In May 1945, the end of the second world war in Europe brought Soviet power all the way to the streets of Berlin. The Red Army had fought its way there as part of the wider Allied effort to defeat Nazi Germany. Now, 80 years on, the end of the Russo-Ukrainian war could enable Moscow to project its power westward once again.
How would that happen? Through some kind of peace accord between Ukraine and Russia — organised under American pressure — that would end hostilities in the short run but reward Russian aggression and leave open the chance of renewed conflict once Moscow reconstitutes its forces.
While the chances of Russian tanks rolling westward are (probably) limited, Moscow is already carrying out cross-border assassinations, cyber interventions, sabotage and other acts of violence short of full-scale military attack. Those would probably intensify, raising the chances of escalation. Worse, any subsequent move westward by Russia would take place in confrontation, not in alliance, with western European democracies — and in the dangerous context of US disengagement from Europe.
Under these circumstances, the precise terms of any deal to end hostilities — be it a ceasefire or a peace accord — matter greatly. Tragically, best-case terms for Ukraine are already off the table: Nato membership remains a distant dream and there’s no ready substitute for the security guarantees that such membership would have offered.
But there is at least still a “best worst case” on offer, namely one that at least avoids formal recognition of Russia’s changes to Ukrainian borders. Much depends on whether the Trump administration plumps for this scenario — or for one with far worse consequences for Europeans and global order.
Anniversary as catalyst
Given that the full-scale invasion took place more than three years ago, it might not seem obvious why this issue has suddenly become urgent. The reason is that Donald Trump has recently renewed his agitation for some kind of ceasefire or peace accord soon, on one occasion calling for this to happen by the end of the first full week in May.
Perhaps not coincidentally, that’s when Moscow will celebrate the 80th anniversary of the second world war victory over the Nazis. Vladimir Putin will preside over a military parade, with guests including Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico and, most importantly, China’s Xi Jinping at his side. Xi’s willingness to spend what Putin calls a “sacred holiday” in Russia represents a high-visibility confirmation of his continuing support for Moscow.
About the artwork
The photo collages in this piece were built from images and ephemera taken from Larry Towell’s ‘The History War’, a book charting the events and people the Magnum photographer encountered on his many journeys to Ukraine since 2014
Such parades happen every year, serving as signs of the extent to which the defeat of Nazi Germany remains a core part of Russia’s understanding of itself as a great power. But the combination of the 80th anniversary, the recent signing of a minerals deal between Kyiv and Washington, and Xi’s presence gives this year’s event added significance.
In response to Trump’s calls for some kind of end to the bloodshed in Ukraine, Putin has already indicated that he will order a temporary ceasefire during commemorative events. Putin’s motive, it seems, is not so much to spare Ukrainians as to manage a set of related problems simultaneously. This declaration makes him appear responsive to Trump and it allows the Russian leader to cast Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, in the role of the one threatening a sacred holiday if violations occur.
It also reduces the risk of high-profile guests coming under attack. As one Ukrainian commentator noted, during the parade Putin wants to avoid having “to hide Xi and other honourable guests in Lenin’s mausoleum from Ukrainian drones” that have proved capable of targeted killings far inside Russia’s borders.
For his part, Zelenskyy has repeatedly expressed interest in a ceasefire, not least to end the tragic civilian deaths from Russian missile attacks. But what kind of a deal Putin and Zelenskyy might strike, at Trump’s urging, will have far-reaching significance. Given that the factors are aligning for a possible end to hostilities, it’s worth taking a closer look at three of the most contentious questions that will haunt any peace accord: recognition of Russian territorial gains, particularly Crimea; the implications for Nato; and the future of geopolitical order.
Rump Ukraine?
Classifying the post-conflict status of occupied Ukrainian territory — above all, Crimea and its important naval port Sevastopol — will be a fraught endeavour. It seems that the Trump administration wants to treat Crimea differently from other occupied Ukrainian regions in any putative permanent ceasefire or peace accord, so it’s worth revisiting some history to understand what’s at stake.
