Why would Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, or any outside mediator, want to talk with Putin? Even if a ceasefire was achieved, as Serhii Plokhy argues in David and Goliath (Harvard Ukrainian Studies, February 2026), it would not bring lasting peace.
Neither side is content with the status quo. Russia cannot be satisfied with the Donbas rust belt for which so many have died, and Ukraine is acquiring the upper hand from its skillful use of military technology.
Putin wants Russia to retain Crimea and other lands occupied by Moscow’s forces in 2014 and after the 2022 full-scale invasion. He even demands the Donbas borderlands still controlled by Ukraine.
But Kyiv says such demands are off the table and wants Russia to return all the territory occupied since 2014 — including artifacts plundered from museums. A Russian-controlled Crimean peninsula cut off from its supply routes is not viable.
No serious peace treaty should reward the aggressor, and Putin and his inner circle must be brought before a Nuremberg-type court to face justice for their war crimes in Ukraine. They started and waged an unprovoked war in violation of the United Nations Charter as well as the Treaty of Paris, which banned war as an instrument of policy and was championed by the Kremlin in 1928.
Neither can any peace treaty ignore the fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has already indicted Putin for the mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children.
It must also underline Russia’s obligation to pay reparations to compensate Ukraine for lives destroyed; the education lost and careers disrupted; and long-term conditions including post-traumatic stress suffered by hundreds of thousands of people.
Besides damage to buildings and infrastructure, the Kremlin’s actions have seriously harmed the environment, poisoning land, water, air, and wildlife. The value of stolen or ruined grain should also be covered by reparations.
The UN compelled Iraq to pay $52bn for damage caused by Saddam Hussein’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990-1. It should bill Russia and collect more than $1 trillion to rebuild Ukraine. This is a huge sum, but Russia’s oil and gas reserves are substantial.
Whoever runs the Kremlin should also compensate the Russian people and ethnic minorities for their losses in a war that was Putin’s invention. There are hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, war veterans habituated to violence and crime, the deceitful distortion and masking of information, a stagnating economy, sanctions by the free world, and an embarrassing indebtedness to China, North Korea, and Iran.
Putin has also sought to stop Kyiv from joining the European Union or NATO, but, as an independent, sovereign state, Ukraine must be free to choose its own alignment.
No lasting peace should allow Russia to be ruled by former KGB operatives and corrupt oligarchs. As in West Germany after 1945, the foundations of aggressive autocracy must be removed and the guardrails for democracy established.
This might seem an impossible task, requiring occupation by foreign forces, as in post-war Germany, but Russia has had its own progressive reformers: Count Witte, Pyotr Stolypin, Aleksandr Kerensky, Nikolai Bukharin, Andrei Sakharov, Aleksandr Yakovlev, Boris Namtsov, Alexey Navalny, Grigory Yavlinsky, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Boris Nadezhdin, and others, most of whom were repressed or killed by agents of state power.
If the bad guys are suppressed in late 2020s Russia, the good guys might flourish, as happened in West Germany under Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, and most of their successors.
To clean up Russia, however, Western nations should also look to their own domestic affairs. The US administration that helped reform Germany, Italy, and Japan after World War II was led by presidents Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, noted for their vision and ideals.
And it’s not just about Washington; Europe’s empowerment also benefited from leaders more far-sighted than most of their successors today.
Ukrainians, and their Russian neighbors, need all leaders in the free world to work for the long term, and achieve justice for Ukraine.
Walter Clemens is an Affiliate, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, and Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Boston University. He wrote What Putin and Xi Owe Their Victims (2023); The Baltic Transformed: Complexity Theory and European Security (2001); Baltic Independence and Russian Empire (1991); and Can Russia Change? The USSR Confronts Global Interdependence (1990 and 2011).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
