The United States Must Prepare for More Than One Russian Future

U.S. Diplomacy Toward Russia Is Too Episodic

By using this website, you agree to our use of cookies. This use includes personalization of content and ads, and traffic analytics. Review our Privacy Policy for more information.

!Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy

Get analysis and alerts more quickly in the mobile app.

Install

Back to Foreign Policy Magazine home page

* Latest
* Regions
+ Asia & the Pacific
+ China
+ Middle East & Africa
+ Americas
+ Europe
* Newsletters
Editors’ Picks
Evening roundup with our editors’ favorite stories of the day
!World Brief Icon
World Brief
Your guide to the most important world stories of the day
!China Brief Icon
China Brief
The latest news, analysis, and data from the country each week
Situation Report
Weekly update on what’s driving U.S. national security policy
FP Weekend
A curation of our best book reviews, deep dives, and other reads
!Africa Brief Icon
Africa Brief
Essential analysis of the stories shaping geopolitics on the continent
!South Asia Brief Icon
South Asia Brief
Weekly update on developments in India and its neighbors
The Reading List
Curated guides on geopolitics and current affairs
FP Bookshelf
A monthly guide to FP’s book reviews, excerpts, and reading recommendations
!Latin America Brief Icon
Latin America Brief
One-stop digest of politics, economics, and culture
!Southeast Asia Brief Icon
Southeast Asia Brief
A weekly dispatch with news from the region’s 11 countries
The New Geopolitics
A five-part masterclass in IR theory with Harvard Professor Stephen M. Walt
View All Newsletters

* FP Live

* Latest
* Trending:
* 25 years after 9/11
* Germany elections

Search this website

* Preferences
* My FP Feed
* Saved Articles
* Newsletters
* Magazine Archive
* Subscription Settings
* FAQs
* Log Out

Sign In

Sign In

Partner with FP at UNGA81 Partner with FP at UNGA81

Subscribe SubscribePartner with FP at UNGA81 Partner with FP at UNGA81

Argument:

The United States Must Prepare for More Than One Russian Future

*
*
* Facebook
* Bluesky
* X
* LinkedIn
* WhatsApp
* Reddit

Save

1. Create an FP account to save articles to read later.
Sign Up
ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

PDF

1. **Downloadable PDFs** are a benefit of an FP subscription.
Subscribe Now
ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

Gift

*
*
* WhatsApp

1. Gifting articles is a subscriber benefit.
Subscribe Now
ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

2. This article is an Insider exclusive.
Contact us at [email protected] to learn about upgrade options, unlocking the ability to gift this article.

Argument

An expert’s point of view on a current event.

The United States Must Prepare for More Than One Russian Future

Managing the Ukraine conflict is just the beginning of negotiations.

By **Matthew Rojansky**, president and CEO of the U.S. Russia Foundation and a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College.

!In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov and Russia's presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev attend a meeting with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner in Moscow, Russia, on Sept. 5.

*In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov and Russia's presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev attend a meeting with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner in Moscow, Russia, on Sept. 5.*

In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov and Russia's presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev attend a meeting with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner in Moscow, Russia, on Sept. 5. Gavriil Grigorov / Pool / AFP via Getty Images)

*
*
*
*

September 15, 2026, 12:01 AM

After more than half a year of drift in U.S.-brokered talks, Washington recently sent envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Moscow and Kyiv to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Washington is right to resume talks, but U.S. diplomacy toward Russia remains too episodic. Witkoff and Kushner’s meetings in Moscow and Kyiv produced no breakthrough, and there is little sign that either side has moved appreciably on the core issues. High-level shuttle diplomacy can reopen doors, but it cannot substitute for sustained official channels and the institutional capacity to use them.

After more than half a year of drift in U.S.-brokered talks, Washington recently sent envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Moscow and Kyiv to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Washington is right to resume talks, but U.S. diplomacy toward Russia remains too episodic. Witkoff and Kushner’s meetings in Moscow and Kyiv produced no breakthrough, and there is little sign that either side has moved appreciably on the core issues. High-level shuttle diplomacy can reopen doors, but it cannot substitute for sustained official channels and the institutional capacity to use them.

Still, whether or not this latest push leads to anything, the war in Ukraine will eventually end at a negotiating table. What happens on the battlefield will shape the terms of any cease-fire or settlement, but it will not substitute for one. Russians and Ukrainians will ultimately have to reach terms that each can live with, and any durable agreement will almost certainly require deep and sustained U.S. involvement.

Vital as it is, managing the Ukraine conflict will be the beginning, not the end of U.S.-Russia negotiations. Moscow and Washington will also have to deal with each other on nuclear risk and strategic stability, outer space, the Arctic, pandemics, and responding to disasters, among many other issues. None of this requires a return to “normal” relations, much less trust or friendship. It requires something more basic: the ability to conduct difficult business with a difficult counterpart when important U.S. interests demand it.

The problem is that after more than a decade of increasing pressure and isolation, especially since 2014, the United States has lost much of that ability.

---

There are good

reasons for imposing costs on Russia. Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, interference in Western political systems, repression at home, and increasingly hostile posture abroad demanded consequences. But policies have second-order effects. One of them has been the hollowing out of the human and institutional infrastructure by which the United States once managed sustained engagement with Moscow.

This matters because the Russians are tough negotiators. Generations of U.S. officials and experts who have sat across the table from Russian counterparts came away impressed by their discipline and preparation. Ambassador Rose Gottemoeller, who negotiated the New START treaty, described her Russian counterparts in an interview with me as “crack negotiators,” extremely well trained, fluent in the negotiating process, technically capable, and often possessing an advantage in language skills.

Russian negotiators also tend to pay very close attention to Americans. That reflects a persistent asymmetry in the relationship. For Moscow, Washington has often been among the very highest foreign-policy priorities. For Washington, Russia has had to compete with China, the Middle East, Europe, terrorism, trade, domestic politics, and everything else occupying a superpower’s attention. In the post-Soviet period, veteran U.S. officials recalled Russian counterparts studying U.S. politics, personalities, and institutional dynamics in extraordinary detail, while Americans sometimes arrived with less experienced teams and far less bandwidth.

That does not mean that Russians possess some s