Jerry Landrum
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised that, if elected, he would end the Russo-Ukraine War within 24 hours by meeting personally with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky. Six months into his term, however, the war persists. This gap between political rhetoric and reality reflects not a deficiency in negotiation skills but the deeper dynamics that H.E. Goemans’ theory of war termination reveals about how battlefield outcomes reshape war aims, exacerbate commitment problems, and interact with domestic political constraints to prevent peace. Applying Goemans’ framework to the Russo-Ukraine War reveals why even sustained US pressure has failed to produce a settlement and why similar dynamics recur in protracted conflicts. Any future peace negotiations over the Russo-Ukraine War must successfully navigate the challenges highlighted within this theoretical framework.
Variance in War Aims
Goemans argues that bargaining space for war termination opens only when neither side demands more than the other can accept. Yet war aims vary based on battlefield outcomes. For Russia, the Kremlin’s illegal annexation of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia in the fall of 2022 marked a pivot from an early focus on capturing Kyiv to securing territorial control in the east and south. Putin’s rhetoric, however, continues to invoke a vision of a culturally unified Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia, suggesting that if conditions allowed, the Kremlin would once again pursue control over all of Ukraine. At the 2025 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin reiterated that he considers “Ukraine and Russia peoples to be one people. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours. We have a rule. Wherever a Russian soldier sets foot is ours.”
For Ukraine, the central objective remains the preservation of genuine independence. Zelensky has declared that surrendering territory is “legally” impossible, yet he has hinted that a settlement involving concessions might be conceivable if backed by Western guarantees. This ambiguity reflects the weaker side’s adaptive strategy of balancing maximalist goals with pragmatic assessments of Western commitment, battlefield innovation (such as cost-effective drone strikes on Russian strategic assets), and the resilience of its population.
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