For more than two years President Volodymyr Zelenskyy framed a single, expansive objective for any settlement: full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity on the basis of international law. That formulation, presented as the Peace Formula in 2022, served both as a normative anchor and a political litmus test for Kyiv’s Western backers. Over the last months, however, that maximalist posture has given way to a more calibrated, transactional diplomacy that accepts step-by-step gains rather than an all-or-nothing end state.

The proximate cause is straightforward. Direct, face-to-face contacts between Ukrainian and Russian delegations resumed in Istanbul in mid May and again on June 2, 2025. Those meetings did not produce a ceasefire or a blueprint for final status. They did, however, produce tangible humanitarian outcomes - notably agreements on expanded prisoner exchanges and on the return of thousands of dead, and the exchange of written memoranda that formalize each side’s opening positions. Those modest results demonstrate Kyiv’s current calculus: secure incremental human gains and preserve diplomatic space while keeping alive the prospect of higher level talks.

The contents of the Russian memorandum underline why Kyiv has moved away from doctrinaire maximalism toward pragmatism. Public reporting on Moscow’s proposals shows demands that would require Ukraine to cede political and security ground - for example, constraints on its NATO aspirations, limits on Western military presence, and formal changes to the status of language and governance in contested areas. Moscow’s list reads as an attempt to convert battlefield successes into political leverage. Kyiv’s negotiating team has therefore chosen a defensive posture: accept humanitarian steps while insisting that any durable political settlement must preserve Ukraine’s sovereignty and be negotiated at the highest level.

At the same time Washington’s diplomacy has reshaped Kyiv’s options. U.S. mediation over the spring led to proposals that Kyiv has treated as working texts rather than diktats. That external pressure - and the need to maintain allied support, which can be fragile and politically conditioned - has pushed Kyiv to contemplate compromises previously deemed unacceptable. In private and in public Zelenskyy’s team has signaled a readiness to trade sequencing and guarantees for concrete humanitarian relief and time-limited ceasefire arrangements, while resisting any permanent legal recognition of Russian annexations.

This shift is not merely rhetorical. Kyiv’s delegation proposed a 30-day unconditional ceasefire as a negotiating starting point and pressed for the return of children and young soldiers as immediate, verifiable outcomes. Those kinds of operational priorities indicate a mindset oriented to risk management: freeze the worst humanitarian harms, buy breathing room for replenishment, and preserve the possibility of reconstituting offensive options later if political avenues close. Practically speaking, that is a compromise in posture more than in principle - it concedes sequencing without conceding ultimate aims.

The interplay between battlefield pressure and diplomacy matters. Ukrainian strikes and asymmetric operations have been used to shape the bargaining environment and to signal that Kyiv retains leverage even while it negotiates. Conversely, Moscow’s ability to impose attritional costs ensures its negotiating demands remain maximal. The result is a negotiated pause in which both sides probe each other’s red lines - a pattern that often hardens into a protracted, frozen conflict unless strong, enforceable guarantees are established. That dynamic should be front and center for Western capitals when they design security assurances and monitoring mechanisms.

For Kyiv the immediate tradeoffs are political and strategic. Domestically, any perception of conceding territory or security guarantees risks sharp backlash and could fracture coalition support. Externally, leaning toward modest, verifiable wins - prisoner releases, returns of the dead, humanitarian corridors - helps maintain international sympathy and keeps partners invested. Strategically, Zelenskyy’s evolving approach aims to convert short-term humanitarian credibility into longer-term diplomatic leverage. The danger is that incrementalism becomes normalization - that the world accepts a semi-permanent partition of Ukraine by default.

What should policymakers expect next? First, more memorandum exchanges and specialist working groups on humanitarian and verification issues rather than sudden breakthroughs on core political questions. Second, intensifying work by mediators to translate tactical pauses into enforceable mechanisms - monitoring, verification, and credible deterrence of violations. Third, a continued tug-of-war between Kyiv’s insistence on sovereignty and Moscow’s push for guarantees that lock in its gains. Absent a credible, multilayered enforcement architecture that includes clear punitive measures for violations, any ceasefire risks becoming a pause exploited for consolidation rather than reconciliation.

In sum, Zelenskyy’s apparent compromises are best read as adaptive strategy rather than capitulation. They reflect a leader balancing the immutable political principle of territorial integrity with the mutable operational imperatives of saving lives, preserving international backing, and buying time to rearm and reconstitute. For Western partners the policy imperative is simple: match Kyiv’s pragmatism with durable guarantees and resources that prevent tactical pauses from calcifying into strategic defeat.