The Illusion of Peace Talks
Today, August 15, 2025, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson in Anchorage under the banner of “peace talks.” On paper, it is a diplomatic overture. In reality, it is a familiar set piece: two men across a table while the war that began in the Donbas more than eleven years ago grinds on, claiming lives daily.
It has been 1,268 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, and more than a decade since the Kremlin first lit the fuse in eastern Ukraine. We’ve seen this before, the Minsk Agreements of 2014 and 2015 were earnest Western attempts to freeze the front. They failed. What remains is the toll of an unbroken war: hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, entire cities erased.
I have fought in Ukraine. My relationship with the country stretches back to 2009, when I first traveled there as a tourist. The people, the culture, the stubborn pride in their sovereignty, these are not abstractions to me. I want peace. But not the kind Moscow offers. The Kremlin’s “peace” is subjugation, dressed in the language of security guarantees. It is not just politics; it is sanctified by the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church. This is as much a holy crusade for Putin’s Russia as it is a geopolitical one.
The Limits of Negotiation
I understand Russian historical grievances. I reject the idea that in 2025, any nation has a divine right to annex and subjugate another sovereign state with internationally recognized borders.
The Russian demand to “demilitarize” Ukraine is absurd. Without its armed forces, and the will of its people to resist, Ukraine would have been carved apart in 2022, its capital occupied, its government dissolved. And let’s not forget: in 2002, at the NATO summit in Rome, Vladimir Putin publicly recognized Ukraine’s sovereignty and said he had no objection to its joining NATO. That statement did not expire.
I can understand, if not endorse, Moscow’s current argument against Ukrainian NATO membership, at least as a legitimate bargaining chip in a wider negotiation involving all 32 NATO members and its primary backer, the United States. But there is a clear pattern: no NATO member has been invaded and annexed by Russia. Ukraine has every right to deepen cooperation with the Alliance. I can humor the Russian argument only if it leads to a reasonable peace that stops the killing.
If the Kremlin were serious about peace, a starting framework could be this: complete cessation of combat operations in all unannexed Ukrainian territories, withdrawal from occupied areas in Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts, a 20-kilometer demilitarized zone along the border with Western peacekeepers on the Ukrainian side, and the removal of Russian heavy weapons from the frontier. It’s not a generous deal to Kyiv, but it would at least show good faith. And it will never happen.
Even so, the war’s toll has worn Ukrainians down. A Gallup poll last month found that 69% of Ukrainians now support a negotiated settlement but that means wildly different things depending on who you ask. Under Ukraine’s constitution, President Volodymyr Zelensky cannot cede territory without a national referendum. The people in annexed regions have had no say in their own fate. These are not problems solved by a handshake in Alaska.
The Reality on the Ground
Right now, Russia is pressing its advantage. The summer 2025 counteroffensive has three hard targets - Pokrovsk, Kostyantynivka, and Kupiansk. These aren’t symbolic objectives; they are strategic cities the Kremlin believes it can take before autumn rains bog down its forces. Pokrovsk is the most urgent. Russian troops have punched a 20-kilometer wedge into the northern axis, the largest single advance since 2023. It’s a narrow corridor, likely taken by motorcycle assault units. Whether they can hold it or whether Ukrainian forces will cut it off remains to be seen.
Moscow has no interest in ending this fight. The point is to keep just enough pressure on the front while playing Trump into seeing Russian demands as “reasonable.” No genuine peace will come this summer. Perhaps Putin will push again for the entire Black Sea coast, up to and including Odesa. That would turn Ukraine into a landlocked state and strangle its grain export economy. That is not a concession. It is a death sentence.
We live in a time when one nation bears the brunt of Eastern despotism at the flank of the Western order. The men dying in trenches are dying for the peace of others, those too far from the front to hear the shelling. Ukraine’s only real option now is to make this war as long and as costly for Russia as possible and hope the Kremlin’s economy collapses under the weight.
There is no deal to be made with Moscow while it still views Ukraine as a land of wheat-harvesting serfs in its imperial orbit. And let this be clear: it is Ukraine’s choice whether to keep fighting, not Donald Trump’s, not Vladimir Putin’s, not anyone else’s.
Benjamin Reed
American Veteran
