Lawfare Daily: Ukraine-Russia Negotiations with Eric Ciaramella and Samuel Charap

[Intro]

Eric Ciaramella: Personally, I think an armistice is probably the, the best case realistic goal. I think once you start to add in a lot of these more intractable political issues, the probability of landing the plane, so to speak, and reaching some sort of fully agreed document and comprehensive settlement goes down to, you know, close to zero.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: It's Lawfare Podcast. I'm Mykhailo Soldatenko, Lawfare Legal Fellow. I'm joined today by Eric Ciaramella, senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Lawfare contributing editor and Samuel Charap, senior political scientist and distinguished chair in Russia and Eurasia policy at RAND Corporation.

Samuel Charap: This is a challenging and difficult and new situation, and one that I think calls for some diplomatic ingenuity to resolve. And if ending the war requires new formats and new arrangements, then you know, I think because of the extremely negative consequences of the war, even just from a U.S. national interest perspective, in my view, then you know, we should be willing to entertain that.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Today we discussed the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, and whether a potential negotiated settlement is possible.

[Main Podcast]

So today we are discussing the Ukraine, Russia negotiations, and there were two rounds of talks in mid-May and early June. This is the first such kind of talks since the talks between Ukraine and Russia broke off in 2022, and at the result, the parties conducted the exchange of prisoners of war and return of the bodies of the dead soldiers.

However, the publicly released peace proposals of both parties show that there is a staggering gap between their positions. It remains unclear whether their further rounds will happen, but today the Kremlin spokesman said that there might be a surge round of talks soon after exchanges finished.

So Sam and Eric wrote and made a number of policy proposals in respect of the war and the Ukraine security arrangements. And I think it would be fair to say that they come from somewhat different perspective on the spectrum of deterrence and engagement. And that would allow us to unpack the subject from different perspectives. So I wanna start for us to unpack the national interest and goals of the parties at the higher level of altitude.

And let's start with the party that started the war Russia. So they often refer in their public comments to so-called root causes of the conflict. So let's start with Sam. Sam, in your judgment, what is the current interest and goals of the Russian leadership and have they changed since 2022?

Samuel Charap: Well, it's a very good question, of course. And it obviously colors a lot of what one might expect out of a potential negotiation, but I think there are two things I would say, generally speaking about interpreting the goals of parties in a, hat is now a protracted war that has evolved in different phases as a general matter.

And the first is that it's usually never just one thing that motivates states to do, to take big decisions about war and peace. And so looking for a single answer is probably not the right approach in this context. And the second, which is sort of hinted at by your question, is that these things tend to evolve over time. And what drove a country to go to war might not be the key to divining what it takes for that country to exit a war because the objectives might no longer be the same even if the war itself is the same war as when it began.

So, you know, I think that that often this is posed as a binary between, you know, either this is about Putin's obsession, imperial obsession with Ukraine and his, and his insatiable desire to crush Ukrainian statehood at any cost versus sort of, it's all because of NATO enlargement. And I think that that is overly simplistic. And probably, you know, gets at the first problem that I mentioned, which is probably there's a bit of both going on here and perhaps in some more nuanced form.

I think the question now really is about what it will take to satisfy, you know, Russia enough to get it to stop the war. And there, I think we have to keep an open mind to a certain extent because we haven't seen the negotiations fully play out in, in, you know, any real way at this stage. So we can say something about what Russia's maximalist objectives might be based on the, the document that that was leaked after the last round of bilateral negotiations.

We can't really say much about what they might settle for if there were to be a real, a, a real negotiation process that that would entail them obviously having to step back from some of their more maximalist positions.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: But if you would be advising the Trump administration right now, for example, would you say that they, the Russians are primarily driven by ideological reasons, which would mean that, you know, there, there would be then less chances for a negotiated outcome, or they care more about strategic objectives as they see them.

Samuel Charap: From a policy perspective, I think definitive answers to that question are probably not as useful as a, basically a prescription that would say, I, I don't know the answer to that question, and it, I'm open to either.

And the only way you can really find out is through a process that, you know, entails testing the proposition that it is something other than an ideological commitment to, you know, the destruction of Ukraine at any cost that is driving Russian policy. Because if that is the case, then, you know, even the most sophisticated, you know, negotiation format is not gonna yield results that are sustainable.

But the reason you enter into this process is to test the proposition that there is some potential compromise that, that that is some, you know, something other than that as you put it, ideological framing of what they're after.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Eric, what do you think about that? What would be your take?

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I mean, I tend to agree with Sam that there is no real clear answer on this. And it's a mixture of, you know, what I see as imperial and ideological reasons with a bit of kind of longstanding strategic objectives that have been common in Russian and previous to that Soviet foreign policy, such as, you know, the containment of NATO and having strategic depth and so on and so forth.

But, you know, I think where I, where I differ a little is that I, I think that the data that we have, which goes back to, you know, really Putin's essay from July 2021, and then goes through all of the, the actions that he's taken, the rhetoric that has come from the Kremlin, you know, since the full scale invasion started, I think we have to go in clear-eyed to a negotiation that, with the assumption that the reasons are much more ideological and, and imperialistic in nature to prepare for that.

While, you know, potentially testing out different formulations of things that we could negotiate over. You know, then you get into this question of what is a legitimate national interest that we would be willing to engage on, things that lead to arm arms control agreements, for example. I mean, that's a, a pretty standard pattern of engagement between major powers is the recognition that, you know, both parties have an interest in, in limiting the others potential to attack them.

