December 30, 2025 07:30 AM IST First published on: Dec 30, 2025 at 06:32 AM ISTPerhaps for the first time in the nearly four-year-long war, the three principal actors appear to agree, albeit for different reasons, that a settlement may be close. After meeting US President Donald Trump in Florida on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he believed the US and Ukraine were “90 per cent agreed” on a 20-point peace plan and “100 per cent agreed” on security guarantees. Trump claimed that a draft agreement to end the war was nearly “95 per cent done”. Even the Kremlin, which usually tempers expectations of peace, echoed Trump’s assessment that the negotiations were in their final stage. Yet for all the positive optics, there are few indications that a concrete agreement is in the offing.For several weeks now, Ukraine has been confronted with a stark choice: Surrender territory in the east and accede to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands, or continue fighting a war of attrition with mounting costs. That the war persists despite consistent pressure from Trump on Zelenskyy to opt for the former — articulated in Washington’s original 28-point plan —underscores Kyiv’s determination not to cede land. Trump and Zelenskyy both acknowledged on Sunday that the future of the Donbas remained unresolved. This eastern region — comprising Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the latter now almost entirely under Russian occupation — has been an intractable obstacle to peace. For Ukraine, questions of sovereignty and national pride aside, Donetsk forms the so-called “fortress belt” of its defensive line. Losing it could allow Russia to use the region as a springboard for future offensives. For Putin, the capture of the Donbas and the supposed “liberation” of its Russian-speaking population is central to the justification for Russia’s invasion and necessary for any peace deal.AdvertisementFor India, a stable peace in Ukraine would ease the foreign policy bind it has found itself in over Russian oil imports and US tariffs. It is evident that Moscow’s ultimate objective is to improve the terms of its engagement with Washington. New Delhi must factor this into its own strategic calculus, as reflected in PM Narendra Modi’s endorsements of Trump’s peace initiatives in Eastern Europe. As the year draws to a close, even as diplomacy goes full throttle, the battlefield continues to set the limits of peace.