In recent months, President Donald Trump’s assertive foreign policy has borne many fruits. His tough stance on burden sharing among NATO allies has led to dramatic increases in their military spending and financial support for Ukraine. His surgical attack on Iran, coupled with tough sanctions, has provoked massive people power protests there. His strong backing of Israel has contributed to a severely weakened and defanged Hamas. And his surgical extraction of Venezuelan tyrant Nicolás Maduro, coupled with the interdiction of Venezuelan oil exports, has forced initial concessions from the proto-communist regime there. By contrast, a year of intense diplomatic effort has yielded little real progress on one of Trump’s top foreign policy priorities — brokering an end to Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine. More and more, Russian participation in negotiations with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff appear to be an effort to string along the White House. Indeed, Vladimir Putin recently declared that his ultimate aim now is the unconditional and total surrender of all Ukrainian territory in the Donbas as well as in Zaporizhzhya and Kherson in the country’s south. Kremlin officials have also consistently rejected Western plans to provide Ukraine with ironclad security guarantees and to ensure it possesses a powerful, well-equipped military. Recently, Putin’s favorite propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, made clear Russia’s plans for Ukraine and Eastern Europe: “[I]n our sphere of interests we will tolerate a government … as long as it is pro-Russian. Enough pitying the enemy, it has to be destroyed.” The Kremlin’s de facto rejection of Trump’s peace efforts has been accompanied by a devastating, monthslong bombing campaign targeting civilians that has cut off heat, water, and electricity in major Ukrainian cities, leaving the elderly and infirm to cope with inhuman conditions in harsh subzero winter temperatures. Russia’s intransigence is no accident. Like Hamas, the Ayatollahs, and Venezuela’s chavistas, Vladimir Putin responds only to power. That’s why President Trump’s focus on persuasion, not coercion, has come up empty. Nevertheless, today Trump has a better chance than ever to press the Kremlin into a peace settlement. Current Russian bravado masks the reality that Russia today is far weaker and more susceptible to U.S. pressure than at any time since it launched its all-out attack on Ukraine nearly four years ago. Putin’s war of aggression has reached a de facto stalemate. Over the last two years, Russia has lost 200,000 dead and many more times severely wounded, but has taken only 3,000 square miles from Ukraine. At that pace, Russia would need five years to take the remaining territory it demands Ukraine surrender voluntarily, and it would take Russia around 120 years to conquer the remainder of Ukraine. Additionally, Ukraine’s major military and technological achievements in drone warfare have meant that the country is suffering far fewer combat fatalities than before. Indeed, Russia’s vicious new attacks on civilian targets far from the front are an acknowledgement of battleground failure and nothing more than a desperate effort to win the war by breaking the morale of the Ukrainian people — a folly given the strong spirit of that nation. Moreover, Russia’s effort to erode support for Ukraine in Europe has failed. Across the political spectrum — including among such conservative nationalist leaders as Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki, France’s Marine Le Pen, Britain’s Nigel Farage, and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni — there is strong support for Ukraine. And Ukraine’s budgetary and military needs appear secure for the coming years, financed largely by Europe — and with $250 billion in frozen Russian assets available for future deployment. Finally, perhaps most significantly, Russia is in the midst of a period of prolonged economic stagnation. In 2025, the Russian economy “grew” 0.8 percent. As 2025 ended, Russian state media were awash with stark appraisals of the bleak future of Russia’s sputtering economy, with estimates for 2026 standing at less than one percent. The headline in the year-end review of the economy in the pro-government Nezavisimaya Gazeta read “Russia is headed toward stagnation, economists suggest.” Among the problems the article pointed to were abnormally high interest rates, a slowdown in investment, and falling production in non-military industries. The article noted that in addition to a weak economy, the economic future looks bleak as “Russia has growing problems in moving towards technological and economic independence.” The war has led to a massive brain drain with hundreds of thousands of skilled programmers, scientists, and entrepreneurs relocating to such countries as Serbia and the United Arab Emirates to seek opportunity and avoid deadly combat. Citing a leading Russian economist, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported, “Russia will not even be able to produce technological prototypes, much less competitive sequential production.” In addition, Russia’s main statistical agency suggests the population may fall from 146 million today to around 130 million by 2046 — a consequence of declining birth rates, wartime deaths, and outmigration. With much of the world in the midst of an AI and robotics revolution, Russian technological backwardness and its declining population are likely to further erode its ability to remain a major regional power. It was the economic decline of the imperialist Soviet Union triggered by President Ronald Reagan’s policies of increased defense spending and long-term sanctions that curbed Soviet adventurism and eventually forced its leaders to withdraw from East Germany and stand aside as the peoples of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria — and later Ukrainians, the Balts, Armenians, and other non-Russians — chose their own sovereign path. This is another such moment to return to the Reagan playbook and force imperialist Russia to stand down and take the path of peace. The first step in that direction would be for the president to press Congress to quickly pass the Sanctioning Russia Act, introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham and co-sponsored by 84 senators. Pressure on Russia should also include the Europe-financed sale of long-range missiles to Ukraine, which could reach critical military infrastructure and command centers in Moscow and could deter Russia from attacks on civilian targets, which have resulted in a 30 percent increase in deaths among noncombatants in the last year. This, in the final analysis, is the realistic path to pressing Putin into a fair settlement and securing for the president his longstanding aim of ending Russia’s war on Ukraine. Adrian Karatnycky, former president of Freedom House, is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and author of Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the War with Russia (Yale). Image licensed under CC BY 4.0.