So that is a conversation that we've had with the Russians before and are capable of having. But I think, you know, again, they've shown no inclination to be willing to kind of put a ring fence and around that and have that be the guardrails under which we'd have a conversation. I think by continuing to insist on these maximalist demands, they make it harder really to question the assumption that that isn't really just the essential demand, which is to, to in essence, destroy Ukrainian sovereignty.

Maybe not independence as a nation, you know, nominally a member of the United Nations, but at least to make Ukraine unable to defend itself and resist Russian coercion. And so that's my operating assumption.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: So we'll get deeper into the positions and we'll discuss what's primary, what's secondary in their proposal.

I just, I, I will take a shot at Ukraine's interest and feel free to, to add anything that you think proper in this respect. So I think that the, the key Ukrainian interest is to emerge secure and dependent and prosperous democracy as a result of that war. And that would imply getting out of the Russian sphere of influence and having the security arrangement that would help it to prevent the future aggression and have the necessary conditions for development.

And I tend to think that the, some sort of an ending to the active phase of the war is in Ukraine's interest. So feel free to add what you think in this respect. But my question to you would be where do you think the U.S. interest aligns with the Ukrainian ones and where they differ and whether the Trump administration got the U.S. interest right? So let's start with Eric on that.

Eric Ciaramella: Here's another case where divining what, what is the core American interest versus how the current political leadership interprets it? I think there's a maybe similar quandary to what we're facing in Russia where I think, you know, analysts like us can take a stab at what we think a reasonable conception of a Russian national interest in is. But clearly Putin has a very different understanding of that that's colored by his own, you know, personal convictions and prejudices and so on.

And I think that's the case here where we've seen real departures from, you know, what would be considered kind of mainstream, longstanding American views about European security. Where, you know, maybe at a basic level, the current U.S. administration still agrees with the proposition that you laid out Mykhailo, which is that Ukraine should emerge as a sovereign, you know, independent, prosperous democracy, but that it's a much lower priority and much less integral to other interests that they consider to be more essential.

And I think the previous administration made a, what I think is a compelling case that, you know, while Ukraine is not a member of the NATO alliance and therefore doesn't have a treaty level guarantee from the United States, that would require us to defend them. Certainly it's an important enough interest that we should devote significant resources, including at the expense of other priorities in our own readiness to help Ukraine defend itself.

And that's what the previous administration did in this administration. It's clearly not as high of a priority, even if maybe the ultimate outcome, if, if the president were selecting from a list of options, he'd say, yeah, sure Ukraine as an independent state, that's fine. I'm, I'm good with that. But what are you willing to put behind it in terms of resources and the trade-offs you're willing to make?

So again, I see, I see it as a departure and I, you know, there is a huge disagreement I think between, you know, the, this current political leadership, and I would say large swaths of, of both parties of at least elected officials in Congress. And so again, who's entitled to give the ultimate view on what the American interest is? Is it the president? Is it the whole kind of political system? Is it the American public? Analysts? Certainly not analysts.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Sam, what do you think about that? And so, and specifically I would like to hear, so some people in the West they argued for the George Kennan-like policy of containment. So resisting Russian influence whenever possible. Do you think that's in the U.S. interests or some components of engagement should be involved there and how that correlates with the goals in respect of the Russia, Ukraine war?

Samuel Charap: Well, you know, I think, one thing that perhaps to paraphrase Eric, is to say what he said and which I largely agree with in, in other words, is that the, that the very fact that you've seen such a shift in the U.S. approach to the war tells you something about even what the sort of more core drivers of U.S. policy on this set of issues has been all along.

I mean, I, I recall the, the reporting, at least that Milley, that is General Mark Milley the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the first years of the war had, you know, his, his four objectives and the first three had very little to do with Ukraine. One was about avoiding a Russia/NATO war, about containing the war within the geographical boundaries of Ukraine, avoiding splits within the NATO alliance.

And then only four was about empowering Ukraine and giving them the means to fight. That there were, that, that the U.S. has other interests at stake here that are broader, relate both to the concerns about the war escalating to a, a, a conflict that involves the U.S. directly and about European security more broadly. Which I think can in part account for the extent of the shift, or at least the, the, the, the degree to which there was flexibility for, for a president to exploit who had a different view of, of the war.

You know, as the, the question about containment. Containment was a policy by the way construed of as in opposition to at that point rollback. So it was a more moderate policy that Kennan was recommended recommending vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. I think, you know, it's hard to compare U.S. policies towards its major power rivals today, Russian/China, to U.S. policy in the Cold War when opposition to Soviet influence globally was the fundamental driver of, you know, all of U.S. foreign policy and everything was essentially secondary.

So I think, you know, the, the answer to your question is that it's not going to be a universal prescription that sees the exact same U.S. approach in every single context. That there are going to be context in which there are, there might be a case for, if not cooperation, then some degree of, of conflict avoidance. And there are gonna be some context in which we have to, we have no choice but to push back against Russian influence.

So, it's quite context specific and the broad doctrines that that don't allow for that kind of flexibility, I think are unlikely to lead to good outcomes.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Eric, I'm curious to hear your perspective on the containment question and also let's just briefly address where Europeans stand here and how their interests align, differ from Ukrainian and the American ones.