Ukraine became independent from Moscow through a referendum vote on December 1 1991 that was judged by international observers to be free and fair. In that election, Ukrainian independence received an absolute majority of support in all regions — including Crimea. Across Ukraine as a whole, more than 90 per cent of voters supported breaking away. World leaders — including the Russian president at the time, Boris Yeltsin — quickly recognised Ukraine’s 1991 borders, including Crimea, as Kyiv’s sovereign territory.
Despite that Russian recognition and a 1997 Russo-Ukrainian treaty which committed both countries to the inviolability of existing borders, Putin nonetheless retook Crimea in 2014. He announced its annexation after Russian forces entered the territory and swiftly organised another referendum vote. Unlike the 1991 election, this 2014 vote failed to receive international recognition, since it took place under what was a de facto military occupation. Few countries acknowledged the annexation formally.
Odds are high that Ukraine will have to live with the loss of Crimea (and other occupied parts of its 1991 territory) for an unknown period, not least because it was already clear by the end of the Biden administration that the clock was ticking down to the end of American military aid deliveries. With those deliveries, Kyiv had a chance to regain occupied territory; without them, chances drop sharply. And Europeans are not currently able to cover any shortfalls, though they are working to change that.
But the way any potential peace accord classifies this occupation is, by contrast, much less obvious. It seems as if the US is willing — either as part of some kind of peace accord, or in parallel with one — to formally recognise Crimea, at least, as part of Russia. The result would be a “rump Ukraine”, involuntarily shorn of a key part of its 1991 territory. A better outcome would instead be allowing Kyiv to emulate crucial elements from the cold war history of the Baltics and West Germany.
Although the Baltic states had become independent after the first world war, Moscow occupied them and turned them into part of the Soviet Union during the second world war. Washington never recognised that occupation, however. Similarly, although post-second world war Germany was divided for over 40 years, neither the Americans nor the West Germans formally recognised East Germany. Instead, in another precedent with potential relevance to Ukraine, they declared in a series of treaties that a unified German nation continued to exist — just temporarily divided into two states.
As a practical matter, these treaties allowed the two Germanies to establish diplomatic relations. But West Germany consistently maintained those were inner-German, not foreign, relations and treated any East Germans who fled west as fellow citizens from the moment of their escape. Such artful manoeuvring kept the door open for better days in the future, which arrived in the 1980s when Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader. Ukraine should be allowed to hope for a better future as well.
How Crimea and other occupied regions are classified after major hostilities cease will also have implications beyond Ukraine’s borders. As Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte stressed recently, there’s a big difference between a peace accord that formally recognises Russian annexation of Crimea versus one that merely acknowledges it. Admittedly, neither classification changes facts on the ground. But if Putin does indeed get legal recognition out of Kyiv by way of Trump’s arm-twisting, that would increase risks to Russia’s neighbours.
Why? Because one of the reasons Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was so shocking was its violation of what seemed to be a new norm of the post-cold war world: that great powers would no longer change major borders in Europe by force. While there might be conflicts between smaller entities, such as the bloodshed among former parts of Yugoslavia, European carnage on the level of the second world war seemed to have become taboo. Putin had, of course, already changed Ukraine’s borders in 2014, but with relatively little violence. It was the scale of the invasion in 2022 that was truly shocking.
Full US recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea would signal a validation of forcible border changes — and suggest that Washington may be willing to formalise post-2022 gains as well. Either or both developments would severely undermine the notion that European borders are safe, and would put Europeans in the unenviable position, as the French journalist Sylvie Kauffmann framed it, of either supporting the inviolability of borders or breaking with Washington.
And either way, the result would be a more permissive environment for transgressions. Given that Russia is already suspected of damaging cables under the Baltic Sea and launching cyber attacks not just across Europe but globally, Moscow’s willingness to act beyond its borders would presumably intensify. That would, in turn, raise the risks of escalation — and the threat of potentially enormous, not to say fatal, damage to Nato.
A post-Nato world of spheres?
The heart of the North Atlantic Treaty, the alliance’s foundational document, is Article 5, which stipulates that an attack on one should be treated as an attack on all. The article does not, however, explicitly stipulate that allies will launch a war in response. This intentional ambiguity means there’s already a level of uncertainty baked into Article 5.
