Strategic Headwinds: Understanding the Forces Shaping Ukraine’s Path to Peace

Banner image: Benjamin Jensen/AI-generated art created using a combination of Midjourney and Fodor

Our Vision

The conflict in Ukraine, like most modern wars, appears increasingly likely to culminate in some form of a negotiated settlement. To help policymakers in Washington, Kyiv, Brussels, and beyond prepare for this critical phase, CSIS Futures Lab is launching a new series: Strategic Headwinds. This series explores the prevailing trends and dynamics—collectively known as strategic headwinds—that shapes ceasefire talks and peace negotiations. These factors encompass a broad spectrum, including the geopolitics of energy and food security, the role of advanced technologies, shifting demographic trends, and the evolving U.S.-China relationship. While war is often described as the continuation of politics by other means, politics itself is shaped by these broader, interconnected forces. As part of this series, we will offer periodic commentaries by affiliated scholars on the prospects for a lasting peace in Ukraine.

The research team also developed an analytical framework for identifying optimal combinations of peace agreement provisions that would result in a durable and sustainable peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine. We collected key articles related to Ukraine Peace Negotiations and identified 20 core negotiating items across four key categories: 1- Territory and Sovereignty, 2- Security Arrangements, 3- Economic Conditions, 4- Justice and Accountability. The core objective is to prevent future conflicts by ensuring the final agreement maintains above-threshold satisfaction levels for all key stakeholders while identifying areas of meaningful negotiating flexibility. We invite you to interact with the Ukraine-Russia Peace Agreement Simulator which allows users to develop a draft agreement and assess its sustainability.

Methodology

The research team conducted a comprehensive analysis of peace proposals and plans published since January 2024, including official frameworks like Ukraine's Peace Formula and various expert and third-country proposals. Through AI-assisted content analysis, the team identified 20 core negotiating items across four key categories:

• Territory and Sovereignty
• Security Arrangements
• Economic Conditions
• Justice and Accountability

The analysis focuses on four key stakeholders in the peace process: the direct parties to the conflict (Ukraine and Russia) and critical external actors (the United States and Europe (EU+UK)). This approach recognizes both the immediate bilateral nature of the conflict and the essential role of Western powers in guaranteeing and implementing any eventual settlement.

To evaluate the feasibility of different agreement combinations, the analysis employs two critical metrics:

1. Satisfaction Level: Measures the degree to which a particular item meets a stakeholder's core interests and objectives (scored 0-10)
2. Negotiability: Indicates a stakeholder's flexibility and willingness to compromise on specific provisions (scored 0-10)

To calculate these metrics, we invited experts involving policy specialists and individuals close to the negotiation process to fill out the survey to reflect realistic stakeholder positions. We used Bayesian Item Response theory to address inter-coder reliability and variance. The simulator also incorporates a minimum acceptable threshold below which stakeholders are likely to abandon negotiations, helping identify viable combinations of provisions that keep all parties engaged while maximizing potential areas of agreement.¹ By analyzing the interplay between satisfaction levels and negotiability scores across different combinations of agreement items, the tool helps negotiators identify promising pathways to a settlement that balances stakeholder requirements with practical flexibility for compromise.

How to Use the Peace Agreement Simulator

1. Building the Draft Agreement

The simulator's interface is divided into three main panels. The left panel serves as the repository of potential agreement provisions. Here there are 20 Available Negotiation Items (List) arranged into four core categories: Territory and Sovereignty, Security Arrangements, Economic Conditions, and Justice and Accountability. To begin crafting a peace agreement, a user should click on items of interest or drag them into the central draft agreement panel (Draft). As each provision is added, the immediate stakeholder reactions will be displayed below the item in the Draft through a system of indicators - green checkmarks showing support, red crosses indicating opposition, and yellow question marks revealing willingness to negotiate.

2. Understanding the Analysis Panel

The right panel of the simulator provides a real-time analysis of the evolving agreement through a dynamic radar chart visualization. This chart plots three critical metrics for each stakeholder (Ukraine, Russia, USA, and EU): satisfaction levels shown in green, negotiability scores in blue, and minimum acceptable thresholds marked by a red line. The minimum threshold represents a critical satisfaction level, below which stakeholders are likely to abandon negotiations.

When analyzing the chart, examine the relationship between satisfaction levels and negotiability scores for each stakeholder. High negotiability paired with moderate satisfaction suggests areas where parties have flexibility to make concessions, while low negotiability combined with high satisfaction often indicates core non-negotiable positions. For instance, if Russia shows high satisfaction but low negotiability, this suggests a hard-line position, whereas Ukraine might show moderate satisfaction and higher negotiability, indicating room for compromise.

The most promising paths to agreement appear where multiple parties show both above-threshold satisfaction and meaningful negotiability scores. Negotiators should focus on these overlapping zones of flexibility while ensuring no party's overall satisfaction drops below their minimum acceptable threshold, as this would likely cause them to abandon talks. By balancing these metrics, negotiators can identify which combinations of agreement items offer the best chance of achieving a stable agreement.

3. Optimizing the Agreement

When the draft agreement shows stakeholder satisfaction levels falling below minimum thresholds or there is a need to improve satisfaction level of party(-ies) with the lowest scores, the simulator offers an optimization feature accessed through a button below the radar chart. When activated, this tool analyzes your current selections and highlights in yellow the items that offer the most promising paths to improvement. These highlighted provisions represent opportunities where multiple parties show both acceptable satisfaction levels and meaningful negotiability scores. You can then experiment with substituting alternative items from the available List, focusing on combinations that maintain all stakeholders above their minimum thresholds while maximizing areas of mutual flexibility.

The key to success lies in achieving a delicate balance - maintaining all parties above their minimum acceptable thresholds while identifying and leveraging areas where high satisfaction aligns with significant negotiability. This methodical approach, supported by the simulator's analytical tools, offers negotiators the best opportunity to craft a durable and sustainable peace agreement that serves the interests of all stakeholders involved.

¹ The threshold was calculated based on BATNA principle ( Best Available to a Negotiated Agreement) .