The US and its allies should adopt a maximum-pressure strategy on Russia to force it to the negotiation table by supplying Ukraine with weapons, sanctioning China, Iran and North Korea and establishing a coalition of the willing to defend a ceasefire, a transatlantic think tank said. 

The Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) has called on US President Donald Trump and European leaders to reject Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands for a permanently neutral Ukraine excluded from NATO as a non-starter. 

In a report released during a virtual media briefing with international journalists on Friday, February 7, ahead of the three-day Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Germany, CEPA urged the West to increase economic pressure on Moscow and its allies, referred to as the “axis of aggression.” 

US Vice President JD Vance and other global leaders are attending the MSC, the world’s leading forum for debating international security policy, which started today.

CEPA called on Western leaders to impose maximum military pressure on Moscow and strengthen Kyiv’s negotiating position by providing more weapons and allowing long-range strikes into Russian territory. 

The report acknowledged Russia’s military capabilities, sophisticated weapons, and battlefield gains in Ukraine, saying the West must learn lessons from contemporary warfare and prepare for future conflicts.

It castigated some European states for bankrolling Moscow’s “war machine” by buying gas and other commodities directly or through third parties since the war started in 2022. 

CEPA is a Washington-based non-profit think tank which promotes “a strong and enduring transatlantic alliance” and provides “innovative insight on trends affecting democracy, security, and defence to government officials and agencies”. 

CEPA President and CEO Dr Alina Polyakova, Edward Lucas, and former US National Security Advisor General Herbert Raymond McMaster addressed the global media at a virtual briefing before releasing the report, “How to Win: A Seven-Point Plan for Sustainable Peace in Ukraine.” 

The seven-point plan was authored by CEPA’s high-level advisory group, the International Leadership Council (ILC), whose members include former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.  

“The transatlantic alliance’s handling of the war’s conclusion will directly influence the frequency and severity of future confrontations with authoritarian regimes, including Iran, North Korea, and most notably, China. The United States and its allies must seize this moment to demonstrate their resolve to defend free nations and impose costs on authoritarian states that seek to subjugate sovereign countries,” read part of the report. 

It added that “estimated Russian casualties in the war have surpassed 700,000 since the start of the 2022 invasion, and Russia is losing an average of 1,500 soldiers per day”. 

The report agreed that Russia had overwhelmed the Ukrainian army – killing hundreds of thousands of Kyiv’s soldiers, taking over the Donbas region and collapsing key infrastructure.

However, it attributed Ukraine’s losses to inadequate support and lack of willpower from the West.

“Allies have given Vladimir Putin no incentive to de-escalate; instead, US and European self-deterrence – primarily in response to the Kremlin’s nuclear saber-rattling – has emboldened the Russian president to escalate with impunity. Some of the wealthiest and most influential alliance members appear more afraid of escalation than of the consequences of Ukraine’s defeat.”

“Weak support for Ukraine has allowed Russia to inflict greater losses, undermining US and European security by signalling to the world that nuclear blackmail is effective. It also conveys indifference to the rights of Ukrainians living under Russian occupation subjected to a brutal regime that dismisses Ukrainian identity as a fallacy,” said the CEPA report. 

The think tank accused EU states of indirectly funding the Ukraine war by buying Russia’s natural resources despite imposing sanctions against Moscow. 

“Kyiv’s refusal to renew its gas pipeline agreement with Moscow will limit Europe’s ability to import Russian gas. However, during the first three years of Putin’s full-scale invasion, many European countries bolstered Moscow’s war economy through the Russian gas market. European countries not only purchased Russian gas — sometimes through third-party exporters — but also continued importing other commodities from Russia, such as fertilizers. In addition to imposing new, more painful sanctions, enforcing existing sanctions is crucial to disrupting Moscow’s war effort.”

“Allies shouldn’t stop with Russia. The Chinese Communist Party’s leadership has emerged as a key supporter of the Kremlin’s war effort in logistics, technology, and financial payments; Iran has supplied large quantities of drones and missiles; and North Korean troops have joined the battle in Kursk. These authoritarian allies all support Russia’s war machine and should face sanctions from the United States and Europe as well,” it added.  

Warning about the “leadership gap in Europe right now”, CEPA called on security-minded countries like the UK, France and Poland to invest in Ukraine’s defence industry. 

The CEPA report came as Trump announced he had discussed on Wednesday that he had “a highly productive phone call” with Putin on Ukraine, agreed to “work together” and have “our respective teams start negotiations immediately, and we will begin by calling President (Volodymyr) Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversations”.  

On Thursday, Trump’s Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told defence ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders was “unrealistic”.

He added that any ceasefire and peace agreement in Ukraine would have to take into account battlefield realities on the ground – a reference to Russia’s control of four Ukrainian regions. 

