Draft documents to end the Ukraine war are said to be ready after Miami talks
As of December 23, 2025, Ukraine’s president says multiple draft documents to end the Ukraine war have been prepared following recent U.S.-hosted talks involving Ukrainian and European officials. The drafts are described as covering security guarantees, recovery, and the basic framework for ending the fighting.
That sounds like momentum. But the central tension has not changed: papers can be drafted in days, while credible guarantees take months to negotiate, fund, and legally lock in—especially while Russia continues large-scale attacks that damage power systems and test Ukraine’s resilience in real time.
This piece explains what is known about the draft documents, why “security guarantees” have become the hinge of these negotiations, and what the drafting phase does—and does not—signal about an actual path to ending the war. By the end, the reader will gain an understanding of the likely bargaining bottlenecks, the economic implications of the paperwork, and the upcoming pressure points to monitor.
“The story turns on whether security guarantees can be made real enough to stop the war—and durable enough to prevent the next one.”
Key Points
Ukraine’s leadership says several draft documents are ready, including papers on security guarantees, recovery, and a basic framework for ending the war.
The talks are part of a U.S.-led push to test settlement options, with parallel contacts involving Russia discussed separately.
“Security guarantees” are the core dispute: Ukraine wants prevention, not a pause; Russia’s long-standing demands point toward limits on Ukraine’s future military posture.
Drafting is not the same as agreement. The hardest steps come next: enforcement, funding, legal ratification, and sequencing (ceasefire first vs guarantees first).
Fighting continues at scale, including major strikes on energy infrastructure that deepen the urgency—and complicate compromise.
The recovery document matters because it signals an attempt to pre-design reconstruction financing, but investors will price guarantees, not promises.
Background
The diplomatic track has accelerated into a more formal phase: turning broad principles into draft texts that can be debated line by line. Ukraine’s president has framed the objective as ending the war in a way that prevents a future repeat—pointing to earlier rounds of Russian military action against Ukraine and warning against a settlement that simply resets the clock.
The United States is attempting to broker a framework that can attract European buy-in and, in parallel, test whether Russia will engage on substance. Ukraine has faced pressure to move quickly, while also resisting terms it views as structurally unsafe—particularly anything that weakens its ability to defend itself after a ceasefire.
In practice, the negotiations now revolve around three connected files:
First, a “basic framework” document—principles and sequencing. Second, a security guarantees package—who commits to what, when, and with what trigger. Third, a recovery and reconstruction pathway—how to finance rebuilding and stabilise the economy if fighting slows or stops.
Analysis
Political and Geopolitical Dimensions
The politics of drafting are performative and practical at once. For Ukraine, producing drafts signals seriousness and readiness to negotiate—without conceding that the end state is already agreed. For Washington, drafts create a platform for coalition management: aligning European partners, keeping pressure on timelines, and demonstrating progress to domestic audiences.
For Russia, the incentive structure is different. A draft is only useful if it produces outcomes Moscow can sell as strategic gains or durable constraints on Ukraine. That is why the talks tend to circle back to the same immovable objects: territory, security architecture, and the future balance of force.
The most important geopolitical question is not whether texts exist. It is whether the drafts embed a credible deterrent. If the documents amount to political support without enforceable commitments, Ukraine will treat them as an invitation to a future invasion. If the documents embed binding military triggers, Russia will treat them as a long-term strategic defeat.
That is the narrow bridge negotiators are trying to build: a settlement firm enough to prevent a renewed war, but flexible enough that multiple capitals can sign it without domestic collapse.
Economic and Market Impact
The mere presence of a recovery draft is meaningful. It suggests negotiators are not treating “reconstruction” as an afterthought, but as a parallel track that can shape the incentives for peace.
However, the economics are brutally conditional. Markets and donors will ask three questions before committing at scale: Is the ceasefire stable? Are shipping, energy, and insurance risks falling? And are the guarantees credible enough that infrastructure will not be destroyed again?
Energy is the clearest linkage between battlefield and balance sheet. Large strikes on generation and distribution create immediate fiscal strain, raise the cost of capital, and push households and industry into rationing. Even if a ceasefire were reached quickly, the reconstruction bill would be constrained by security risk premiums unless guarantees are seen as enforceable.
