The US-led effort to end the war in Ukraine has splintered into multiple parallel tracks: Washington meets Kyiv, Europe consults Ukraine separately, and American negotiators hold talks with Russian officials. But almost no meetings have included Russia, Ukraine, and the United States at the same table - and none have brought Europeans into the room alongside them.
This structure has proved "chaotic and counterproductive," Samuel Charap and Jennifer Kavanagh argue in a Foreign Affairs analysis, as "Hvylya" reports. The fragmentation "has increased the risk of misunderstandings and made it hard to identify terms that can gain buy-in from all stakeholders," the authors write.
US negotiators have met with Russian representatives, including Vladimir Putin, at least a dozen times. Ukraine and the United States have held frequent bilateral sessions, sometimes with Europeans present. But the process lacks the one format that could actually produce results: a single table where all parties test propositions and revise terms through direct dialogue.
"Identifying compromises that all parties can accept requires testing different propositions and iteratively revising their terms, a process best accomplished through direct dialogue, not asynchronous discussions," Charap and Kavanagh write. Without that feedback loop, each track generates expectations and red lines the others cannot see - making convergence on a deal increasingly unlikely.
The Trump administration paused the talks citing its focus on Iran, but the authors argue the real problem predates that decision. The structural deficiency - separate tracks with no multilateral mechanism - had already stalled progress before the pause. Charap, who served on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, and Kavanagh, who directs Military Analysis at Defense Priorities, argue that gathering Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and Europe at the same table is a necessary first step toward any viable settlement.
Also read: why Ukraine risks running out of defense funds as Western aid delivery slows.