Ukraine and Russia Can Find Peace With a DMZ

By Retired Admiral James Stavridis, Fletcher Dean Emeritus, and former supreme allied commander of NATO

The Korean War offers a model for a cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia.

During the election campaign, former and future President Donald Trump said he would stop the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. While that seems highly unlikely, it is clear that the new administration is extremely skeptical of continuing significant US military aid to Kyiv. Trump and his vice president, JD Vance, have talked about pushing both sides to the negotiating table early in 2025.

This isn’t hopeless: The chances of both sides being willing to negotiate next year are increasing. Russian President Vladimir Putin insists he is willing to grind away indefinitely, but mounting personnel losses will make that difficult. Roughly 200,000 young Russian men have been killed in action, with probably double that number seriously wounded. And more than 500,000 people have departed the country, many of them young men escaping the draft. The arrival of up to 100,000 North Korean troops to help alleviate the problem is an admission of Russian weakness.

Ukraine also faces significant manpower problems — but even more dire is the possibility of declining aid from the US and perhaps the European Union. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s appeals have an increasing tone of desperation, and nothing in the national security appointments of Team Trump will likely encourage Kyiv’s sense of security. Even Marco Rubio, Trump’s choice for secretary of state, has abandoned his longtime support for Kyiv. Over time, the odds are against the Ukrainians on the battlefield.

So the question becomes what sort of deal might be acceptable, if not attractive, to both sides? And who would help bring the parties to the table? Actually, those North Korean troops bring to mind a potential model for compromise: the demilitarized zone that has kept the peace on the Korean Peninsula for seven decades.

The rough outline of a agreement has been visible for over a year. When the initial Russian invasion failed to run the table and conquer all of Ukraine, the battle lines began to stagnate. There has been some back-and-forth — the Ukrainians have retaken about half of what Russia held at its high-water mark — but the landscape is simple: Russia holds about 20% of Ukraine, including Crimea and the four provinces of Donbas; and Kyiv holds the remaining 80% of the country, including Odessa and the crucial southwestern Black Sea coastline. While Ukraine took a small chunk of Russia near Kursk a few months ago, that salient is likely to collapse soon in the face of a determined Russian-North Korean military operation.

Let’s use that geography as a starting point for compromise. Putin won’t return Crimea and the four provinces, which have a high percentage of ethnic Russians. Zelenskiy will hate this and protest it, but the military realities of Russian occupation are fixed. What you see is probably what you will get, whether you’re in Kyiv or Moscow.

Assuming that is the rough land calculus, the next step is to create a meaningful cease-fire by forging a demilitarized zone between territory held by each side. Here the Korean War provides a reasonable precedent: create a strip, perhaps 5-10 miles wide, and have the opposing parties patrol it, just as the North Koreans and South Koreans have faced each other for 70 years. Or, perhaps better but less likely, there could be a neutral force of United Nations peacekeepers from Latin America or Africa.

The next step is providing some level of security guarantees for Ukraine so that Putin can’t just re-invade from his forward positions in Donbas. While membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would be ideal from Kyiv’s perspective, it’s not realistic right now. Putin will demand Ukraine be neutral, with no NATO trainers, troops, jets or support based in Ukrainian territory. The trade space between these stances is limited, but there is the possibility of a defined level of NATO engagement in training and equipping the Ukrainians, short of membership.

Over time, the Ukrainians may want European Union membership as well, and they are on a path toward it. Putting the possibility of EU membership off for, say, five years and NATO membership for 10 could be a starting point in negotiations.

Some observers will say, “What’s in it for NATO?” Quite a bit, actually. If and when this war ends with a negotiation, Ukraine will have the most experienced, innovative and well-equipped ground forces in Europe. Even if NATO membership takes a decade, the value of Ukrainian membership is real.

Finland went through a similar experience when the Soviet Union invaded in 1939 in the so-called Winter War. The Finns fought the Russians to a standstill, but ultimately traded about 10% of their land for peace and pledged neutrality. Now, they are vital members of NATO.

Everyone will hate parts of this deal. Putin will hate it, because he doesn’t get what he really wanted — the entirety of Ukraine, 40 million new citizen-vassals and the nation’s rich natural resources. Instead, he’ll get 20% of that territory, filled with unexploded ordnance, mines and burned-out infrastructure.

Zelenskiy will hate such a deal, because he’s in effect trading land for peace. It isn’t right or fair, but neither are life or realpolitik.

We have a saying in north Florida where I’m from: Sometimes you gotta be for what’s gonna happen anyway. These are ultimately decisions for Ukrainians and Russians to make, but the shape of the deal is becoming clear. All that’s needed is a push to the table, which may be coming from Washington very shortly.

(This post is republished from Bloomberg.)