of peace in Ukraine is going to take commitment that … this administration did not believe it would have to make. So some people on the Ukrainian side have pointed out the irony that Washington doesn’t want to stand by its NATO allies. We have, I think, more and more indications that U.S. is ambivalent about its NATO commitments, but it might be prepared to stand by Ukraine. So that’s something of a surprise.
But if I just continue the thought, the real question here, of course, is how is Russia going to respond to this? And I think we can be absolutely sure from Putin’s speech today to his defense collegium, a really militant speech, very critical of NATO, especially the European members of NATO. He’s firing a warning shot here. … Clearly Russia is going to reject this idea that there will be, for example, forces from European NATO countries stationed on Ukrainian territory, possibly even under some form of command system akin to NATO’s. They’re simply going to say that is a red line. It’s unacceptable.
That’s going to put the Trump administration in this position again, where they have to think, “Well, how do we square the circle here? Does it mean to get to a peace agreement we have to put yet more pressure on the Ukrainians and Europeans?”
But I think we’re kind of running out of road here. And maybe President Trump will have sort of one more serious go at this to see whether Putin really does want to settle the war or not. Because Trump keeps saying that Putin wants peace.
Putin wants peace on Russia’s terms. He wants Ukraine to capitulate. And Ukraine is clearly not prepared to do that … despite the manifest problems in terms of manpower, the economic challenges they face, and simply the weariness of the country after nearly four years of war.
As some Ukrainians have said to me, in terms of this territory in Donbas that they’re being asked to surrender, … they’d rather fight for that and possibly lose it longer term rather than simply to surrender it.
IAM: So you’re not very optimistic about the progress.
Lough: I’m not optimistic there’s going to be rapid progress. There may still be some progress here because ultimately, despite Putin’s rhetoric, he is in more difficulty than it appears on the surface.
But having to sustain losses of the kind they’re suffering at the moment to keep recruiting soldiers — not that they care about these losses, but it’s just a question of keeping the manpower at the necessary levels. If they’re going to advance further into Donbas, if they’re going to try to seize a major city, for example, they would have to mobilize. Another partial mobilization, the last time that happened in late 2022, about a million people left the country.
It’s an unpopular war. And importantly, he set the expectation that this war is going to end soon. And I’m sure that both in the elite and in broader society, that’s an idea that is welcomed because people are tired of the war. So if he can’t satisfy that, I think there are going to be many more questions asked about what’s the point of this war. … Just getting Donbas, like the Russians would say, [is like getting] a suitcase without a handle. You know, it’s very heavy, cumbersome and of extremely limited value. …
It almost feels to me as though Putin has persuaded himself, perhaps has been told by his chief of general staff and by the military command, that it’s all going well on the battlefield. Ukrainians are not going to be able to keep going. And at some point, very soon, the front’s going to collapse. But Putin’s been saying this for about a year now. And the Russian army has taken what, nearly four years, to seize 20% of Donbas. And they’ve got another roughly 20% to go. To conquer that territory, I’m not saying it would take them another four years, but it would take them a long time.
IAM: What’s your assessment of the front lines? You’ve said that the situation is difficult. How bad is it? Does Putin have as much time on his side as he thinks he does?
Lough: Certainly, the Ukrainian army is under a very great degree of pressure. There’s chiefly a manpower problem here. Lack of equipment as well. They are significantly outnumbered in some areas and struggling to hold their ground. But the reports I see every day almost invariably point out that Ukrainians are counterattacking in places, they’re advancing in places.
And I think the development we saw last weekend when President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy visited the town of Kupiansk on the front line, which the Russians claimed to have captured. It turns out that they may have thought they had captured it, but it seems that there was some sort of deception operation here that the Ukrainians have mounted. And they’ve gone back into this town and recaptured at least parts of it.
This sort of does tell the story that the Russian military have almost certainly been exaggerating their successes. And this is something that Putin has latched onto and repeated. But he can’t keep repeating it if they’re just advancing at such a snail’s pace. …
I was talking a few weeks ago to a Russian expert who studies the Telegram channels, where the Russian Z community, these patriotic supporters of the war, … exchange information. …
And he told me that his overall impression … is that the Russian military, the people commanding this operation on the ground … weren’t interested in winning the war. The status quo, this attritional warfare, suits them because they’re making money out of it. …
So if that’s the starting point, then it doesn’t feel as though the Russian army is going to defeat the Ukrainians quickly at all, that maybe the Russian army just can’t do more than this sort of attritional warfare. And so it depends on how long the Ukrainians can keep up the resilience. …
The Ukrainian side is still highly motivated. And these reports of massive numbers of desertions … haven’t reached the level where they’re imperiling the integrity of the front. So I think we can say that Ukraine is still continuing to fight remarkably well in the circumstances.
