Ukraine’s deteriorating battlefield position is driving the war toward an inevitable settlement shaped by geography, not diplomacy, forcing Kyiv and the West to accept a peace that mirrors Russia’s territorial gains.

It’s inevitable. A proxy war is going badly, and someone proposes a peace plan grounded in physics, not fantasy. Instantaneously, those funding the killing in Washington reflexively scream, “THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE KREMLIN WANTS!” Well, yes. This is because the winning side always gets the peace they want. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but those hundreds of billions spent on killing off the Ukrainian and Russian people were for nothing. And losers never get to choose.

As the conflict in Ukraine enters its third year, the military map tells a story that Western political language has struggled to admit. The Ukrainian front is not simply strained or over-extended; it is approaching structural collapse. A combination of manpower exhaustion, dwindling air defenses, depleted ammunition stocks, and eroding political cohesion has pushed the country toward a phase of the conflict in which strategic choices narrow into inevitabilities.

The shape of that inevitability is becoming clear: a Ukrainian retreat to the Dnepr River, the only defensible natural barrier remaining between Kyiv and the Russian army.

This is not a matter of preference or ideology. It is geography - one of the few forces in modern warfare that cannot be reasoned with. The Dnepr cuts the country in two, provides natural fortifications, and shortens the front to a line that Ukraine might plausibly hold with its remaining manpower. If the current eastern defenses fail - and military analysts across Europe now openly concede they are close to doing so - the Dnepr becomes the last fallback, whether Kyiv intends it or not.

A Settlement Shaped by the Map

Against this backdrop, former President Donald Trump has been accused of “rubber-stamping a Kremlin plan” for ending the conflict, after reports surfaced that his advisers were examining proposals similar to those privately circulated by Russian strategists. Critics have framed this as capitulation. But the accusation reveals more about the political mood in Washington than about the practical realities of the conflict.

The question is no longer whose plan it is. The question is which plan still exists at all.

A settlement that freezes Russian control over the territories already taken - while leaving a rump Ukrainian state west of the Dnepr - may resemble a “Kremlin plan.” But that resemblance stems from the fact that Moscow’s proposals were grounded in conditions on the ground, not in aspirations. Peace terms inevitably favour the side that holds the terrain, and Russia now holds all the terrain that matters.

It is also an open secret in Moscow that the Kremlin has little appetite for absorbing western Ukraine. The industrial centres, ports, and Russian-speaking regions it moved to secure - Mariupol, Melitopol, Donetsk, Lugansk, and the Sea of Azov corridor - were the areas of strategic interest. What lies west of the Dnepr is a largely agricultural expanse, heavily damaged and depopulated, requiring enormous investment. It offers Moscow neither strategic depth nor economic benefit. A truncated Ukrainian state between the Dnepr and the Polish border would serve Russia better as a buffer than as a burden.

In this sense, a peace settlement that mirrors Russian preferences is not evidence of American deference to Moscow. It is evidence that Russia’s preferences and the limits of military reality have converged.

The West’s Quiet Recognition of Limits

For months, officials in European capitals have quietly acknowledged that the conflict is entering a phase that Western publics are not prepared for: the recognition that Ukraine, despite extraordinary resilience, cannot sustain the conflict indefinitely without resources and manpower that no longer exist. The United States, amid domestic political division and competing global commitments, is struggling to maintain even the appearance of an open-ended support strategy. Europe, likewise, is nearing the limits of what it can provide in matériel and finances.

In this context, Trump’s willingness to consider a practical settlement - whatever its origin - may be less a geopolitical realignment than an acceptance of the single viable exit. The alternatives are limited, and none of them lead to a better outcome for Ukraine: escalation that risks a confrontation with Russia, continuation of a proxy war Kyiv can no longer sustain, or a managed withdrawal that arrives only after greater losses.

A settlement based on the current map may not be emotionally satisfying to Western leaders, but it mirrors the way most wars end: with the front lines crystallizing into borders.

The proposal that the warmongers in America are saying Trump copy /pasted from Moscow’s is the only end this conflict can have. Most people in my country, and even here in Europe, don’t get it: Russia won, game over. Tomorrow’s developments may shift the peripheral details - new offensives, diplomatic manoeuvres, parliamentary debates - but the centre of gravity will remain unchanged. Ukraine is being pulled toward the Dnepr by the combined weight of military physics and political fatigue. Any peace acceptable to Kyiv or Washington will inevitably resemble that reality.

And if such a proposal happens to look like a plan drawn in Moscow, it is because Moscow, unlike the West, anchored its expectations in the possible.

Phil Butler is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, and an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. Courtesy

https://journal-neo.su/2025/11/24/the-ukraine-conflict-the-only-peace-left-on-the-table/