Although he is far too proud to admit it, Donald Trump’s quest for peace in Ukraine is over – at least for the time being. It seems to be slowly dawning on the US president that the man he was honouring with lavish affection only a week ago in Alaska may not be quite as trustworthy and reliable a partner as Mr Trump would like.
The awakening has been a long time coming, and it remains partial. The realisation that Vladimir Putin might be “tapping me along” was raised as early as April, but that didn’t stop Mr Trump indulging his counterpart. When the first lady apparently suggested that President Putin “talks nice” but then bombs civilians in Ukraine, Mr Trump’s reluctant scepticism notched up a little more. Then he told the BBC he was “not done” with Putin, but was “disappointed”.
Still, though, President Trump persisted with this vision of a superpower summit after which the peace process in Ukraine would at least begin.
One week on, and with Russia’s cynicism as palpable as ever, Mr Trump seems to have decided to expend no more political capital on the war in Ukraine. He has discerned that “maybe [Putin] doesn’t want to make a deal”. A standard, Nobel Prize-winning deal in Ukraine is not clearly not going to materialise for Mr Trump – just as it won’t in Gaza.
Conveniently discarding the multiple promises that he could deliver a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire in a day, the White House now says that Mr Trump is simply going to wait until Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin are ready to talk before wading into the intractable conflict again. Maybe then he’ll convene the trilateral meeting that seemed imminent last week.
It will be a long wait – but, on balance, this is just as well. The basic contours of an agreement did become clearer in recent weeks, and they were problematic. The terms could be summarised as Ukraine giving up significant amounts of its sovereign lands, and thus defensive capability, in return for very little. Mr Zelensky did not fancy a “constitutional” commitment from Russia, nor some equally woolly “security guarantees” from the US and, tragically, from the so-called “coalition of the willing”, thus far united only in timidity.
As Kaja Kallas, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, points out, the Putin-Trump peace deal was a “trap” set by the Kremlin for Mr Zelensky. Had the Ukrainian leader carried on with his tactic of constructively engaging with the peace initiative sponsored by Mr Trump, he might well have found himself under irresistible pressure to capitulate and “swap territories”, a euphemism for surrendering millions of free Ukrainians to their grisly fate of brutal Russification. That, at least, has been avoided.
Ms Kallas is right to point out some salient basic facts about the war and the recent moves to end it: “We are forgetting that Russia has not made one single concession, and they are the ones who are the aggressor here. Putin is just laughing – not stopping the killing, but increasing the killing.”
So the war in Ukraine goes on; if anything, with more intensity. As if to show open contempt for his interlocutors, Putin’s forces bombed civilian targets as far west as Lviv, close to Poland, and destroyed a US-owned factory in the area. There’s been no let-up in the activities of Russia’s “shadow fleet”, ferrying contraband oil and conducting espionage – hardly the acts of a nation intent on peaceful cohabitation.
One hopeful sign is that President Trump is openly criticising his predecessor, Joe Biden, for not allowing Ukraine to “fight back” by striking targets in the Russian Federation. He also, in typical Trump style, took to social media to talk up Ukraine’s military prospects: “It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader’s country. It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of winning! It is like that with Ukraine and Russia. Crooked and grossly incompetent Joe Biden would not let Ukraine FIGHT BACK, only DEFEND. How did that work out? … Interesting times ahead!”
Interesting indeed – and while Mr Trump has not quite switched sides again to the extent that he will send hi-tech weaponry directly to Ukraine, he is content for the coalition of the willing to buy arms and pass them on to Kyiv’s forces. Mr Trump has also shown himself ready to sanction countries such as India, who are propping up the Russian war machine by buying Putin’s oil – and there may be some more pressure in that respect to come with China.
Through bitter experience, Ukraine has itself already emerged as a formidable military player, pioneering the use of battlefield drones, for example, and missile strikes on strategic Russian infrastructure. The new, improbably named Flamingo cruise missile developed by Ukrainian engineers is said to have a range of 3,000km (1,900 miles) and will soon be in mass production.
Also on Mr Zelensky’s side is the parlous state of the Russian economy. In such a secretive state, no one knows for sure how long Russia can support such a hungry war machine. Much depends on the world price of oil, Russia’s ability to dodge sanctions, and the willingness of China to lend it money. But some sort of financial crisis feels more likely than not, and particularly if Mr Trump turns frostier with the Kremlin.
There may be months of stalemate ahead, especially as winter draws in. But the failure of the Trump peace initiative is certainly not bad news for the people of Ukraine. They survive to fight another day, strengthened by the certainty that a bad peace is worse than no peace.
