Donald Trump has signalled that the US would help, a bit, with security guarantees as part of a “land for peace” deal between Ukraine and Russia.
And Kyiv would need it – the land the Kremlin wants is Ukraine’s best laid defence.
If Ukraine agreed to Vladimir Putin’s demands, handing over a vast chunk of the Donetsk Oblast province - where Moscow currently controls about 70 per cent – would hand the Russian president some of Ukraine’s finest redoubts and most doughty defenders.
It would include thousands of miles of pre-prepared trenches, tank traps that snake across the rolling landscape and pre-prepared ambush positions – a modern Maginot Line.
Britain’s ministry of defence has estimated it would take Russia “4.4 years” and nearly 2 million casualties to take the four provinces Putin wants to claim.
An agreement to freeze the frontlines where they are, but for Russia to settle for the land it has taken plus the Donetsk bonus, would probably save a couple of years fighting. If the battle for Bakhmut is an indication of how hard won Russian advances are, then a pause in the killing is a huge result for Putin who has lost 60,000 soldiers there.
Kramatorsk, just to the north of Donetsk, would be a harder fight. So would nearby Slaviansk. Hundreds of thousands of Russians would die in fights for those fortress cities. Slaviansk was hit by missiles last night, but knowing its residents, they’d fight invading Russians with broomsticks if they have to.
But if Trump can get Ukraine to agree to hand over the land – then Putin saves men and arms to reuse another day.
On Monday evening, Trump broke away from talks with Volodymyr Zelensky, the leaders of Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Finland plus the top representatives of Nato and the EU, to call Putin during their multilateral summit.
It is understood they spoke for 40 minutes.
Trump has spent much of this year trying to get a ceasefire agreed in Ukraine. He showed uncharacteristic irritation with Russia’s maximalist demands and over Putin’s refusal to respect calls to down weapons, even for a breather.
The US president even threatened economic sanctions, and sanctioned India, the second biggest importer of Russian oil, in an effort to get the Russian leader to comply.
But Putin, an indicted war criminal and wily operator, wangled a trip to Alaska and a summit with the US president where he persuaded Trump that a ceasefire wasn’t necessary.
He also managed to shift the debate about the future of Ukraine to “land swaps” and discussions about what bits of its land Ukraine would surrender in return for vague Trumpian commitments to “security guarantees”.
This makes no sense. Ukraine was invaded. Europe’s leaders each made it clear they backed Ukraine, wanted a ceasefire before any further talks, and that they would buy the weapons America has stopped giving to Ukraine.
The Financial Times reported that Ukraine had offered Trump a European-funded $100bn arms deal as part of a pact.
Trump has every incentive to hold Putin’s feet to a fire and demand he get out of Ukraine – or burn.
The US could join its allies in Ukraine to defend Europe, it could back its legal demands for territorial integrity, its accession to Nato and celebrate that it is a democracy not a dictatorship. It could also make money by selling weapons and exploiting Ukraine’s vast mineral deposits.
Trump could show the Kremlin that it could lose this war – not offer Putin a war bonus of the best defended territory currently in Ukrainian hands.
But as he sat hanging on the telephone in a call to a man he much admires, it is clear that he’ll do nothing of that kind.
He’s figuring out how to betray what his country once stood for, for a man who is everything it once stood against. And he probably called that man for help to do it.
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