This is why the recovery text matters politically: it can be used to lock in donor coordination, outline claims and compensation mechanisms, and set conditions for phased investment. But economically, it will not bite until security risk falls.
Technological and Security Implications
“Security guarantees” sound like diplomacy, but they are operational plans. They translate into force posture, air defense coverage, intelligence sharing, training pipelines, logistics stockpiles, and rapid-response triggers.
Modern warfare has also changed what verification means. Any ceasefire worth signing will need monitoring that can detect violations quickly and credibly. That likely means layered surveillance: satellites, drones, electronic signals, and ground observation—plus agreed processes for attribution and escalation.
Another technology dimension is endurance. Russia’s capacity to sustain large drone and missile campaigns has turned infrastructure into a frontline. Ukraine’s counter-drone and air-defense adaptation has improved, but mass attacks can still impose outages and fear, especially in winter. A paper guarantee that does not translate into delivered air defense systems, maintenance support, and munitions stockpiles will be treated as insufficient.
In short: the security file is not just about promises. It is about capabilities delivered on a schedule—and the rules for when they are used.
What Most Coverage Misses
The overlooked bottleneck is not drafting. It is ratification and trigger design.
Security guarantees only deter if they are believable to Moscow and survivable in the politics of guarantor countries. That means legislative scrutiny, budget commitments, command arrangements, and legal wording that prevents “strategic ambiguity” from becoming an escape hatch when a crisis hits. Drafts can be written fast; guarantees become real only when parliaments, budgets, and militaries align.
The second missing piece is sequencing. If a ceasefire comes before guarantees are locked in, Ukraine fears Russia will regroup and return. If guarantees are locked in first, Russia may refuse outright. The negotiation is therefore less about grand principles and more about timelines, verification, and what happens on Day 1, Day 30, and Day 180.
Why This Matters
In the short term, the people most affected are civilians living with instability—especially in areas exposed to infrastructure strikes and rolling outages. Every major wave of attacks compounds the humanitarian burden and narrows the political space for compromise.
In the medium term, Europe is affected through security planning, migration pressures, defense procurement, and energy risk. A settlement with weak enforcement could create a frozen conflict that still destabilises the region and demands continual military spending.
In the long term, the outcome will shape global assumptions about deterrence, territorial conquest, and the credibility of security guarantees in a world of revisionist wars and mass-precision strike campaigns.
What to watch next is less about ceremony and more about mechanism:
Whether details emerge on the structure of guarantees (multilateral framework, bilateral commitments, and how they would be activated).
Whether there is a defined pathway for reconstruction financing tied to verified security milestones.
Whether the battlefield tempo decreases—or whether large strikes continue despite diplomatic language, signalling non-cooperation.
Real-World Impact
A household in western Ukraine plans Christmas week around electricity windows, charging power banks and heating a single room when the grid drops. Any “draft” that does not reduce the outage risk feels abstract.
A small manufacturer in Poland watches the border-region security picture and insurance costs. Even without direct damage, perceived escalation tightens margins and delays investment decisions.
A grain exporter near Odesa recalculates routes, storage costs, and delivery dates every time drones or missiles hit infrastructure. Stability is not just peace; it is predictability.
A family in London sees the war through energy bills and interest rates. Even muted market stress can feed into household budgets when uncertainty spikes.
What’s Next?
The drafting stage is a waypoint, not a breakthrough. It shows the talks have moved from slogans into structure, and it gives negotiators something concrete to argue over.
The fork in the road is whether the security guarantees can be written in a way that is enforceable and fundable—without collapsing the negotiation before it reaches a ceasefire. If the guarantees are too soft, Ukraine will reject them as a trap. If they are too hard, Russia may refuse to engage.
The clearest signal of direction will be whether officials begin to converge on practicalities: who provides what forces and systems, what legal approval is required, how violations are defined, and what happens immediately after signature. If those elements stay vague while strikes continue, the “drafts” will read less like a bridge to peace and more like paperwork running alongside a war that refuses to slow down.
