Calls for a ceasefire in Ukraine are growing louder – but so are accusations that peace equals surrender. Does ending the war really require humiliating one side, or can we imagine an armistice without capitulation?

Why does every conversation in Ukraine sound like a demand for surrender? Talk of ceasefires and negotiations is met with suspicion, as if compromise equals capitulation and diplomacy equals defeat. Yet wars seldom end with magic words like victory or justice – they end with deals, often messy and painful. The question is whether those deals must humiliate one side to satisfy the other. And in Ukraine’s case, the stakes are not only territorial – but they are also moral, political and global.

The Politics of Humiliation

Humiliation is more than an emotional wound; it is a strategic trap. In 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron warned that Russia must not be humiliated, stating “We must not humiliate Russia so that the day when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means”. Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba hit back with a sharper response: “Calls to avoid humiliation of Russia can only humiliate France and every other country that would call for it.” The tension speaks volumes. For Moscow, humiliation is losing face after a war waged in the name of restoring imperial pride. For Kyiv, humiliation means surrendering the sovereignty they have defended with blood, sweat and tears, rendering sacrifice useless.

Leaders fear humiliation for the simple reason of legitimacy, not solely morale. No Ukrainian president could survive ceding Donbas; no Russian leader can spin a defeat without risking internal backlash. History offers cautionary examples: the Treaty of Versailles humiliated Germany post the First World War and sowed Nazism, while post-Second World War generosity avoided repeating that tragedy. Humiliation is not just psychological – it shapes the architecture of peace.

Territorial Compromise: Peace or Precedent?

Does peace require land? Many assume that a settlement in Ukraine must involve territorial concessions – Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk. The logic seems pragmatic: Russia holds the territory; Ukraine cannot reclaim all of it without catastrophic losses. Why not trade land for peace?

History offers mixed lessons. Post World War II, Finland ceded 10 per cent of its territory to the Soviet Union, bought stability, and rebuilt as a prosperous state. Conversely, Ukraine already tried compromise in 2014 through the Minsk agreements – autonomy for Donbas in exchange for peace. Almost immediately, in January 2015, Russia sent another large batch of its military to the region. Seven years later, Russia responded with a full-scale invasion.

In this light, concessions look less like peace and more like a pause before the next war. Public opinion in Ukraine is deeply divided, as a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll taken in May 2025 found that 52 per cent of Ukrainian citizens were unwilling to compromise on territory in negotiations, highlighting that public sentiment still overwhelmingly reject legitimising aggression.

There is also the question of precedent. If aggression pays, what does that signal to the rest of the world? To China over Taiwan? To would-be aggressors in the Balkans or the Caucasus? Compromise is not just about maps; it is about the rules of the international system.

The Ceasefire Alternative: Armistice Without Capitulation

If ceding land risks repeating past mistakes, what alternatives remain? One is to rethink what peace looks like—not as a treaty of surrender, but as an armistice without recognition.

Korea in 1953 provides a model: a ceasefire that froze the front lines, avoided formal capitulation, and has held – uneasily, but effectively – for over seventy years. Could Ukraine adopt a model? Possibly. A permanent armistice could halt the bloodshed, while leaving sovereignty claims unresolved. Russia would not get legal recognition of its annexations; Ukraine would not abandon its right to reclaim the occupied lands. Each side could tell its domestic audience that it had not “surrendered.”

Would it be ideal? It would not. It would leave scars, militarised borders, and a long shadow over Ukraine’s future. But it might stop the dying without sanctifying conquest.

The Cost of Principles vs. The Price of War

Every war forces a cruel arithmetic: how much do principles matter in human life and state survival? For Ukraine, the principle is clear – borders cannot be changed by force. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter enshrines it. To abandon that principle feels like awarding Russian aggression. But the price of holding it grows by the day: shattered cities, millions displaced, economies strained, and the risk of escalation hanging over Europe like a storm cloud.

Western support is not infinite. Sanctions fatigue is real. Elections in the U.S. and Europe will test public resolve. If aid slows, Ukraine may face impossible choices. The world must ask: is an uncompromising insistence on total restoration worth an endless war? Or is there space for a settlement that preserves the principle – at least on paper – while freezing the battlefield in practice?

Beyond Zero-Sum Thinking

The hardest war to win may be the one in our own imagination. We have been coordinated to see peace as a prize for the victor and a punishment for the defeated. But in modern conflicts, victory is rarely absolute, and punishment rarely stays confined to the punished. A humiliated Russia may be more dangerous than a contained one. A humiliated Ukraine would undermine every Western guarantee and invite future aggression.

Recent events underscore this paradox. In early September, Russia launched its largest-ever air assault on Kyiv, firing over 800 drones and missiles at civilian and government targets. Days earlier, at an Oval Office summit, President Trump, President Zelenskyy, and European leaders pledged security guarantees for Ukraine and floated the possibility of direct talks with Moscow. The contrast is stark: peace talks inch forward even as the bombs continue to fall.

There is another path. An armistice that halts the killing without legitimising conquest. A settlement that keeps Ukraine’s sovereignty on the map and Russia’s humiliation off the table. Peace will not look like victory – but it does not have to look like surrender either. Because in the end, the question is not whether Ukraine gives up land. It is whether we can give up the illusion that peace must mean someone is humiliated.

The real challenge is not solely ending the war, but ending it without planting the seeds of the next one. Peace without surrender is possible — but only if we stop mistaking compromise for capitulation.