Eric Ciaramella: So, you know, on the, on the European question, I think there has been a major strategic shift in Europe over the past three years seeing Ukraine's fate and security, not really as a peripheral European matter, but as an, an increasingly central one. And I think Europe is, has been mobilizing the resources that sort of show that.

At the same time, you know, if, if push comes to shove to prioritize, ultimately, you know, one's own country always comes first. And so when you see even certain kind of frontline states like Poland for example just in the kind of decisions that they've made on, on various aspects of military support to Ukraine and on the diplomatic front, and then of course the economic aspects related to Ukrainian grain and, and so on and so forth.

I think it shows that, you know, at the end of the day, yes, Ukraine's, Ukraine's, fate and sovereignty are essential, but not existential necessarily interests and preserving ultimately the home front is gonna always take priority.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Okay, so let's move then further discussing the, whether there are proper conditions in place to have a negotiated settlement.

So at, at one point, President Trump said that, you know, Ukraine and Russia, they're like children on the playground and you need to let them fight before they will be ready to settle. And it seems like he was talking about the fact that the parties are not ripe. And so my my kind of a question to both of you, do you think that's the case and when will they become ripe?

Should we have what political scientists called mutually hurting stalemate, mutual exhaustion, or something else can move the needle in this respect? So let's start with Sam.

Samuel Charap: So, the, the concept of mutually hurting stalemate and, and particularly ripeness as as, as regards to the time for conflict resolution even as a concept for analysis has come under a lot of criticism in recent years.

In part because it is not something that you hear, that research has demonstrated that parties in the moment that they're about to end a war actually recognize as such. It's only something that is sort of recognized in retrospect. So particularly as regards to policy decisions, it's not a useful tool necessarily to be able to divine the right moment because the, you know, some of this is not subject to rational calculus about battlefield prospects.

Now that having been said, I think it's clear that optimism about the utility of continuing to use force to achieve your objectives is, disincentivizes parties to agree to stop fighting. And I think one major problem we have right now is that Russia believes that in six months of the war continuing, or x number of months going forward, its position will improve and that the deal it could get in the future is better than the one it could get today.

And that, that clearly is a problem. But the sort of lack of a evident mutual hurting stalemate shouldn't be a a reason not to, to try to get some sort of end to the war, some negotiated end to the war in, in the shorter term. It represents, that is the, the Russian optimism a challenge, a major challenge to getting there. But it, it, it should not be an excuse for not trying, I guess is what I would say.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Which would imply that somebody, the parties would need to make policy decisions about the concessions that the, the only other way to being, like, mutually exhausted. Would that be right, to put it this way?

Samuel Charap: No, not necessarily. It's just that fundamentally the, the decisions about war and peace are political ones and and particularly in a conflict where I think the, the battlefield and now is less about conquest of territory more than it is about imposing costs on the other side. And, and using that as leverage to get a better negotiated outcome.

Both sides are gonna have to make compromises. Neither side can impose their, their maximalist objectives. So, you know, if, if it is the case that if there were a credible process, and I would argue that there isn't one now, so we can't really make that argument and, and it turns out that Russia is still insisting on things that it can't achieve on the battlefield, then we're just not gonna have an agreement in the short term.

And recognizing that its optimism is a problem, I think is important for any, anyone looking at this issue from a policy perspective, but a again, you know, I think that the, if we just frame it in the terms of like, is it therefore the case that there's nothing possible that would potentially draw Russia into some sort of a negotiated outcome in the shorter term, then whatever its perspective is on how things could get better. I don't see the evidence for that.

I mean, I think there are lots of incentives that have been created for Russia to end this war, to say, you know, decided two, two of them, the, the pressure on its economy and on its military which are quite significant, whether those will outweigh whatever benefits that Russia perceives in continuing. This is only something you can find out through a, a process of negotiation.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Yeah. And Eric, what do you think about that? And in particular, I wanted to hear your view. So some people right now argue that Ukraine should pursue what's called strategic neutralization, basically denying Russia success until it realizes that it cannot achieve its objectives.

So my main concern with that, that it may take a long time and can result in a prolonged war at the current pace. So what do you think about that and more generally to what Sam mentioned, what is the pathway, how to get the necessary condition for a negotiated outcome?

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I mean, I think the, the conditions are clearly not there right now. And where I would differ is I would say Russian war optimism is not a problem. It is the central problem. And it's the central problem that I think one can only solve not through finding out more information in a negotiation, certainly not alone. It needs to be paired with some sort of additional meaningful pressure that shifts the calculus at the top, such that they see escalating costs down the road.

And it starts to put into question their overall assumption. They, Putin, you know, and the people around him, their overall assumption that the deal gets better for them and that they're on this glide path to victory. Unless you can challenge that, I think it's kind of pointless just to have talks just to learn more about their positions because there's fundamentally no reason for them to moderate any of their, any of their longstanding demands.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: We'll discuss these positions and whether, and I would be curious to hear your thoughts. So people, when they talk about the negotiation settlement, they have like two broad concepts in mind. So one option would be to have a pure armistice or ceasefire and just not agree on political questions, which seems like Russians are not interested in that.

When they're interested in that, they like to cite the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, that it's better to have 10 years of negotiation than one day of war. But when it's not in their interest, this rhetoric kind of is absent in their talking points, but still. So that's, that's kind of a one option, which many people think would be favorable to Ukraine to have an armistice without making any concessions, and then just talk for a long time.

