US President Donald Trump has ditched his call for a ceasefire in Ukraine, backing instead Russian President Vladimir Putin’s push for a permanent peace agreement. That has not stopped some European leaders from pushing for a temporary truce first, even though the US president has seemingly decided one is not necessary.
It’s not that Kyiv and its allies don’t want peace. But they understand that the kind of deal sought by Russia can’t happen unless the most basic principle underpinning the global order – that a country cannot get what it wants by force – is thrown under the bus.
And Kyiv’s European allies are not willing to risk that, not least because they could well become the next target of Russia’s aggression.
Speaking to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump adopted some of Moscow’s talking points, questioning whether a ceasefire was “necessary” if a broader peace deal could be achieved.
But international law experts and analysts say that any deal that would force Ukraine to give up its land to stop the killing of its people by Russia would be completely illegal under the UN Charter, a key international agreement which most countries signed up to after the horrors of the Second World War.
While often thought of as essentially the same thing, there is a big difference between a peace deal and a ceasefire in the eyes of international law.
During a ceasefire, warring parties agree to stop fighting with each side keeping hold of the territory under its military control. But the understanding is that the pause is temporary – usually to provide a window to negotiate, deliver humanitarian help or evacuate civilians.
Kyiv and its European allies suggested that a ceasefire might be a precursor for a meeting between Zelensky and Putin, followed by a trilateral meeting between Trump, Zelensky, and Putin.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who attended the summit on Monday, said that he “can’t imagine that the next meeting will take place without a ceasefire.”
A ceasefire can be short – like the 1914 Christmas Truce that lasted a few days – or it could stretch to decades. The ceasefires between Cyprus and Turkey, and between India and Pakistan have been in place for decades with no permanent peace settlement in sight.
What Putin wants – and now, apparently, Trump as well – is a permanent peace agreement.
Under international law, a peace agreement is meant to be a formal, long-term treaty that dictates the future relationship between two countries.
And that’s where things get complicated.
“There is a uniquely core principle to international law that is inscribed front and center in the UN Charter: Use of force is emphatically prohibited. So what that also (means) is that any treaty that you procure by use of force is effectively illegal and is inherently void,” said Jeremy Pizzi, an international lawyer and a legal adviser of Global Rights Compliance, a human rights foundation.
Little detail has been shared about the kind of peace deal Putin discussed with Trump last week, but it is clear that the Russian leader has not abandoned some of his maximalist demands, including that Ukraine give up the entire eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, known as the Donbas, and is banned from joining NATO in the future.
This would make the deal doubly illegal under international law: illegal because of the way it would be reached – by force – and illegal because of its content.
But even if he wanted to – which he does not – Zelensky cannot agree to give up territory.
Under the Ukrainian constitution, any change to the country’s borders must be approved by a referendum – a rule that is in place partly because of Russia’s tendency to install puppet governments in foreign countries.
A survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), a leading public opinion pollster, in May and June found that the vast majority of Ukrainians reject the idea of recognizing Ukrainian territories as part of Russia. An even bigger majority is against giving up control over territories that are currently controlled by Ukraine.
Speaking to CNN from Kyiv, Pizzi said that even if the Ukrainians somehow changed their minds and voted in favor of giving up their land – which they are unlikely to do, according to KIIS – the agreement would still be illegal under international law.
“Regardless of the Ukrainian constitution, Zelensky, or no one, can hand over territory linked to aggressive military conquest. The prohibition of using armed force to conquer territory is absolute under international law,” Pizzi said.
There are also practical and strategic reasons why Ukraine cannot agree to Moscow’s demands.
The Russian military currently controls almost all of Luhansk and more than 70% of Donetsk, which means that Putin is asking Kyiv to give up even more than it has lost so far.
But the parts of the Donbas region that are still under Kyiv’s control include infrastructure that is crucial for Ukraine’s defense. A string of industrial cities including Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Kostiantynivka that are connected by main roads and railways form the backbone of Ukraine’s defenses. If they were to be taken by Russia, the road to the western parts of the country would be wide open.
There is also little incentive for Kyiv to trust Moscow, Pizzi said.
“Russia has engaged in armed attacks against Ukraine for over 10 years now, consistently, repeatedly during that time. Russia has feigned negotiations, feigned good faith, while continuing to use violence and keeping up the same illegal maximalist goals in the background and Ukrainian authorities are painfully aware of this,” he said.
“There is no logical, sensible reason to trust Russia in the absence of a precursor, a good faith decision or engagement that they make on their part to hold off from killing more Ukrainians,” he added.
Kyiv, backed by the Europeans, has indicated that it is willing to recognize the current reality on the ground in order to stop the killing. This would likely mean freezing the conflict along the current front lines and essentially giving up on trying to regain its land while the ceasefire is in place.
Analysts at the Eurasia Group wrote in a note on Monday that the European leaders would no doubt make it very clear to Trump that there can be no question of acceptance of a permanent annexation of Ukrainian territory by force.
“While there is openness to recognition of the de facto military position on the ground, neither Ukraine nor the Europeans will accept that Russia should be ‘given’ more land than it has captured,” they said, quoting a Western intelligence assessment that it would take Russia more than four years to occupy the rest of the Donbas.
And, crucially, even if Kyiv were to recognize that the reality on the ground gives Russia the de-facto control of some of its land, it would certainly not agree to make this a permanent recognition. Kyiv’s goal remains to regain all of its territory in the future.
The Eurasia analysts said there was some doubt in the European minds that “Trump understands, or cares about, the importance of the distinction” between the two.
A ceasefire might be the only way out of the current violence. A permanent peace deal would be against international law.
“The reality is that (international law) makes it almost politically impossible to conclude a peace treaty when the victim is not winning. And my response to that is: That’s the point,” Pizzi said.
