Leadership in the Ukraine-Russia peace process is a new challenge for Europe

The leadership of any peace-making process will need to disprove such accusations and account for the risk assessments, and must also assume that the new character of warfare, so striking in the expanding “kill-zones” in Donbas and beyond, necessarily demands a new kind of peace, which has yet to be defined. A single, comprehensive peace deal may turn out to be too complex and controversial to negotiate. Instead, the process may have to proceed through a sequence of agreements on particular ceasefires, territorial swaps and sanctions fine-tuning. Ukrainian resilience and resourcefulness are opening a window of opportunity for bringing the war first to a pause and a truce, and eventually to an end. Europe cannot deny responsibility for seizing this chance.