As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its fourth winter, it is evolving from the "war of attrition" phase described in military literature into a sharp new era dominated by diplomatic impositions. The doctrine of Ukraine's victory at all costs that prevailed in the Western bloc during the war's early years has given way to a Trump administration-centered realistic and coercive peace agenda. While the current situation on the ground presents a picture where neither Kyiv nor Moscow can achieve a final and decisive military victory, the 28-point peace plan leaked and brought to the table by Washington last month has become the most concrete evidence that the war will conclude not with a peace treaty but frozen conflict status.
The seismic effects this frozen and neutralized tableau will create in Black Sea geopolitics will serve to increase Turkey's indispensability within NATO.
From Idealism to Realism: New Peace Model
The way a war ends is typically determined not by the political will of the parties but by military exhaustion on the ground and the strategic preferences of great powers. In the Ukrainian case, the difficulty of completely removing Russia from the territories it has occupied and the reality that the invader cannot completely conquer Ukraine have made a division similar to that on the Korean peninsula inevitable. The 28-point plan presented by the United States demonstrates that the conflict will turn into a frozen conflict whatever the conditions are. This reality moves Ukraine closer to a Korean-style armistice: a de facto partition, frontlines hardening into de facto borders, and an open-ended ceasefire
The plan does not demand that Ukraine formally recognize occupied territories as Russian soil; however, it makes conditional that Kyiv accept de facto Russian control over these regions. Borders are frozen at current front lines and transformed into non-conflict lines. Ukraine's greatest strategic goal, NATO membership, is not pushed into an uncertain future by this plan, but definite impossibility. This point is a very serious externally imposed restriction on a sovereign state's defense capacity and pushes the country into a neutralized buffer zone status.
Such a not so pretty picture means Ukraine's transformation into a gray zone country that cannot become a NATO or for the foreseeable future an EU member, whose security guarantees hang by a thread, while the threat from Russian President Putin remains alive just beyond the border.
Legal Chaos in the Black Sea and Turkey's Rising Significance
The freezing of the war within the framework of the 28-point plan and the non-recognition of borders by international law will create uncertainty in the Black Sea's maritime jurisdictions. A state's territorial waters and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) are determined by the projection of that state's land borders on the coastline. The de facto Russian control but de jure Ukrainian territory status of Crimea, Kherson, and the Sea of Azov coastlines will make sovereignty rights at sea inextricable.
The uncertainty of continental shelf boundaries has the potential to disrupt energy projects in the Black Sea. Russia's continued naval presence in the region will make the security of Ukrainian ports, such as Odessa, and the sustainability of vital routes like the grain corridor a constant bargaining chip. NATO members Romania and Bulgaria have limited naval power capacity, which means the Western Alliance’s efforts to provide deterrence in the Black Sea make Turkey a strategic necessity.
One of Turkey's strongest cards is the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits, the primary international treaty governing passage through the strategic waterways connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea. Ankara, which prevented escalation in the Black Sea during the war by closing the Straits to warships, will continue its gatekeeper role during the frozen conflict period. Even the functionality of security guarantees in the Trump administration plan will hinge on Turkey's control over the Straits and the dialogue it maintains with Russia. To successfully deter the Kremlin, the West will need the Turkish navy, diplomatic channels, and military infrastructure more than ever.
The "Turkish Gateway" Model: Ukraine's Indirect Path to the West
The 28-point plan's forced distancing of Ukraine from NATO and the EU does not eliminate Kyiv's need for Western integration; rather, it compels Ukraine to seek alternative and indirect routes. At this juncture, a model that has proven successful in the post-Soviet space for decades emerges: the "Turkish Gateway."
Georgia offers the most instructive example of how a country can maintain its Western orientation while managing Russian sensitivities. For years, Tbilisi developed its ties with NATO and the EU indirectly through Ankara, rather than through direct confrontation with Moscow. Turkey's unique position — simultaneously competing fiercely with Russia in certain arenas while maintaining a mutualistic coexistence in others — created a strategic buffer zone that Putin tolerated, albeit reluctantly.
This tolerance stemmed from a pragmatic calculation: Turkey, as a NATO member with deep historical, cultural, and economic ties to the post-Soviet space, was perceived by Russia as a manageable interlocutor rather than existential threat. When Central Asian republics strengthened their relations with Turkey through mechanisms like the Organization of Turkic States, or when Georgia expanded its economic and security cooperation, Moscow did not react with the same hostility it reserved for direct Western engagement. Turkey's ability to maintain channels of dialogue with the Kremlin — on energy, Syria, Libya, and the Caucasus — gave Russia the assurance that Ankara's influence in its near abroad would not translate into a strategic encirclement.
Turkey emerges as the natural candidate to fill this vacuum. Just as Georgian military officers trained with Turkish counterparts, Georgian businesses integrated into Turkish supply chains, and Georgian civil society organizations received support from Turkish foundations without triggering severe Kremlin retaliation, Ukraine can replicate this model.
The Trump Vision: Turkish American Partnership as Regional Architecture
The emergence of this Turkish Gateway model coincides with a fundamental shift in American strategic thinking under the Trump administration. The American president’s transactional approach to foreign policy and his skepticism toward traditional burden-sharing arrangements within NATO create an unexpected opening for a reconfigured Turkish American partnership in the region.
In this framework, Turkey is not merely tolerated as a difficult ally but actively empowered as America's partner in the Black Sea-Caucasus-Central Asia.
This dynamic will transform Turkey into Ukraine's proxy integrator with the West. In this arrangement, Turkey does not replace the West in Ukraine's strategic imagination; rather, it serves as the permissible intermediary, the acceptable face of Westernization that does not trigger Russia's deepest security neuroses. Just as the Organization of Turkic States allowed Central Asian republics to deepen ties with Ankara without formal declarations of leaving the Russian orbit, Ukraine's deepening relationship with Turkey will allow it to pursue substantive Westernization under the cover of regional cooperation.
For Turkey, this represents not just an enhancement of regional influence but a fundamental elevation of status from an occasionally problematic NATO ally to indispensable American partner, from a country that consumes American attention to one extending American power. The irony is profound: Turkey achieves this status not by aligning more closely with American values but by proving its utility in managing the messy realities that the Trump administration prefers not to want to directly address.
Attorney Emir Abbas Gürbüz is a foreign policy and security studies researcher based in Istanbul. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Treaty Association and chairs the Hariciye Center for Foreign Policy and Security Studies.
