This market will resolve to "Yes" if there is an official ceasefire agreement, defined as a publicly announced and mutually agreed halt in military engagement, between Russia and Ukraine by December 31, 2025, 11:59 PM ET. If the agreement is officially reached before the resolution date, this market will resolve to "Yes," regardless of whether the ceasefire officially starts afterward. Any form of informal agreement will not be considered an official ceasefire. Humanitarian pauses will not count toward the resolution of this market. This market's resolution will be based on official announcements from both Russia and Ukraine; however, a wide consensus of credible media reporting stating an official ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine has been reached will suffice.
Buy YES: the market is pricing near-zero odds for a last-minute, headline-defined ceasefire—despite an active Q4 diplomacy channel and non-trivial incentives for a symbolic halt before year-end.
For Polymarket to reprice to ~80–95%, the conflict must shift from “talks about talks” to an *announced, dated and signed* cessation of hostilities with an implementation/monitoring mechanism that satisfies the market’s “official ceasefire” standard. Practically, this requires (i) a US-led package that creates immediate economic downside for Moscow (credible enforcement of secondary tariffs/sanctions that Trump threatened on 14 July 2025 and reiterated with a shortened 10–12 day window by 28 July, but did not implement post-deadline), and (ii) a face-saving political structure for both sides—likely a *time-bound armistice* that defers final-status issues (Donbas/Crimea) while freezing lines, coupled with staged prisoner exchanges and humanitarian corridors (building on the 175-for-175 exchange around 25 March 2025). The near-term “tell” would be senior-level diplomacy resuming after the 12 September 2025 Kremlin “pause,” with a jointly published communique that includes a start date, scope (air/land/sea), and third-party verification. A plausible pathway is a Q4 2025 transatlantic alignment (US-EU) that pairs tighter enforcement (secondary measures on Russia’s partners plus expanded financial restrictions) with a security-guarantee framework for Ukraine, giving Kyiv political cover to accept a ceasefire *without* immediate constitutional territorial concessions. Zelensky’s 26 November 2025 statement that Ukraine is ready for a Trump-backed deal is the key setup: it signals marginal flexibility on process/format, even if polling still shows majority resistance to land swaps and constitutional limits remain. If Moscow simultaneously faces a deteriorating macro/war-effort tradeoff (despite the 160,000 conscription plan by 15 July 2025 indicating current intent to sustain operations), the incentive to lock in gains via a ceasefire rises. Under this scenario, the market will not wait for perfect compliance; a signed, internationally witnessed ceasefire announcement is sufficient for a rapid repricing toward certainty.
Our base case is that Polymarket’s 2.6% implied probability is too low versus the actual distribution of late-2025 outcomes, but the modal path still falls short of an “official ceasefire” by 31 December 2025. We target 7.0% fair value: the war remains a stalemate with intermittent diplomacy, yet the frequency of senior engagement in 2025 (Turkey talks on 28 May, the Alaska summit on 15 August, and continued US/EU coordination efforts) plus Zelensky’s 26 November 2025 openness to a Trump-backed deal meaningfully increases the tail risk of a year-end announcement versus a market that is effectively pricing “no chance.” Crucially, prediction markets tend to underprice low-probability, high-impact political events when the information set is dominated by battlefield noise and maximalist public positions. While Russia’s 160,000 conscription plan (by 15 July 2025) and the Kremlin’s 12 September “pause” are clear negatives, they do not eliminate the possibility of a late-year “freeze” driven by winter operational realities and a Q4 transatlantic push linking coercive economics to a security-guarantee framework. In our view, the correct framing is not “comprehensive peace,” but “an official ceasefire instrument that defers final status.” Therefore, we see asymmetric upside in owning ‘Yes’ from 2.6%: even a modest shift toward an actionable framework—dated ceasefire proposal, named monitoring architecture, and synchronized US-EU enforcement language—should push pricing toward mid-single digits to high-single digits, consistent with our 7% target, even if ultimate execution remains uncertain.
For the market to move only to ~5–20% (and fail to approach “near-certain”), negotiations would need to remain active enough to keep the *option value* alive, but without crossing the threshold of an “official ceasefire.” This is the path where diplomacy produces incremental, headline-friendly deliverables—expanded prisoner exchanges, localized humanitarian pauses, a conditional maritime/Black Sea arrangement (which Russia floated in lieu of a general ceasefire and Ukraine/partners resisted), or a non-binding framework—yet no signed, comprehensive cessation of hostilities. In other words, the market stops pricing a near-zero tail, but cannot underwrite execution risk given persistent battlefield activity (e.g., continued strikes/shelling as seen through 2025) and repeated breakdowns (Turkey talks 28 May; Alaska summit 15 Aug; intensified strikes 21–22 Aug; and the Kremlin’s 12 Sep “pause”). Mechanically, this bear setup is driven by (i) sustained Russian maximalism (full Donbas control and other preconditions), (ii) Kyiv’s hard domestic constraint set—territorial concessions require processes that are politically and constitutionally prohibitive without a referendum, and 2025 polling shows majority opposition to land swaps—and (iii) insufficient follow-through on Western coercive tools (e.g., Trump’s July tariff threats not being implemented after the early-August deadline). That combination keeps an “official ceasefire by Dec 31, 2025” unlikely, while still allowing periodic bursts of optimism around summits and technical talks that can lift pricing into mid-single digits or low teens. In this world, the contract remains a classic “diplomacy headlines vs. deliverables” trade: every new meeting (US-EU, Trump-Zelensky, backchannel envoys) generates transient repricing, but the absence of a signed instrument with a start date and monitoring keeps investors anchored to a low probability band rather than a full re-rating.
The trade is a low-base-rate, event-driven exposure where outcome likelihood is dominated by (i) high-level political decisions under wartime constraints, (ii) enforcement credibility of U.S./EU pressure (especially secondary measures), and (iii) “ceasefire creep” pathways in which partial arrangements accrete into an officially documented ceasefire/armistice that defers final territorial status. At a 2.6% market-implied probability versus an internal 7% fair value, the position’s return profile is highly convex but exposed to significant path-dependency and settlement-definition risk. The central risk is not gradual mark-to-market volatility; it is binary outcome failure plus episodic headline-driven repricing and potential liquidity gaps. Key risks to monitor (most decision-relevant): - Enforcement credibility: whether threatened secondary sanctions/tariffs move from signaling to implementation. - Ceasefire construct feasibility: emergence of verification, sequencing, and “status deferral” language acceptable to Kyiv/Moscow. - Domestic constraint binding: Kyiv constitutional/red-line constraints and Moscow hardliner/security-service constraints. - Q4 summitry pipeline: whether there is a structured diplomatic calendar with deliverables (working groups, draft text, monitors). - Battlefield and winter dynamics: whether operational realities create “mutual hurting stalemate” conditions or trigger escalation.