What Could Make Russia Want Peace?

Economic and military pressures could force Russia’s hand. Its economy is strained but not enough to do that, analysts say. And President Vladimir V. Putin says Russia is winning the war.

A photograph released by Russian state media showing President Vladimir V. Putin meeting with the U.S. special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, at the Kremlin, on Tuesday.Credit...Alexander Kazakov/Sputnik

By Neil MacFarquhar

Dec. 3, 2025

Updated 8:51 a.m. ET

The New York Times; see also and also

After nearly five hours of talks on Tuesday between U.S. and Russian negotiators about ending the war in Ukraine, no breakthroughs emerged.

According to a Russian negotiator, President Vladimir V. Putin was critical of the proposals. Before the talks, he even said he was willing to go to war with Ukraine’s European allies, which have been working to support Ukraine financially and militarily.

“We are not planning to fight with Europe, but if Europe suddenly starts a war with us, we are ready right now,” Mr. Putin said.

So what could force Russia to end the conflict? Absent serious pressure like stronger sanctions by the Trump administration, it comes down to the economy and the battlefield, analysts say. While there are challenges for Russia on both fronts, neither is dire enough to give the United States significant leverage in the talks, President Trump’s third effort to broker a peace. 

“There are points where Putin’s probably feeling under pressure, but none of them have reached any kind of juncture that he feels he has to make a decision or has run out of options,” said Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington who ran Russian and European affairs at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration.

Before Tuesday’s talks, Mr. Putin made a rare visit to a military headquarters, as well as to an economic forum, to make the point that Russia had the economy and the armed forces it needed to continue the war.

The Russian elite is an echo chamber for this claim.

Train carriages in Moscow in 2023 by Russian Railways, a state-run company that is struggling to repay its debts amid high interest rates.Credit...Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Fyodor Lukyanov, a leading foreign policy commentator, wrote an opinion article in the state-run Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper after the most recent U.S. peace proposal emerged. Military force was the main means to achieve Russia’s goals, including “unlocking national economic opportunities,” he wrote.

Earnings from oil and gas that pay for the war have fallen, and new American sanctions against Rosneft, a state company, and Lukoil, the country’s two largest energy producers, were imposed in October.

While the government harvested almost $10 billion in taxes from oil and gas producers in October, according to Finance Ministry figures, that was notably down 27 percent from the same month a year earlier. Sanctions were a contributing factor, amid lower crude oil prices and a stronger ruble.

But Russia still pockets enormous sums from its energy industry, despite Western efforts to corral the shadow fleet of tankers that transport most of the country’s energy exports.

Falling oil revenue is “likely to be a constant toothache that sets into the Russian war effort,” said Clifford Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a New York-based political-risk analysis group.

Still, Mr. Kupchan noted, to sharply lower Russia’s income would require much stronger sanctions, including the unlikely prospect of blocking sales to China, Russia’s largest energy customer, or Ukraine’s inflicting significant damage on exports.

A banking crisis might also pressure Mr. Putin, but so far, his adept team of economists has smoothed the war fallout.

Huge government spending on armament production in the first two years of the war sent inflation skyrocketing. To tame it, the Central Bank imposed high interest rates.

The prime rate has come down to 16.5 percent, though some of Russia’s most significant companies are struggling to repay their loans. Russian Railways, a state monopoly, has had particular problems, with over $50 billion in debts as freight numbers have shrunk.

Russia’s largest automaker, AvtoVAZ, has slashed production, but economic problems in the country are unlikely to affect the Kremlin’s focus on the war in Ukraine. Credit...Gleb Stolyarov/Reuters

Consumers are also struggling with the high rates, one reason sales of big-ticket items like cars are plummeting. Russia’s largest automaker, the maker of Lada vehicles, AvtoVAZ, said it would shift to a four-day workweek and slash production by 40 percent.

State-run television has allowed for some grumbling about these issues.

Andrei Bezrukov, a professor at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, said on an influential Russian talk show on Sunday that, “sadly, it’s accountants who run the country and its economy” and that they have no long-term strategic plan.

But Russians are unlikely to take to the streets over the economy, noted Konstantin Sonin, a Russian economist a the University of Chicago.

On the military front, Russia has been inching forward, especially in southeastern Donetsk Province. Russia claimed on Monday that it had seized the strategic town of Pokrovsk, but that was contested by both Ukraine and Russian military bloggers.

Gains come at a terrible human cost but that does not seem to affect Russia’s calculations in peace talks. Mr. Putin has staked his legacy on the outcome of the war.

High payments to soldiers mean new recruits replace the nearly 30,000 lost each month, analysts said. Frontline units have dented Ukraine’s advantage in deploying drones by infiltrating small teams to kill the drone operators, military analysts said, but then lack the concentration of troops and tanks needed to seize significant territory.

Still, seemingly fine with a grinding war of attrition, Mr. Putin repeatedly asserts Russia is winning.

“The pace of the offensive has been the same for the past year and will continue that way,” said Dmitri Kuznets, a military analyst for Meduza, an independent Russian news outlet.

A military recruitment billboard with the slogan “Pride of Russia” at a bus stop in Moscow in February.Credit...Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press

Alina Lobzina and Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.

Neil MacFarquhar has been a Times reporter since 1995, writing about a range of topics from war to politics to the arts, both internationally and in the United States. 

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine 

-- Peace Proposal: Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other U.S. officials met with a Ukrainian delegation that was without Andriy Yermak, who resigned as chief of staff to Ukraine’s president. 

-- Ukraine Corruption Scandal: Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff and top peace negotiator, resigned amid a $100 million embezzlement scandal that has threatened to topple Zelensky’s entire cabinet. Here’s what to know and what Zelensky has lost.

-- South Africans on the Front: The South African government is investigating how more than a dozen men unwittingly ended up fighting for Russia in Ukraine. 

-- U.S. Deference to Russia: A leaked conversation between the White House envoy Steve Witkoff and a senior Russian official suggests that President Trump is determined to make a deal to end the war in Ukraine, even if it is mostly on Russia’s terms. Trump said that Witkoff was using standard negotiating methods. 

-- Ukrainians in Russia’s New Gulag: Even if a peace can be reached, it won’t be easy to solve the problem of Ukrainian civilians languishing in Russian jails. This is one prisoner’s story.