No simple solution to crisis, but still better to talk than to fight

Although everyone seemed to keep the mood delicately cordial during the marathon meetings at the White House on Monday to keep the focus on the collective goal of ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the disagreement between the United States and its European allies on how the goal should be realized remains.

NATO chief Mark Rutte told Fox News that potential swaps of Ukrainian territory were not discussed. Yet, the issue was believed to be a focus of the discussions. An image posted by a senior White House official on Monday showed US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky standing in front of a map of Ukraine showing the areas occupied by Russian forces.

Trump has said it was up to Ukraine to determine the issue of potential territorial concessions as part of any peace deal, although he has at times indicated the need for "land swaps".

That the US president announced he is arranging a trilateral meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelensky and himself implies that Ukraine and the European countries might have been pressured to soften their stance on territory, as well as a ceasefire that they once took as a requisite for any talks.

An indication of that came when Zelensky told the media "I hope that we will find decisions and what is very important that all the sensitive things, territorial, etc, we will discuss on the level of leaders during trilateral meeting". Previously, he had stressed that territory is nonnegotiable.

"I can't imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said during a roundtable discussion. But the US president said it was not a prerequisite. "We're going to let the president go over and talk to the president, and we'll see how that works out," Trump responded to Merz. "In the six wars that I've settled, I haven't had a ceasefire. We just got into negotiations."

That a trilateral meeting was being arranged after agreeing to include the territorial issue in future discussions indicates that both Ukraine and its European allies accept that a ceasefire is no longer a requisite for negotiations.

Although he said "The idea of trilateral meeting is very important, because this is the only way to fix it", French President Emmanuel Macron stressed that another summit should not only feature the three presidents — Zelensky, Putin and Trump — but also top European leaders, indicating the European countries' disenchantment at being excluded from the table. But that seems to be where the US-brokered peace process leads to.

The main concrete result from Monday's meetings is Washington's promise to give Ukraine "NATO Article 5-like protection" as a security guarantee to bring an end to the conflict. US special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Sunday that Moscow has agreed to this arrangement.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Article 5 says that "if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked".

Ukraine has also said it wants any peace deal to include guarantees that Russia will never launch such a "special military operation" in the future.

In other words, following the loss of lives, land and mineral resources, what Ukraine, with the full support of its European allies, will probably secure at last is the "security guarantees" of Washington and Moscow.

While the path to resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict remains complex and filled with disagreements, it is clear that dialogue and negotiation offer the most viable route forward. Talking — even when difficult — is far preferable to confrontation.