According to Donald Trump, this could be the week that the Ukraine war ends. “Hopefully Russia amd (sic) Ukraine will make a deal this week,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Both will then start to do big business with the United States of America, which is thriving, and make a fortune!!”
Details of a ceasefire – or the “deal”, as Trump prefers to call it – will be thrashed out in London this week as Trump’s top negotiators meet with Ukrainian and European officials.
What exactly is on the table remains officially secret. But certain key details have emerged through press leaks and interviews with Steve Witkoff, the real estate investor and Trump ally who was in St Petersburg earlier this month negotiating with Putin.
One key point is that membership of Nato is off the table for Ukraine. Another is that Russia wants Kyiv to officially recognise Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, as officially Russian territory.
Are both demands gross violations of Ukrainian sovereignty? Undoubtedly. They are also politically suicidal for Volodymyr Zelensky.
But it’s revealing to turn the question on its head. Does Ukraine actually have any practical military or diplomatic path to winning back Crimea? Or does Kyiv have a realistic chance of actually joining Nato as a full member, against the strong objections of many key Nato states?
The answer to both those questions is no. In practical terms, by conceding Crimea’s new sovereign status or by becoming officially neutral Ukraine loses nothing that it has not already lost.
Furthermore, at least three of the Ukrainian negotiators at the last round of face-to-face peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv in Istanbul in March 2022 have said on the record that their side was willing to concede neutrality – ie no NATO membership – as well as leaving the final status of Crimea to be discussed at a later date.
In other words, Kyiv was already come close to conceding both Crimea and Nato in the first month of Putin’s invasion.
Except there is one important caveat. Whatever Zelensky was or was not prepared to concede in Istanbul back in 2022 was set against a guarantee of a full Russian withdrawal. Such a withdrawal is very much no longer on the table.
Indeed Witkoff has hinted that Russia continues to demand control over the entirety of all the four provinces that it unilaterally incorporated into the Russian Federation in September 2022 – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. That would entail Zelensky willingly conceding even more territory to the invader – another clear political impossibility.
The Kremlin’s uncompromising hard line, and Washington’s apparent support of that hard line, raises two questions. One is whether Putin actually wants the peace talks to succeed.
The other is whether Trump has any appetite whatsoever for pressuring Putin into making concessions – for instance, as Trump has threatened in the past, imposing secondary sanctions on countries who import Russian oil, a move that would cut the Kremlin’s war economy off at the knees.
Putin’s broken promise of an Easter ceasefire – a truce that his troops violated hundreds of times – strongly suggests that his offers of peace are a sham.
The Kremlin seems to believe that time is on Russia’s side, and that the longer they press on with ground advances and aerial blitzkrieg the weaker Ukraine will become. Putin appears to be more interested in setting up Ukraine to take the blame for the talks’ failure.
As for the US, there are strong signs that Trump’s team have already negotiated a deal acceptable to the Kremlin and are now attempting to impose those harsh terms on Ukraine and its remaining European allies.
That the demands that Trump is presenting on the Kremlin’s behalf amount to the US rewriting the internationally recognised borders of Europe at the behest of an aggressive dictator apparently matters not a jot.
Trump once promised a quick end to the Ukraine war. But his breezy boast has crashed against the immovable object of Putin’s intransigence. His response seems to be to accept all Putin’s demands – then walk away from talks when Ukraine and Europe reject them.
I tried to bring peace, he will say, and make you guys rich to boot. That way Trump can treacherously wash his hands both of the failure of his beautiful deal and the continued bloodshed that will inevitably ensue.
According to Donald Trump, this could be the week that the Ukraine war ends. “Hopefully Russia amd (sic) Ukraine will make a deal this week,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Both will then start to do big business with the United States of America, which is thriving, and make a fortune!!”
Details of a ceasefire – or the “deal”, as Trump prefers to call it – will be thrashed out in London this week as Trump’s top negotiators meet with Ukrainian and European officials.
What exactly is on the table remains officially secret. But certain key details have emerged through press leaks and interviews with Steve Witkoff, the real estate investor and Trump ally who was in St Petersburg earlier this month negotiating with Putin.
One key point is that membership of Nato is off the table for Ukraine. Another is that Russia wants Kyiv to officially recognise Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, as officially Russian territory.
Are both demands gross violations of Ukrainian sovereignty? Undoubtedly. They are also politically suicidal for Volodymyr Zelensky.
But it’s revealing to turn the question on its head. Does Ukraine actually have any practical military or diplomatic path to winning back Crimea? Or does Kyiv have a realistic chance of actually joining Nato as a full member, against the strong objections of many key Nato states?
The answer to both those questions is no. In practical terms, by conceding Crimea’s new sovereign status or by becoming officially neutral Ukraine loses nothing that it has not already lost.
Furthermore, at least three of the Ukrainian negotiators at the last round of face-to-face peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv in Istanbul in March 2022 have said on the record that their side was willing to concede neutrality – ie no NATO membership – as well as leaving the final status of Crimea to be discussed at a later date.
In other words, Kyiv was already come close to conceding both Crimea and Nato in the first month of Putin’s invasion.
Except there is one important caveat. Whatever Zelensky was or was not prepared to concede in Istanbul back in 2022 was set against a guarantee of a full Russian withdrawal. Such a withdrawal is very much no longer on the table.
Indeed Witkoff has hinted that Russia continues to demand control over the entirety of all the four provinces that it unilaterally incorporated into the Russian Federation in September 2022 – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. That would entail Zelensky willingly conceding even more territory to the invader – another clear political impossibility.
The Kremlin’s uncompromising hard line, and Washington’s apparent support of that hard line, raises two questions. One is whether Putin actually wants the peace talks to succeed.
The other is whether Trump has any appetite whatsoever for pressuring Putin into making concessions – for instance, as Trump has threatened in the past, imposing secondary sanctions on countries who import Russian oil, a move that would cut the Kremlin’s war economy off at the knees.
Putin’s broken promise of an Easter ceasefire – a truce that his troops violated hundreds of times – strongly suggests that his offers of peace are a sham.
The Kremlin seems to believe that time is on Russia’s side, and that the longer they press on with ground advances and aerial blitzkrieg the weaker Ukraine will become. Putin appears to be more interested in setting up Ukraine to take the blame for the talks’ failure.
As for the US, there are strong signs that Trump’s team have already negotiated a deal acceptable to the Kremlin and are now attempting to impose those harsh terms on Ukraine and its remaining European allies.
That the demands that Trump is presenting on the Kremlin’s behalf amount to the US rewriting the internationally recognised borders of Europe at the behest of an aggressive dictator apparently matters not a jot.
Trump once promised a quick end to the Ukraine war. But his breezy boast has crashed against the immovable object of Putin’s intransigence. His response seems to be to accept all Putin’s demands – then walk away from talks when Ukraine and Europe reject them.
I tried to bring peace, he will say, and make you guys rich to boot. That way Trump can treacherously wash his hands both of the failure of his beautiful deal and the continued bloodshed that will inevitably ensue.