And the second option is to have some sort of a political settlement. And I think they're on kind of an, on a spectrum because you can have an armistice and address some, some, at least a part of political questions. So what are your thoughts on that? What should be the goal and what is more realistic? Eric and then Sam.

Eric Ciaramella: Personally, I think an armistice is probably the, the best case, realistic goal. I think once you start to add in a lot of these more intractable political issues, the probability of landing the plane, so to speak, and reaching some sort of fully agreed document and comprehensive settlement goes down to, you know, close to zero. But even an armistice, I think is, is very hard to imagine how we get there now. A kind of really structured, rigorous process with presumably some enforcement mechanism. So, you know, I, I didn't answer in the previous question.

You had Mykhailo, about this, this concept of strategic neutralization, which has been coined by a new Carnegie non-resident scholar, former Defense Minister of Ukraine, Andrii Zahorodniuk, in a, in a paper just published earlier this month. And, you know, I think that that is a, a strategy whereby the expectation is that there won't be any sort of agreement. You know, certainly not a political kind of comprehensive settlement and not even necessarily a, a signed kind of ceasefire agreement.

So I think the idea at a strategic level is to replicate the success that Ukraine had in the Black Sea where it was able to field and demonstrate enough capabilities where Russia saw a continuation of hostilities in that particular area, as you know, a greater and escalating danger the longer it went on.

And so, you know, there was a series of written agreements. Those didn't work out. Ukraine demonstrated more capabilities and so we have kind of a de facto what's now a gentleman's agreement. And I think Andrii’s point is that through kind of a rigorous and systematic application of force and a management of resources limited on Ukraine's side, together with partners, you can start to replicate that across different domains and achieve some sort of, you know, slightly more stable, but certainly lower level, you know, of hostilities than we have now.

But he and I share this view is pretty pessimistic about the idea that you're gonna reach some sort of general ceasefire at the negotiating table. It's not to say that you shouldn't try, but getting back to my original point, you have to be able to, to show sustained pressure and staying power in order to fundamentally shift that war optimism that Sam was talking about. And I, I don't think you get there only at the table.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Eric, would it be fair to say that this strategy would like, create a lot of risks of long-term war and unstable outcome with when you have a tacit ceasefire, there is a risk that another site would re-arm, regroup and attack again. So do you think there is an inherently this risk in this strategy?

Eric Ciaramella: There is, but I think that is the inherent risk in the current approach. And I think, you know, what Andrii is arguing a bit more is that, you know, you can shift away some of the, the excessive burdens being placed on Ukraine from a purely attritional framework. Again, through the use of technology and kind of smarter ability to strike the Russian rear and complicate their, you know, logistics and so on and so forth, in such a way that, you know, again, with, with lesser manpower, Ukraine is still able to achieve these strategic effects.

But I agree with you Mykhailo, that this is, it's not a condition that can be created overnight. And it does require also political decisions on the part of Ukraine's partners to share probably more advanced technology than, than they've been willing to, to date. And not to mention. You know, the huge issues we have here in Washington about the political will to, you know, even keep a kind of minimal baseline of, of critical systems like Air Defense going.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Sam, what do you think about that? And in particular, what are your thoughts about whether, at least some elements of peaceful settlement are possible? And I would be especially curious to hear your thoughts. You wrote together with Sergey Radchenko for Foreign Affairs about the Istanbul talks in 2022, where parties were negotiating political issues and reportedly making some concessions.

Do you think, first, whether a political settlement, some sort is possible in the short term, medium term? And whether the Istanbul kind of discussion that happened in 2022 might be useful for the current realities?

Samuel Charap: So I think one thing you said, Mykhailo, which is extremely important that I wanna underscore, is that this is a spectrum question, right? So if you, on the one hand, you have a pure ceasefire slash armistice that deals exclusively with the mechanics of the cessation of hostilities. And on the other hand, you have a peace treaty that normalizes relations between the former belligerents.

The vast majority of negotiated ends to wars come somewhere in the middle. They have some elements that deal with more political issues and, and, and some that are more exclusively about the mechanics of ending the fighting. I think it, it's been amply demonstrated because there, we've sort of played this out in real life over the last several months that a pure ceasefire, even a temporary one is impossible because Russia views the ongoing fighting as its leverage and is unwilling to concede upfront to a, an unconditional ceasefire without, I think seeing a pathway to a deal that it would find, accept acceptable addressing broader issues.

On the other hand, we also know that a pure, like a peace treaty would be impossible because there are going to be irreconcilable differences between Russia and Ukraine that would make, you know, full normalization of relations impossible.

So we're gonna be somewhere in the middle. And I think the key question right now is how you bridge the Ukrainian desire, and some might say need for a cessation of hostilities at the front end of a negotiating process and the Russian insistence on having the political issues to some degree resolved before agreeing to cease hostilities.

And there are some ways you could think about bridging that gap, like, with a framework agreement outlining the potential eventual terms of the settlement and essentially providing a negotiating mandate upfront that enables a ceasefire and then a broader negotiating process that makes that framework agreement into something more concrete.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Like Minsk Agreements in a way.

Samuel Charap: Yeah, but that's a sort of failed example in a way.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Yeah.

Samuel Charap: And not, not something exactly that I think we should be holding up as a model. In a way, you know, the way Minsk turned out was that it was mostly just about a, at least diminution of hostilities and, and the political arrangements were never implemented.

