Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the war in Eastern Ukraine had already resulted in more than 14,000 military and civilian deaths. The invasion — a blatant violation of international law — escalated the war into the deadliest violent conflict on European soil since World War II, making it increasingly globalised both in terms of participating actors and impact. The war has led to tens of thousands of civilian and military deaths and injuries. It has displaced about a fourth of Ukraine’s pre-invasion population and has caused vast infrastructure destruction and economic damage.
After the dissipation of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in 2023, the war turned into a war of attrition, with Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region and Russia’s use of an intermediate-range ballistic missile, the “Oreshnik”, in 2024 representing important escalatory trends without becoming game changers. At the same time, Russia made constant territorial advances, and according to Deep State data, it occupied about 19% of Ukrainian territory at the beginning of 2025. The attrition phase increased fatigue and the loss of trust in military victory, leading to growing support for peace talks and concessions in Ukraine, as shown by sociological surveys. However, these attitudes shifted again as Ukrainians reacted to the coercive and erratic peace efforts of the incoming Trump administration.
The official peace process, represented by the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015, was already stalled before the invasion, failing to achieve even a permanent ceasefire. In an atmosphere of insecurity and lack of trust, the parties to the conflict continued military build-ups and other action-reaction moves. At the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, Russia escalated its demands, addressing them directly to the USA and NATO. It demanded the signing of security treaties involving the military withdrawal of the West from the in-between states and a return to NATO’s May 1997 force posture when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed. The West proposed a “small-steps”, confidence-building process, which Russia rejected, instead resorting to mass use of force and an intended military occupation of Ukraine’s capital to enforce its demands wholesale.
Russia’s demands escalated further in the course of military actions. Since February 2022, both Russia and Ukraine have rejected the “small-steps” process, referring to the failure of the previous peace process. Russia has continued to insist that only a full implementation of its escalated demands would be an acceptable outcome, while Ukraine has demanded a full withdrawal of Russian troops, the restoration of territorial integrity, and war-related justice.
After a decade of failed peace efforts that destroyed trust in the peace process, dialogue, and mediation, it is a very difficult task to put in place a multilevel, inclusive and long-term peace process that could enable the transformation of escalated identities and demands and rebuild trust. The key lesson from the pre-invasion period is that if the peace process is constructed again only around meeting Russia’s demands without committing all sides to relational restoration of legitimacy and addressing the issues that remained unaddressed since 2013, it will fail to achieve long-term de-escalation.
Diminishing its initial ambitions, the Trump administration has started a “small-steps” process, reflected in a 30-day ceasefire and talks about the Black Sea agreement. Many question the administration’s approach as biased, deal-making, exclusive and coercive mediation, while others still hold out some hope, given the lack of a better alternative, while the even worse alternative remains the continuation of this devastating war of attrition or a nuclear escalation.
This article was published in Globe #35, the Graduate Institute Review.
