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US VASSALS BLOCK UKRAINE PEACE

Jeff Rich on why Britain and Europe cannot end the Ukraine war while Washington still sets the terms

Ian Proud, Sep 02, 2026

I sat down with historian Jeff Rich of The Burning Archive to discuss the seemingly intractable challenge of ending the war in Ukraine. Jeff spent 33 years as an Australian official before turning to global history. I spent 24 years as a British diplomat, including four and a half years at the British Embassy in Moscow after the Ukraine crisis began. We come at the problem from different directions but landed in the same place.

This is not a two-party war. It is a five-party war: Russia, Ukraine, the European Union, the United States and Britain. Each is trying to finish it on its own terms. None of them has built a peace process. That is why the search for a single “deal” keeps failing.

A single peace deal won’t be enough to settle four different conflicts at once, something I wrote about for Responsible Statecraft in June.

Jeff’s answer is similar to mine; a multi-treaty settlement.

He draws on the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 — the practical fact the catastrophe of the Thirty Year War was ended with several treaties, not one.

He also draws on the Cambodia settlement of the early 1990s. That war mixed a civil conflict, an East–West confrontation and a split inside the communist world.

The way out was a UN mandate and a UN transitional authority that gave China a face-saving off-ramp from the Khmer Rouge.

The parallel with Western sponsorship of the present Ukrainian government is uncomfortable, yet unavoidable. Peace for Ukraine will emerge from separate interlocking tracks: Russia–Ukraine terms to end the fighting; a deal on EU–Ukraine accession, which will be as complicated as ending the war; an agreement on the long-term Europe/UK relationship with Russia; neutrality for Ukraine in treaty form; and a long-term settlement between Washington and Moscow.

September 6, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine