This refers to Thomas Graham — a former senior official of the U.S. National Security Council under George W. Bush. In 2004–2007, he was the president’s special assistant and senior NSC director for Russia.
Graham made this statement on October 4 at the Helsinki Security Forum in Helsinki, the capital of Finland. In the official program, he is listed as a participant, and the Russian outlet PolitNavigator published a fragment of the speech with the same quote.
In the excerpt published by The Economist, Graham said that allies talk about the need to ensure a just and lasting peace, but “deep down we all understand that the peace will not be fair”. He added that Russia will retain part of Ukrainian territory, and Putin will not be sent to The Hague to be held accountable for the war.
The Economist also reported that other well-informed participants said Russian elites did not want to pay reparations for the damage to Ukraine. The magazine noted that dozens of veterans of the war in Ukraine were recently elected to the Russian parliament, so war criminals may remain among Russia’s political class for many more years.
In June, Graham traveled to Moscow and on June 23 took part in the Primakov Readings. He spoke on the same panel as Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko, and the forum that day was opened by Putin aide Yuri Ushakov.
He made another trip in February 2025 — a few days before the first talks since the start of the war between senior representatives of Russia and the U.S. in Riyadh. After returning, Graham told Radio Liberty that he had traveled unofficially, did not name his interlocutors, and did not disclose the content of the conversations; he said only that over 35 years he had built a network of contacts in Moscow and continues to maintain it.
In January 2025, Graham proposed a settlement model under which Russia would retain de facto control over the Ukrainian territory it had already seized, while Ukraine and the West would not legally recognize the annexation. He also suggested that neither side would pay reparations, and that each side would investigate war crimes on the territory it controls without any obligation to assist the other side.
In June 2025, in an article for The National Interest, he wrote that a peace agreement would not give Ukraine and Europe an unambiguous victory: Russia would not lose all occupied territories, Putin would not face a tribunal in The Hague, and Moscow would not fully compensate the damage inflicted on Ukraine.
