After a new round of shuttle diplomacy, Russia has made a new offer to Ukraine. It’s obviously worse than what was reportedly on offer in Istanbul in 2022 at the start of the war. Which itself was worse than what the Minsk II arrangements were.
Basically, the maximalist position Russia laid out in June 2025, a 31-point list including territorial cession of 20 percent of Ukraine, neutrality, and an 80 percent cut to Ukraine’s military has now expanded to include a demand for a Ukrainian constitutional commitment regarding territorial concessions.
There’s been a lot of upbeat talk about Ukraine’s progress in the war and innovation. A lot of this rested on a February 2026 offensive in which Ukraine recaptured roughly 200 kilometers in five days. Also, there is something surprising to most analysts that even in four years of war, Russia has not been able to capture and hold Kharkiv, so close to its own borders.
But Ukraine, even with its advances in unmanned drones, has also made some desperate moves to expand conscription. The fiscal picture is looking bleak. That’s on top of a widely acknowledged social exhaustion and fracturing of morale.
Russia is acting, for now, like it’s still in fundamental control of this engagement. This suggests three possibilities: (1) Russia is completely deluded about its relative position and leverage. (2) The Russians are acting confident in the hopes that somehow Donald Trump’s political interest in ending the war will work for them on favorable terms. (3) Ukraine’s position really is fundamentally degrading, even if much more slowly than Russia or anyone else anticipated.