After nearly a year of chaotic, stop-and-start efforts to broker a cease-fire in Ukraine, the Trump administration remains deeply involved in talks to stop the war. Unsurprisingly, the most vexing topic remains territorial concessions—in Trump-speak, “land swaps.” And until now, diplomats have not come up with anything likely to solve it.
The discrepancy between the original pro-Russian 28-point plan that surfaced in November 2025 and the reworked Ukrainian-U.S.-European version speaks volumes about how far Ukraine and Russia remain from each another. The 28-point plan calls for international recognition of all currently Russian-held territory as well as marking the entirety of the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts as Russian. The plan amounts to a surrender ultimatum for Ukrainian forces, and it positions Russia perfectly to eventually re-start its campaign in a better position.
The 20-point counterproposal calls for fighting to be halted at current battle lines, which will become the lines of contact. It refuses to recognize any of the Russian gains in eastern Ukraine or Crimea as legal. Ukraine says it can accept Washington’s proposed demilitarized zones and a free economic zone in the part of the Donetsk region that it controls, but it also wants Russian-held territory of equivalent size to be included, too.
The void between these proposals is where U.S. international affairs analyst and former negotiator in the Balkans Edward P. Joseph has jumped in. In a recent journal article, Joseph proposes using the template of U.N .Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1244, which was adopted in June 1999 and affirmed the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) but called for “substantial autonomy and meaningful self-administration for Kosovo.” After a unanimous vote in the UNSC, Kosovo was emptied of Serbian and Kosovar Albanian militaries and placed under an interim U.N. administration with an international security force.
Nearly 27 years later, Kosovo remains a protectorate of the U.N.—although one in which elected Kosovar officials govern broadly and police themselves. Joseph argues that the logic of Resolution 1244’s postponement of the legal question of sovereignty—namely, who owns Kosovo—is the key to the relative peace that has prevailed there since 1999. The Kosovar Albanians govern themselves in a system that they have declared is an independent state, but that neither Serbia nor Russia (as well as five EU members and other countries) do. Serbia continues to consider Kosovo part of its federation, as stipulated under 1244. Importantly, Russia, as a member of the UNSC, stands behind 1244 and insists that it be respected to the letter.
As applied to Ukraine, the deal could involve an international peacekeeping force led by either the U.N. or Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe replacing the Ukrainian Armed Forces in those sections of the western Donbas that are part of the Donetsk oblast but not under Russian occupation. Russian troops would remain where they now stand. All questions of sovereignty would be set aside until referendums in all of eastern Ukraine and Crimea eventually determine sovereignty.
Certainly, this would be a bitter pill for Ukraine. Kyiv would lose even symbolic sovereignty over the Donbas and environs. But the pivot would enable the Ukrainian president to halt the war that has had such cruel, devastating consequences for his people—and could become even worse, especially if the United States withdraws. Despite conditions that are now unpalatable to most Ukrainians, President Volodymyr Zelensky might be able to sell it to his citizens since the entire Donbas—indeed, all of Ukraine in its 1991 borders—would not immediately become Russian. In the end, the people of all five eastern Ukrainian oblasts that Russia has tried to claim will ultimately decide which country has dominion over them. Thus, the Russian sham referendums of 2014 and 2022 would become invalid.
In Ukraine’s favor, the international peacekeepers on the ground along the contact lines would represent part of the kind of security guarantee that Zelensky has long sought and open the way for more. Ukraine would have a buffer zone comprised of international forces between it and Russia. Also, such an agreement would enable Ukrainians currently living in western Donbas—about 200,000 people live in the holdout pocket, including in the cities of Kostiantynivka, Slovyansk, and Kramatorsk—to remain there, and it would allow those who have fled to return in a secure environment. There could be other troops—though not NATO’s—as security guarantors elsewhere in the country. This isn’t that far from the demilitarized free trade zones that Zelensky has said Ukraine will consider.
The harder party to sell on this would be Russia, although it too would benefit it many ways. For one, it would cease the war that is draining its nation’s blood and treasure. Moreover, Ukrainian troops and the country’s national insignia would disappear from those regions that Russia covets. It is much less than Russia wants, which is all of Ukraine, but it’s a face-saving way for President Vladimir Putin to convince Russians that the country’s tremendous expenditures were worth it. Also, if sanctions relief were part of the package, Russia might indeed bite. Joseph argues that Russia’s engagement on Resolution 1244 in Kosovo increases the likelihood that it would engage in a similar way in Ukraine. It already knows how such a political process works.
Many Ukrainians, for their part, will respond as writer Oksana Zabuzhko did to Foreign Policy’s query on the Joseph proposal: “I don’t think this ‘peace plan’—as well as any other aimed at preserving Russian state in its current condition, rather than fragmenting it in the interests of global security—is worth a serious discussion.”