So I I, I'm thinking about something that is more effective, obviously, but I think, you know, Mykhailo, one of your questions is about the implications of accepting the prospect of a, of a multi-year, you know, or indefinite conflict to achieve better, a better outcome for Ukraine, which is sort of inherent in something in like Andrii Zahorodniuk’s proposed strategy.

I mean, I would add on, you know, if I, just as an outside observer that one of Ukraine's interest in this might be avoiding precisely that outcome because as much as the attritional consequences for Russia are significant, they're much more significant for Ukraine. And avoiding the consequences of that kind of long war scenario, I think would be a, a, an interest of Ukraine's as well.

And in my view also that there's, there's going to be some need for some degree of negotiated end to this war. It's, the Black Sea model is unlikely to be replicable, you know, across the conflict, precisely because violence is being used here strategically to achieve political objectives, at least for the Russian side.

In this kind of inter-state conflict, it's actually extremely rare that you don't have a negotiated end historically, whereas some civil wars tend to end by petering out that that usually is not how interstate wars end. In fact, the vast majority of them do not end that way.

As to the Istanbul, the applicability of the, the 2022 documents that were then being exchanged between Russia and Ukraine, you know, a lot has changed since then. I think, you know, the, everything from the Russian purported annexation of four regions of Ukraine to the, the number of casualties and the extent of the war that has occurred in the interim. And so picking up the, the document from 2022 and echanistically applying it today would obviously not work.

But that document did point to a lot of the key issues that are still relevant for both parties. You know, for Ukraine, the question of security guarantees and avoiding a repeat of, of this full scale invasion and a lot of the security issues that Russia put on the table in terms of, you know, Ukraine's neutrality and so on, are likely, in fact, we've seen already have been ones that the parties have raised again.

So I think it's important to look back to it as a, as a, as a now historical episode that can point to some key lessons, but it's, it's not something that can be picked up and, and, you know, implemented in today's context.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: To follow up on that, Sam, do you think, let's just imagine a potential concession on some form of armed neutrality. Do you think that has a chance to move the needle in negotiations? Is that something that you would imagine be a sort of this policy issues in the armistice?

Samuel Charap: Well, I think, let me, let me say on the armed part, that seems to be something that is going to be a requirement for Ukraine going forward. In other words, Ukraine is going to need a significant capabilities of its own.

The Ukrainian armed forces are gonna need to be a significant force going forward for Ukraine's own security under any circumstances, no matter what else happens, right? So I think that's definitely going to be a piece of the picture, regardless.

As to, you know, neutrality. So that word obviously is loaded in, in, in the, in this context. And it has a variety of meanings. I would note that, you know, de facto Ukraine has been non-aligned and that it is not, has not been a member of a military alliance for the entirety of its post-1991 independence. And it, it has expressed aspirations to, to join the NATO alliance, but it has never, you know, become a member.

Whether it formally embraces that status and renounces its aspirations to alliance membership, I think is the key, is one of the key political questions that's going to be on the table. We've seen it, of course, raised by the Russians and, and explicitly rejected by the Ukrainians in the context of their latest exchange of papers. But, you know, if I were to imagine that, that that kind of a framework might well be one of the things that's on the table, sure.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Eric, what do you think about that? And so you, together with Eric Green, wrote a paper arguing that Ukraine should keep a NATO option on the table. Why do you think that's important and what do you think about the neutrality option and Sam's thoughts about that?

Eric Ciaramella: You know, the, the paper as that was written, it was in a sort of different political era prior to this administration. And so I think it's, you know, the sort of main idea in there is just not really viable so long as Trump is president.

But, you know, I don't necessarily have a problem with armed neutrality as a model. But again, I think the, the armed part is the much more important. aspect and should, you know, continue to be a Ukrainian red line.

And by that I mean what Russia has tried to do with the concept of neutrality, going back to, you know, Istanbul and frankly back to 2014 and the ideas of federalization in Ukraine and all of that is, is ultimately to deprive Ukraine of a credible means to defend itself, both in terms of indigenous capacity and in terms of what would be, I guess, bilateral arrangements and agreements with different, presumably western partners to receive training and equipment and, and technology and so on, even if not part of a formal alliance.

And so I think the issue is that Russia has not credibly demonstrated that its main objective is achieving a Ukraine that is not actually part of the alliance structure, but still able to defend itself. That would be something that we, I think, could have a conversation about. And I think the Ukrainians at various points have been willing to have that conversation.

That was fundamentally the deal that Trump and Steve Witkoff put on the table earlier this year. And I think the Russians sort of rejected it, you know, completely out of hand. And so I think the problem here is that just kind of renouncing NATO aspirations in the hopes that that is the factor that will clinch a deal, I think ignores all of the other signs that Russia is demanding something much more sweeping.

And so I think, you know, you play with that element on its own, at at risk of kind of negotiating with yourself and giving something away without securing the kind of, you know, ultimate sustainable piece that would be necessary with a fully defensible Ukraine with a credible deterrent.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Eric do you think the Trump administration proposals, in terms of the, you know, unilateral commitment of the U.S. not to support Ukraine's NATO membership, do you think that was enough for the Kremlin?

Eric Ciaramella: No, definitely not.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Or do you think they had concerns that, you know, that would be another administration sometime soon, it may reverse course. European Alliance would not support that and Ukraine would keep including in its constitution, the aspirations to join NATO. So do you think that was the reason why they rejected it or what, what do you think?