IAM: A couple of times since March or April, analysts were saying that President Trump now sees that Putin does not want peace. Do you think we’re still there, or do you think Trump’s going to blame the Europeans and Ukrainians if the process stalls?
Lough: President Trump has put an extraordinary effort into trying to move a peace process forward. He’s invested significant political capital. That Alaska meeting — red carpet treatment for Putin, bringing him in from the cold — was a big risk and it didn’t pay off. Obviously, Trump had been led to believe that Putin was going to be more flexible. …
Remarkably, [Trump] didn’t give up. He imposed some sanctions on the face of it, if they were to be enforced, these sanctions on Lukoil and Rosneft, the increased tariffs on the Indians. These are things that certainly if the sanctions were enforced, they would definitely put the Russian economy under more pressure. So it kind of looked as though Trump was getting fed up and he needed to show a bit of steel and finally put some pressure on Putin. …
He clearly seems in some way to be captivated by Putin, to admire him, and Putin, with all his skills as a KGB operative, has been able to exploit the sort of fascination he exerts on Trump. But we’ve got to a point now where Trump has got the Ukrainians and the Europeans aligned with a U.S. position. And we haven’t had that so far.
And so he’s clearly going to think, “Well, the ball is in Putin’s court now. Let’s see how he reacts.” He must understand instinctively that Putin’s not going to like a lot of the things that have been agreed earlier this week. And the Russians have already signaled as much. But he thinks probably using a combination of his personal charm, the possibility that he could, in theory, impose more sanctions and make life more difficult for Putin, that he can somehow persuade him to show a degree of flexibility.
And then if he can do that, then he would be prepared to go back to the Ukrainians and Europeans and say, “Look, this is the only deal available. You’re going to have to make some more compromises. I’ve got Putin to make at least a modest compromise. Now you need to do more.”
But I still don’t think this is going to be enough to really make a breakthrough. The danger for Ukraine is that Trump might just walk away at least temporarily and say, “I’m done with this. You carry on fighting, but you’re not going to benefit from U.S. intelligence support. And I will also cut off deliveries of U.S. military equipment bought by the Europeans.”
That would be an extreme position. But it sort of does feel a little bit this time as though we’ve got to the point where he’s put as much pressure on the Ukrainians as he can. …
We’ve got some very difficult days and probably months ahead. And I think it’s very important here to manage expectations. President Trump is a man in a hurry.
I remember listening to [Trump outgoing Ukraine envoy] General [Keith] Kellogg earlier this year at the Munich Security Conference, and he said, memorably, “We’re going to be working on Trump time.” And there’s expectation that … the wars can be ended quickly.
Apparently one of the things heard on the margins of the talks in Berlin earlier this week on the U.S. side was that the U.S. side has now woken up to the fact that this is all really complicated, and you can’t get it done quickly.
Let’s just think about the issue of freezing the front line. We’re not even talking here about adjusting borders or demilitarizing part of Donbas or something like that. We’re just talking about freezing the conflict. How do you actually enforce a ceasefire?
The U.S. had talked earlier this week about leading a verification mechanism or establishing one. How on earth is this going to be done along such a wide front line? It’s 1,000 kilometers or more. That’s a huge logistical challenge to begin with.
IAM: We initially saw [U.S. special envoy] Steve Witkoff going to Russia multiple times, meeting with President Putin. Then we saw [U.S. Secretary of State] Marco Rubio meeting with the Europeans and Ukrainians. It seemed as though there were two parallel tracks working on this peace deal. Do we now have one process? Do you think Rubio’s involvement earlier put the process on an institutional track? Or is Witkoff conducting personal diplomacy with the Russians?
Lough: It feels to me as though it’s still very much personal diplomacy, unconventional diplomacy, with all the problems that that creates. But underlying it all is still this belief in the White House that it’s commercial deals that can motivate all sides and cut through some of these traditional problems that are involved in the diplomacy of bringing wars to an end. So I think this is a highly questionable approach in this war, and it fails to appreciate what the Russian motivations are here.
Let’s face it: Putin is still talking about conquering all four regions of Ukraine and incorporating these into Russia and the Russian Federation proper because they are, in his view, historically Russian lands. So I don’t see that Putin would somehow be deviated from that course.