Moreover, Ukrainians tend to reject the Balkan comparison out of hand.
“The Kosovo precedent,” wrote Volodymyr Horbach, the director of the Institute for Northern Eurasia Transformation, a Ukrainian think tank, in an email to Foreign Policy, “cannot solve the problem of Russian aggression and occupation of Ukraine. There was an ethnic conflict in Kosovo, not an external occupation and an attempt at annexation.”
Moreover, Horbach continues, “Trump’s so-called peacemaking efforts cannot be implemented either, because he proceeds from a false assessment of the Russians’ goals in this war. It is these false efforts that have formed the opinion of observers that the main obstacle to ending the war is the territorial issue.”
Horbach, of course, is entirely right that Putin’s intention is not to slice off pieces of eastern Ukraine but rather to subdue the country completely and extinguish its nationhood. But there’s something to be said for engagement right now, in the negotiations that are underway and in which Ukraine is actively participating.
Perhaps the United States and Europe working together can wrangle a cease-fire that will grant the Ukrainian people a respite—hopefully longer rather than shorter—from this heinous war. Zelensky obviously wants this. And perhaps Putin, too, is coming around to the recognition that Russia will neither subdue all of Ukraine nor take a chunk much larger than it currently occupies.
Ulf Brunnbauer, the director of the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg, Germany, told Foreign Policy in an email that creative thinking is welcome and that it makes sense to devise off-ramps for both sides: “So a compromise that leaves some ambiguity for the time being seems better than an endless war. Even if Russia’s economic problems are mounting, they don’t seem to run out of shells, rockets, and men – at least not as fast as Ukraine. The [Joseph] compromise would at least prevent Russia from taking over territory that Ukraine will eventually be forced to leave anyway. So maybe it could be sold to the Ukrainians.”
Brunnbauer, however, pointed out that Serbia was forced to accept Resolution 1244. “It did not have the military means to fight against the factual loss of control over Kosovo,” he argued. On the contrary, Russia is under no such pressure. “UNMIK [the U.N. Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo] was accepted by the Kosovars,” he said, “because they felt that eventually they would run the show.”
And Russia, he underscored—as any Ukrainian will, too—has thus far never negotiated in good faith, breaking agreements one after another. “So the practicability of this proposal would depend on the presence of a credible military force that deters Russia,” Brunnbauer said. “I do not really see that.”
Like many sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause, Brunnbauer proposes putting more pressure on Russia and sending more arms for the Ukrainians to try to freeze the front line where it is—and not have to relinquish the western Donbas or other territories.
The proposed referendums, argued Peter Harris, a political scientist at Colorado State University, are the nonstarter. Neither side wants the territorial issue to be decided by a plebiscite, he said: “For Ukraine, it would be a concession that these are disputed territories—and that Russia has a [legitimate] claim on them.” Basically, if Ukraine agreed to this, it would be agreeing to a legal process by which unlawful conquests of its eastern territories can be made lawful. From Ukraine’s perspective, he said, there is no question about sovereignty: “A question deferred is still a question—and Ukraine does not want to concede that there is a question.”
In addition, the conditions on the ground make any kind of plebiscite invalid, Harris argued. “Ukraine wouldn’t trust such a process because so many of its citizens have fled or been expelled, so how could they vote?” Russia has brought in pro-Moscow settlers, further undermining the legitimacy of a popular vote on sovereignty, Harris said. It’s important, too, he wrote, that Russia is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, and so any process done under U.N. auspices would give Russia an upper hand.
John Feffer of the Institute for Policy Studies, a U.S. think tank, also writing in correspondence with Foreign Policy, saw such a peace plan as more attractive to Ukraine because it is on the back foot. “Zelensky has spoken of reincorporating the Donbas through non-military means. But I don’t see the Kosovo model appealing to Putin at the moment,” he wrote. “Russia has already incorporated the four regions into Russia — the Donbas plus Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. In other words, Russia has already decided the sovereignty question,” as far as its concerned.
Any levelheaded observer will concede that such a deal offers Russia legitimacy that undermines international law and basic notions of justice. But Ukraine, after its courageous battle against Putin’s Russia, has a chance to survive only if the United States remains on its side, supplying it with intelligence and weaponry and enforcing sanctions.
Ukraine’s best bet may be to pursue exactly such a deal—and then have it fail by Russia’s hand. At least that would illustrate to the Trump administration what most other observers already know: Russia is in this war to conquer all of Ukraine because it cannot tolerate a political system more attractive than its own on its borders. Achieving such certainty may be an option that Ukraine can’t afford to rule out.