We’re well past the point of just “ceding territory”
That might well be true, despite Putin's noises about peace talks. If I were looking at it from Putin's point of view, Merkel's comments re: Minsk would not engender any trust with respect to "the West" honoring agreements. Any peace agreement would carry the suspicion that a Ukraine rump state would serve as a further staging area for future hostilities, ala a 'Muslim Peace'.
That may be the reality we're looking at.
This will be the deal that President Trump works out, with peacekeepers somehow involved.