Eric Ciaramella: I mean, I think that's what Trump put on the table because that's what, that was the only thing in his power to kind of pledge upfront as the framework for some sort of deal. He was basically saying, I'm going to reverse the longstanding U.S. position in support of Ukraine's eventual NATO membership.

The U.S., you know, we can't force all of the allies to come along with us, but we can have significant sway over them. If you accept this as a starting point, maybe we'll get to a place where it can be guaranteed in some fashion. I mean, you could imagine different formats where the U.S. could sign some sort of more binding arrangement that would've precluded or not precluded, as we know, that's, you know, no president can really preclude a future president. Not even Congress can do that.

But I think that would've made it much more difficult for a future administration to backtrack, even if you couldn't have gotten formal changes in the Ukrainian Constitution, given how laborious that process is and you couldn't reach consensus at 32 NATO allies, which I think is probably impossible at this point.

But recognizing that that's what Trump, you know, what the United States could put on the table. That was Trump's opening position. Again, I think if this were the central issue for the Russians and the central motivating factor in what they wanted to achieve out of a negotiation, they would not have dismissed that in such a, I think, callous way as they did.

And I think they would've taken it and tried to work with it. And instead, they have created so many poison pills and additional demands that even Trump and JD Vance and people like that are saying, I mean, this is kind of nuts. How are we supposed to negotiate with this? They're not, they're not showing a good faith effort.

And so again, that, like you were saying, Mykhailo, that opening pledge may not have been enough, but it was just an opening. And Russia clearly showed no inclination to go down that road with Trump. And so I think that's why I fundamentally come back to my original position that it's about much more than NATO and Ukraine's kind of military alignment. It's about Ukraine's sovereign ability to defend itself and resist coercion.

Samuel Charap: So I, I do take a slightly different view on this issue. I think, you know, one, it it's just important to recognize that a, it's just not a credible commitment for the U.S. to just say, we don't think Ukrainian membership in NATO is likely, or Ukraine doesn't become a member of NATO in some kind of abstract way as, as the Trump administration did, given the history of this issue.

And both the alliance being on the record in many different ways, in many different formats since 2008, about proclaiming Ukraine's eventual NATO membership. I mean, just less than a year ago in Washington, the, the alliance declared that, you know, what was it not irreversible, it was in Vilnius in this case. What was it last, what was it in Washington Declaration? Something equally ambitious about the path of Ukraine to, to becoming a member of the alliance.

And as Eric notes, it's in Ukraine's Constitution. So I think that this is not, this is not an easy issue. That can be just sort of, we should just, we're, we should expect the Russians to believe the first, you know, comment on the issue, put on paper by U.S. administration. They're gonna wanna see it in, in five different ways, written in blood and, and so on.

I think that that is just the reality of, of where we are and to, to suggest that, you know, simply because the Trump administration put it on the table, we should have expected the Russians to just accept that as enough, is to underestimate the extent to which this issue has been played in the exact opposite way for many, many years now.

And they have every reason to believe that barring an actual policy shift that the, this could be on the agenda at any point in the future. And I, there, this is not an easy issue to address. I mean, I think that we've kind of tied ourselves up in knots, given the extent of previous alliance commitments to this question and the fact that it's in the Ukrainian Constitution.

So I, to be clear, this is not the only thing that Russia has cares about. I think that's obvious. And among the things that wasn't on the U.S. list was any limitations on either Ukraine's own military or the extent of Western assistance to Ukraine's military. Not to say necessarily that that should be part of the equation, but clearly that's what Ru-, you know, one of the things that Russia has been demanding. So there, there might have been other reasons to that, that wasn't accepted at face value.

I, I would just note that this is going to be a challenge. I mean, one interesting lesson from Istanbul in this context is the way that was addressed in that document where it was both a Ukrainian commitment to permanent neutrality and a U.S. and in fact P5, permanent members of the Security Council commitment to embrace that in a UN Security Council resolution, ie as a matter of in international law, that would've sort of superseded any NATO summit communiques. In other words, the suggestion that it went farther than what we've seen even the Trump administration put on the table so far.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: I also wanted to ask about the Istanbul in part of the security guarantees from P5 members, that was supposed to be a kind of a credible security arrangement for Ukraine.

Do you think, so both of you mentioned that the armed part of the security arrangement, meaning Ukraine own capabilities, is very important and it's like a non-starter because it's a matter of survival. The second part, the security guarantees that were discussed in ‘22, do you think something similar, realistic at this point of time, or that's just like circumstances so changed that even Russia would not consider it in any form or shape?

Samuel Charap: So if I may, I think it's important, it's not necessarily. You can have neutral countries that have security guarantees. So the neutrality question is really about membership in a, in a military alliance and the implications thereof. I mean, as we saw with the proposal in Istanbul, which was essentially included both neutrality and security guarantees that would've been legally binding and arguably more explicit than even Article Five.

Putting aside how viable that idea was there are models that would allow for both non-alignment and security guarantees. And I think the model from Istanbul in 2022 is problematic because at that time there would be the idea that Russia would be a party to it. I think so much has happened in the interim that that is, you know, unlikely to be viable for, I mean, it wasn't even viable at the time since it was never finalized. But putting, I think that's sort of not really on the table at this point.