The CEPA report called on the US and EU to do the following: 

• Adopt a strategy of maximum pressure on Russia

-The United States and its European allies should negotiate with Russia only from a position of strength, which requires gaining greater leverage over Moscow to bring Russia to the negotiating table in good faith.

-Putin must not be granted a de facto veto over Ukraine’s aspirations, and the West must make it clear to Russia that permanent Ukrainian neutrality, including any limitations on defense cooperation with the United States and allies, is unacceptable. And the US and its allies should consider the West German model during peace talks and agree that NATO membership can be decided later. 

• Impose military pressure on Russia with immediate material support to Ukraine

-A peace deal notwithstanding, the quickest and most effective way to pressure Russia and strengthen Ukraine’s negotiating position is to rapidly provide weapons and military capabilities without caveats before any negotiations.

• Increase economic pressure on Russia and its supporters 

-The United States and its allies must increase sanctions on Russian financial institutions and energy sector entities, release frozen Russian assets to support Ukrainian defense and reconstruction, and enact secondary sanctions to intensify economic pressure not only on Russia but also on the authoritarian regimes of China, Iran, and North Korea. 

-The Chinese Communist Party’s leadership has emerged as a key supporter of the Kremlin’s war effort in logistics, technology, and financial payments; Iran has supplied large quantities of drones and missiles; and North Korean troops have joined the battle in Kursk. These authoritarian allies should also face sanctions from the United States and Europe. 

-Rebuilding Ukraine will take years and cost an estimated $1 trillion. Therefore, allies must find legal and political means to use the $300 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets held in Western financial institutions to support Ukraine’s reconstruction.  

• Establish parameters for good-faith negotiations 
• Suppose Moscow is willing to engage in serious negotiations. In that case, the transatlantic alliance must establish conditions to ensure a secure future for Europe and involve Ukraine and European allies in peace talks, as the outcome will affect Europe’s security.

• Establish a coalition of the willing to defend a ceasefire line 

• Should negotiations result in a ceasefire, the United States should support a European-led coalition of the willing to enforce the ceasefire line with an international force, increase investment in Ukraine’s defense industrial production and learn critical lessons from this new frontier of warfare. 
• The United States must be ready to deploy, at minimum, trainers, military advisors, and preferably military personnel to support this coalition. 

• Invest in allied and Ukrainian defense industrial bases and learn lessons for innovation

-Transatlantic allies must boost their defence industrial output to ensure Ukrainian battlefield superiority and bolster Ukraine’s negotiating position. European and US weapons stockpiles are low, while Ukraine faces a major munitions shortage that hinders defensive capabilities and battlefield effectiveness. 

-Russia’s war in Ukraine has introduced many new methods of warfare and represents the first conflict in decades against a highly sophisticated adversary employing maximum effort. 

-Allies have much to learn from using autonomous weapons, electronic warfare, and battle management software in the conflict. Assisting Ukraine in scaling its defense capabilities will foster innovation and better prepare allied defense industries for future conflicts. 

• Ensure Ukraine’s rapid EU accession

-Brussels should welcome and encourage Ukraine’s EU aspirations and avoid being bogged down by the obstacles that have plagued the Western Balkans’ accession process. 

-The EU must prioritize supporting Ukraine’s reformers and civil society and not allow the ongoing conflict or impending negotiations to impact decision-making in Brussels. It must accelerate talks with other prospective countries that Russia is attempting to influence, such as Moldova and the Western Balkans to support democracy and the rule of law and demonstrate steadfast resistance to Russia’s authoritarian influence in the region. 

CEPA CEO Dr Polyakova argued during the media briefing that to get a good deal; the West must reject Putin’s “maximalist” demands for a neutral Ukraine and embrace economic pressure and tough diplomacy. 

“The first recommendation really focuses on how the United States can lead an allied effort to ensure that we disavow the Russians of the illusion that they are winning, the swore and that time is on their side, and that they currently have very little incentive to come to the negotiating table from a sincere position that will require compromise,” Dr Polyakova said. 

She added: “So this is really a plan and how we, first and foremost, get to a negotiating table in which the Russians are there and are compelled to compromise and we lay out our own objectives, which the previous administration did not do in Ukraine.”

“We had no strategic objectives that we were trying to achieve in Ukraine. Point number two is to say the Europeans have had to take the lead here, this question of Russian assets, most of them are being held in Europe, must be resolved.”  

McMaster added they wanted the Ukraine war to end from “a position of strength” for Kyiv.

“I think we have to recognize that there’s never been a, you know, a favourable political outcome to a war that did not reflect military realities on the ground, you know. So this idea, you know, that there can be some sort of a settlement that can meet the minimum requirements or goals of Ukraine to have, you know, a viable state that is capable of defending itself …reconstructing its economy and on the road to prosperity.”

“I really think that no matter what happens in the interim, maybe with a brief ceasefire that fails or whatever, unless Putin concludes that he’s losing, he’s not going to agree to any kind of a political settlement,” McMaster said.