Statements by the second Trump administration about its priorities lying elsewhere in the world, and its disdain for Europeans — expressed corrosively in the Signal chat between defence secretary Pete Hegseth, vice-president JD Vance, other Trump officials and one very surprised journalist who had been added accidentally — have further increased that uncertainty.
A peace accord in which Washington formalises Putin’s seizure of territory by violence may embolden him to test Article 5, such as by dramatically increasing activities against the Baltic states. And repeated failures to respond to incursions from Moscow would also further undermine Article 5, perhaps exposing it entirely as a bluff. Europe would then effectively move into a post-Nato era, raising a daunting question: what would come next?
Unsurprisingly, policymakers and academics alike are currently debating just this issue. As the American political scientist Stacie Goddard writes in Foreign Affairs, Trump wants “a world managed by strongmen who work together” to divide the world into spheres of influence. Rather than confrontation between spheres, these leaders will instead fight “the forces of disorder” — that is, challenges to their authority — inside their respective spheres.
The result would be a world divided into three, in which Beijing, Moscow, and Washington could do largely what they wanted as long as they stayed in their own domains. Taken to an extreme, this vision would allow Xi to take Taiwan, Putin to take as much of the former Soviet bloc as he desired, and Trump to take Canada, Greenland and Panama.
Such a global reordering would be the ultimate negation of the promise of the post-cold war era, namely that smaller states would no longer routinely fall victim to great-power competition. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, such states seemed to have gained unfettered and lasting access to sovereignty and self-determination. They could choose, at long last, economic and security alliances for themselves — and former Warsaw Pact members and the Baltic states chose what ultimately became the European Union and Nato.
Observers at the time, however, warned that the outbreak of peace might not be as widespread as assumed. The American Russia expert Stephen Sestanovich presciently warned in 1993 of “the frustration and powerlessness we will feel once Russian democracy fails” and its imperialist impulses return. Now that this has happened, the question today is how much self-determination smaller states, particularly European ones, can retain if spheres of influence become the order of the day.
This question matters not just to European states but globally as well, thanks to Xi’s support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Although the categorisation of the Chinese-Russian partnership as one with “no limits” was clearly overstated — Beijing seems to have abruptly discovered a limit when Moscow reportedly considered using tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine in late 2022, to which the Chinese objected — it’s clear that Xi and Putin share a personal bond and a mutual interest in divvying up the benefits of their partnership. Those include reliable, cheap energy supplies for China and international legitimacy for Russia.
But in supporting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Xi is actively violating the supposedly core Chinese foreign policy principles: state sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-intervention. He’s also willing to shatter norms both abroad and at home, given that in 2023, he broke with the long-established practice that the party’s top man would serve only two terms, manoeuvring himself into a third term and setting himself up as leader for life. He and Putin clearly agree on the goal of undermining the western rules-based liberal order and moving on to something more congenial.
The power of words
It’s in this context that the true significance of any potential Ukrainian peace deal comes fully into view. An accord that avoids the US (or any country) formally recognising Ukraine’s truncation will give Kyiv a chance to fight — or at least to regain territory by other means — another day. Ideally, such an accord would also involve placing troops from a coalition of willing Nato members along the line of control and accelerating Ukraine’s accession to the EU.
If that’s not workable, then it would be better to strive towards a Korean war-style armistice rather than some kind of agreement that involves the US formalising Russia’s annexation of Crimea and possibly of other territories as well. Coming just as Putin — who is by all accounts obsessed with history — marks the anniversary of Russian power extending as far west as Berlin, such an accord would send an ominous signal. It could clear the lane for future westward power projection by Moscow, suggesting that the shift to a sphere-based order has become more likely.
The consequences could be felt as far afield as Taiwan. While there are key differences — for example, Washington ceased regarding Taiwan as sovereign and terminated official diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979, instead establishing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China — the spectre of a Russia rewarded for its land grab could nonetheless start to look like a precedent.
For these reasons, a lot hangs on a few words on a piece of paper that may or may not be signed in the coming weeks. It will be easy to lose sight of the words as Victory Day marching bands play and flags flutter, but those celebrations are about the past. Those few words could signal the arrival of a much darker future.
Mary Elise Sarotte is a professor at Johns Hopkins University and the author of ‘Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate’
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