The question is whether either European states or, or the, and/or the United States would be willing to provide guarantees to Ukraine outside of the context of, of NATO membership. I think the Biden administration took a very binary view of this issue. Either you have Article Five or you don't. And we can provide you, you know, weapons and training and assistance of various kinds. But you know, there's Article Five and then there's everything else.

I would, I would make the case that there is, there's, there is more in that middle ground than, than that binary allowed. You know, the example that I often cite is the 1975 U.S./Israel MOU, when the U.S. made commitments essentially committing to take action if Egypt were to violate the ceasefire that was then in place between Israel and Egypt. In other words, you can imagine guarantees being tied to the ceasefire itself and to upholding the ceasefire as an external party.

Again, I don't know if the, the Trump administration would go for something like that, but I'm just pointing out that there are other kinds of guarantees that are not alliance membership and also not more than nothing.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Yeah, and it, it, it would depend on details because we can also remember the Nixon so-called security guarantees to South Vietnam, which not ended very well. Eric, what do you think about that, about the security guarantees part?

Eric Ciaramella: I don't see how you get a credible security guarantee at this stage with this current U.S. administration. I do think you can piece together various arrangements that fall short of a guarantee. Particularly, you know, I think some European nations would be willing to lean a bit farther forward as we've seen in some of the discussions around the coalition of the willing.

But, you know, I, I kind of never saw the, the Istanbul formula of a real ironclad treaty level security guarantee that included U.S. participation as viable, because I think the United States wasn't in a, you know, wasn't in a position to do it then and isn't now, outside of a NATO framework where you have kind of more collective responsibility and it's much clearer what it means.

I think these kind of creative solutions, while I like them and I, I do like to think about them, I think one of the challenges is that when you invent something entirely new, you can't just kind of declare it and then move on. You need to build so much architecture around it in order to create the actual deterrent value.

Whereas in NATO, you know, we've been working on it now for 75 years, and so when a country is a member of NATO, that's something that is actually clearly understood in the Kremlin. They make a distinction as we've seen in this war between NATO territory and non-NATO territory. And the, and Putin for all of his, you know, brutality against Ukraine has been pretty judicious about not crossing, you know, what he understands to be a red line of attacking Article Five territory. And I think that would be the case if Ukraine were hypothetically a member in the future.

Obviously the conditions aren't there right now, but I think if you create some bespoke arrangement and some new kind of security guarantee, which isn't, you know, the legal element of it isn’t entirely clear and, you know, the collective versus individual mechanism and what exactly is being pledged, I think, you know, you end up creating too much ambiguity and then you could actually have a deleterious effect on your other security guarantees that, you know, again, we've been working since the late 40s and 50s to reinforce all the time, you know, both in Europe and the Asia Pacific because of that kind of uncertainty and newness of it.

So I would be cautious about kind of inventing new things when it comes to guarantees, because the stakes are so high. But certainly short of a guarantee, it does seem like we can, we can piece together some arrangements, whether that's enough to make Ukrainians feel safe at the end of the day that the war won't recur. I don't know.

I mean, I think Russia has to fundamentally show, you know, that has turned a new leaf and I, I don't know that you get there without a change in political leadership in Russia, which is again, a prospect for the probably distant future.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Sam, feel free to add anything else you want on this.

But my question is, the next question is about other demands from Russia on the table, and those demands relate to the international recognition of Crimea and four regions of the if Ukraine that they don't fully control. And some people think that this is poison pills just to derail negotiations while other think that that might be just a position from which they can walk back saying that if you do amendments to your Constitution, we'll do amendments in our constitution because they made, obviously, in violation of international law amendments to their constitution in respect of those territories.

And also, I, I, I'm curious, what do you think about their other demands about cultural stuff, Russian language and everything? Is this something secondary or they would, or they would still consider them on the same importance with their NATO neutrality and other demands? Sam, what do you think?

Samuel Charap: I mean, I think it's patently absurd in this context to demand Ukrainian withdrawal from areas that Russia has very little chance of retaking militarily in any plausible, you know, medium term context.

And, you know, if they insist on that then it's not gonna be a very fruitful negotiation. So, while I don't you know, I can't say for sure, certainly testing the proposition that that is just a maximalist position that they're prepared to walk back from in the context of a, of a credible process is going to be one of the key dimensions of this.

As for the cultural and language issues and so on, you know, obviously first and foremost it's a question for Ukraine to decide, but I think it, it is striking that it keeps coming up. It's likely to be something that Russia pushes for. I think, you know, Ukraine has to decide how far it's prepared to go on some of these issues related to, you know, the, the former Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchy or Russian language, the status of Russian language and so on, and what it could, if it were willing to make concessions on those issues, what it could get in return.

One final point on the guarantees issue, I mean, I think while in principle I agree with Eric that, you know, it'd be nice to have clarity and, and a hundred percent using tried and true models. This is a challenging and difficult and new situation, and one that I think calls for some diplomatic ingenuity to resolve, and if ending the war requires new formats. And new arrangements then, you know, I think because of the extremely negative consequences of the war, even just from a U.S. national interest perspective, in my view, then, you know, we should be willing to entertain that.

Obviously the details, the, the devil's in the details. But you know, dismissing it outta hand because it's not something that had been used before, I think is probably not gonna work in this context where we're likely gonna have to innovate if we're going to get to a negotiated outcome.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Eric, feel free to add anything on that. And just the final question that I have to both of you, you, is about accountability for the aggression and conquest. Do you think it's important, do you agree that that's important, that the results of this war make clear that Russia bared costs for its aggression, for its invasion, for violation of the international law, and how would that look like?

