Throughout modern history, territorial lease agreements have been used to end conflicts and settle disputes between nation-states. The UK’s agreement with China in 1889 to lease the New Territories around Hong Kong and America’s ongoing lease of Guantanamo Bay are among the most famous, but there are many other examples involving European powers during the late 19^th and 20^th centuries. More recently, in 2010, Russia renewed Finland’s lease of the Saimaa Canal territory for 50 years and Russia in 2015 agreed to lease land in the Transbaikal region to China for 49 years.

Territorial lease agreements can be an attractive face-saving mechanism for both sides of a territorial dispute because they do not involve the outright annexation of territory. A lease agreement preserves de jure sovereignty for the lessee while recognizing de facto control of territory by a foreign power.

A successful territorial lease agreement to end the Ukraine War would likely have the following provisions:

1. An immediate cease fire along the current line of armed conflict.

2. The establishment of a UN peacekeeping force to monitor the ceasefire boundaries.

3. A 25-year lease of the occupied territories by Russia in return for an upfront and then subsequent annual payments. To facilitate these payments, the United States and the EU would end economic sanctions on Russia. The current sanctions would be reinstated if Russia breeches the terms of the lease agreement.

4. Full administrative control of the territories by Russia. Russia, however, would not prevent Ukrainian language instruction in schools or the free practice non-Russian Orthodox religions.

5. A UN organized and supervised plebiscite at the end of the lease to determine whether these territories would return to Ukraine or remain as part of the Russian Federation. Russia and Ukraine would both be bound by the plebiscite’s results.

6. Ukraine would need to renounce its desire to become a part of NATO but would be allowed to join the European Union.

Ukraine could continue to receive defensive military equipment from the U.S. and Europe but agree to practice an “armed neutrality” similar to the status Sweden and Finland maintained before these countries joined NATO. NATO countries would be granted an option to individually intervene militarily without triggering the collective defense requirement of Article 5 of the NATO agreement if Russia breeched the ceasefire agreement.

The United States, Ukraine, and other European countries would recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea. Crimea has been under Russian control since the time of Catherine the Great and remained so with a military lease agreement after the formal independence of Ukraine in 1991. Direct access to the Black Sea is a core Russia strategic goal and it is unlikely that any Russian government would willingly give up Crimea.

A 25-year lease may have the additional benefit of outlasting both Putin’s and Zelensky’s governments. If western Ukraine becomes a model of economic prosperity and freedom and eastern Ukraine does not, the east could vote to become reunited with the west. Alternatively, if the east continues to feel closer to Russia than the west and is happy with Russian rule it could vote to become a Russian province. Either way, after 25 years both parties will likely have shed the baggage of the current Putin/Zelensky animosity.

Whether the Ukrainians under Zelensky, Western Europeans, globalists, or the Russians would agree to this approach is debatable. Many Western European and American foreign policy elites feel strongly that, since Ukraine bravely resisted the Russian invasion and suffered great personal and economic loses, the West is morally obligated to continue supporting Ukraine militarily until it defeats Russia.

Unfortunately, without direct military intervention from the West, it is difficult to see how Ukraine could expel Russia out of the eastern territories or Crimea. Despite continuing aid, Ukraine is losing the war of attrition. Russian manpower reserves and military production capabilities dwarf those of Ukraine and Ukraine will soon run out of military-aged males.

Globalist Western European leaders seem to believe that tougher economic sanctions and more military aide to Ukraine will cause Putin’s regime to collapse and the Russians to capitulate. This ignores the fact that Russians have endured tougher hardships in the past and that secondary sanctions are unlikely to bring Russia to its knees. Indeed, Russia is more likely to find creative ways to bypass the secondary sanctions and continue the war.

Even if Putin’s regime somehow collapsed, the result could be much more problematic for the United States. Civil unrest in Russia, which has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, could lead to unpredictable chaos, in which nuclear weapons might be used or sold to terrorist groups.

Russia may oppose a lease proposal because they believe all the recently annexed Ukrainian territories historically belong to Russia, and that new borders need to be settled before a ceasefire is concluded. In the minds of Russian nationalists, Russian claims to eastern Ukraine and Crimea were resolved in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The Russians may also balk at making large lease payments to Ukraine, viewing these payments as veiled reparations for Russia’s invasion. Russian nationalists believe that Ukraine and the West instigated the war.  

Nevertheless, Russia might be willing to accept a neutral independent state in western Ukraine because of its separate historic cultural, religious, and political development under Polish-Lithuanian and later Austro-Hungarian domination—providing that Ukraine does not become part of NATO.

In his 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntington predicted that a fault line between western and eastern Ukraine might become a dangerous source of conflict between Russia and the West if globalist elites tried to force all of Ukraine into the Western orbit. Huntington understood that western Ukraine, with its Uniate religious traditions and its long historical political ties to Western powers such as Poland, is very different from the eastern part that Russia now occupies.

Putin’s autocratic regime is distasteful to the West but, from what we can tell, is widely supported by the Russian people. Despite Putin killing off his most serious opponents, his style of government is similar to the 19^th- and 20^th-century czarist regimes the Russian people are familiar with, and less brutal than the Communist governments of the former Soviet Union. Russia’s previous experiments with liberal democracy ended with the Bolshevik revolution during World War I and economic poverty and chaos during the Yeltsin years. It was only after Putin took power from Yeltsin that the Russia economy strengthened and political stability returned.

Despite opposition to a negotiated settlement from either side, utilizing a territorial lease approach may be the most face-saving solution for everyone, and the Trump administration should press for its acceptance. Russia, China, and India are all global superpowers with nuclear weapons. Given that China represents the most significant threat to America’s long-term security, U.S. policymakers should try to prevent the close alignment of these three powers against U.S. interests. China represents America’s most significant security threat. Separating Russia from its current “special relationship” with China should be a core U.S. objective in any settlement ending the Ukraine war.