So obviously the prior administration, Biden administration, took a more enthusiastic approach on that and in, in terms of international criminal cases, war crime prosecutions, reparation program. But also like generally as a matter of historical accountability or we, we, we can, we can remember how the UK entered World War I in order, because imperial Germany violated the Belgian neutrality and that at the end of the day, people are taught in the high school that that's all happened because of the alliances.

So I, I guess my question is, do you think this broader accountability for that and both practical and historical is important? And how would it be reconciled with an idea of a negotiated settlement? Eric, do you have any thoughts on that?

Eric Ciaramella: Yeah, I do think some form of accountability is very important because the, the risk otherwise is that Russia emerges from this war aggrieved and totally unrepentant.

And you know, accountability can take a lot of different forms. I, I don't think that Vladimir Putin is gonna be put on trial in the Hague. I don't think that's particularly likely. But you have things like the frozen sovereign assets, which could be, you know, again, repurposed to Ukraine as, as part of a, a settlement if that were to happen. Again, I, going back to my earlier view, I don't think that the, the time is ripe right now for, for us to have this entire kind of holistic conversation.

But I do think that Ukraine and its partners, kind of no matter how the war ends, need to make every effort to ensure that Russians understand the cost that they paid for this completely senseless act of aggression. And I think that will be very difficult in the current political environment in Russia, where again, there's a essentially, no, no freedom of dissent and whatnot. But one day there will be political change.

And I think being able to show through a historical record that Russians paid a tremendous cost in terms of lives and that the government was, you know, hiding the ball in a lot of ways, I think could at least go part of the way towards having some sort of historical reckoning in Russia.

But, you know, I, I don't think it's gonna be a clear cut case, you know, where Russia undergoes the kind of true reckoning that, you know, would make it face up to, to the crimes that it's committed on a kind of systematic scale in Ukraine. I just don't, I don't see how that happens right now.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Eric, do you think in that respect, the concessions on future NATO membership may help Russia to build this narrative after the war that, look, we told you that's all about it. Do you think that's important for the West and for Ukraine?

Eric Ciaramella: I do think so, and I do think that is, yeah, that's a risk of any of these kinds of concessions that could be talked about in terms of an agreement is that, you know, however the Kremlin leadership spins it, they will, they will probably spin it as a victory and a justification for the whole thing from the get go.

You know, does that outweigh the kind of cost of not doing that? You know, I'm not, I'm not sure. I mean it, and then you get to these other points that you put on the table, like the cultural and linguistic elements and, and you know, Russia's more sweeping demands. You know, I, I fundamentally don't know what it will take for, for Russians at this point to kind of realize at a societal level the error that they've made.

All that is to say, I, I don't have a clear answer on accountability, but I think it shouldn't be abandoned as part of the framework for seeking this kind of durable settlement.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Sam, any concluding thoughts on that?

Samuel Charap: Yeah, so I think clearly accountability is extremely important, and as you noted Mykhailo, there's two kinds of accountability. There's this sort of narrow legal kind, and there's the sort of broader state level, you know, has aggression been seen to pay dividends for Russia? And will that, you know, have a sort of emboldening effect on either Russia itself or potential future countries that are thinking about invading their neighbors?

I think the first legal accountability is, is likely to be not a part of the negotiated outcome. At least for the most part because it's unlikely that you know it, it's, it, it's much more likely that Ukraine and, and those of its Western partners that are still interested would, will pursue, you know, their own accountability mechanisms that Russia will not be party to and might resist.

There aren't many precedents for countries that weren't defeated in an interstate war accepting accountability, legal accountability mechanisms along the lines of things like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in, in South Africa, which obviously was not an interstate conflict. So, you know, I think that that will be important, but will unlikely to be a piece of the negotiations, at least in, in a central piece of it.

The broader question about whether this will have seemed to been a sort of success for, for Russia, I would preface this by saying that. There will be a victory speech regardless of the terms of the negotiated outcome almost. And there will likely be one, you know, in Kyiv too, and that is precisely the, the challenge of a war that is not going to end with a decisive military outcome. That is more likely that we're to see two victory speeches than, than just one.

But, but that narrative is one thing. And then there is the sort of objective costs that have been imposed on Russia and the strategic catastrophe that Russia has, you know, imposed on itself as a result of it, its full scale aggression. And I think that it would be extremely difficult to look at this if you're sitting in Beijing and say, you know, like, everything really worked out for Russia really well. And that, you know, in the end, they didn't have to pay much for what they did. They've had to pay tremendously and, and the costs over time are going to multiply.

So, and I think it's important, by the way, as a matter of Western policy, to maintain those costs because you know that that could serve in fact as a deterrent effect going forward. Obviously, you know, there's, there's some degree of the question of degree is important there too, but making sure that aggression like this does entail significant costs for Russia, I think it should be an important priority going forward.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: Eric, Sam, I think that was great. Thanks very much for joining the Lawfare Podcast.

Samuel Charap: Thanks for having me.

Eric Ciaramella: Thanks so much Mykhailo.

Mykhailo Soldatenko: The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Bruins Institution. You can get a free version of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfare material supporter through our website, lawfaremedia.org/support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters.

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