Opinion: Why Trump’s Ukraine Peace Talks Are Going Nowhere

There seems to be some market optimism building around the Trump peace process in Ukraine, being spearheaded by Witkoff and Kushner.

Ukrainian Eurobonds have been among the best-performing in EM space this year, so someone seems to believe the narrative from Witkoff et al., which says talks have been constructive and that 90% of issues have been resolved.

Remember that after the Dimitriev “Russian” 28-point plan, there was a revised Ukrainian-European condensed 20-point plan. And reports that Ukraine had secured some kind of agreement on security guarantees to backstop any ceasefire.

The FT has something more on this herein.

Messaging from Witkoff et al. has been that the only remaining sticking point is now territory, and Moscow’s demand that Ukraine withdraw all its forces from the Donbas, ceding, in effect, control of the Donbas to Russia.

Ukraine has thus far baulked at the demand to give up Donbas, after four hard years of fighting and, indeed, longer, as Russia’s first military intervention in Donbas dates back to the summer of 2014. Why, if Russia has failed after 12 hard years of bitter fighting to secure Donbas, should Ukraine give it up now?

And opinion polls in Ukraine appear to be of the same view, with a KIIS poll this week suggesting 52% of Ukrainians oppose conceding Donbas to Russia, with 65% seemingly still prepared to endure the war as long as it takes.

Trump, Witkoff, et al would no doubt argue that giving up Donbas is the price for Ukraine now of peace, and if you don’t surrender Donbas now, then the war will continue at the cost of many more Ukrainian casualties and the potential loss of much more territory for Ukraine. And the stick from the US is that if Ukraine does not accept this peace deal, then US military support could be withdrawn, risking a broader collapse of Ukrainian defenses.

I guess the core question for Ukraine is if it gives up Donbas, what is to stop Russia from taking this land and carrying on the war? How can Russia be trusted, and what is the West going to do to ensure Russian compliance with any peace deal?

The problem is more acute for Ukraine as the Donbas continues to be the backbone of Ukraine’s defenses. Military wisdom is that if Ukraine gives up its Donbas frontline defenses, the space to the West would be opened up to much greater Russian territorial gains.

For Ukraine, then, the questions are: first, can Russia be trusted to honour any peace deal? And second, will the West come to Ukraine’s defence if Russia is given the Donbas and then just carries on West?

Can Russia be trusted?

Obviously not, I think would be the universal Ukrainian response, gleaned from 12 years of war and three decades of prior Russian malign action against Ukraine.

Trump, Witkoff, Kushner, et al, appear to have little real understanding of Putin’s motivations. They appear naive in thinking that he can somehow be bought off on Ukraine by offers of sanctions moderation and business deals.

For Putin, his quest to conquer Ukraine is not some economic or business venture; it is emotional and ideological. He fundamentally rejects the right of Ukraine to exist and does not accept Ukrainian identity as separate to Russian. All of Putin’s actions over 26 years in office suggest that Putin will stop at nothing to complete his total victory over Ukraine.

Strategically, Putin is committed to doing whatever it takes – perhaps bar putting his own life on the line – to capture Ukraine. My sense is that he might tactically accept a peace deal if that deal is seen as being so bad for Ukraine as to offer the potential to destabilize Ukraine and to allow for future and further Russian invasion of Ukraine. His hope there is that Trump forces Ukraine to accept such a bad deal that it becomes unsustainable.

Trump’s efforts on Greenland, weakening NATO unity in his discouraging remarks over US allies in NATO’s failure to ride to the defense of the US likely make Putin think that the West and Ukraine are on the back foot, close to collapse, so why should he give way or make concessions now on Ukraine? Putin thinks that Trump can deliver a total victory for Russia in Ukraine.

And there is no way, in my mind, that Putin would accept any deal that leaves Ukraine sustainable over the long term. This Trump idea of a free trade zone in Donbas and a common investment fund for the benefit of Russia and Ukraine is just ridiculous.

Why would Putin want any scenario where Ukraine benefits and prospers, when he has spent the past three decades intervening in and against Ukraine to do exactly the opposite?

To some extent, here I think that Trump gets his Russia and Ukraine views from Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs – the same corrupt people who have sustained the kleptocratic Putin regime in office for the same three decades and actually kept Ukraine as a corrupted and failed state in effect until the Euromaidan revolution in 2014.

That same oligarchic Russian and Ukrainian class rent sought to their own advantage, ripping their own populations off. Even now, I think they would love a chance to cut business deals to their own advantage with Trump. Trump thinks that Ukrainians think like him and the same oligarchs, they don’t, they want the rule of law, democracy, and to live in a normal European country.

But if Russia absolutely cannot be trusted, what about the West? Can Ukraine trust the West to come in and defend it in a scenario where they give up Donbas to secure a Trump ceasefire deal, but then Russia exploits any such concession to push further in the war?

Well, Europe (or enough of it), I think, finally understands that its security depends on Ukraine holding out against Russia for as long as possible, as Putin will not stop his aggression against Europe in Ukraine. So, I think the instinct is to try and help Ukraine – hence the Coalition of the Willing.

But as has been well documented, the European Coalition of the Willing simply lacks the military capability to do very much if Russia rolls through any ceasefire. Ultimately, the only backstop will be the US, and then, in any such scenario, can Trump be trusted to roll out some kind of military or seismic economic sanctions response against Russia? The answer is absolutely not.

Trump has shown absolutely no track record of taking Putin on or bringing him to account for any of his malign actions.

Would Trump go to war with Russia over Ukraine? Absolutely not. Would Trump sanction Russia for breaking any ceasefire? Very unlikely. And would the US continue to supply Ukraine with arms to defend itself in a scenario where Russia attacks again? Unlikely again.

 It’s hard to see in that scenario that under Trump, the US would provide Ukraine with a State of Israel-type guarantee, providing near-unlimited conventional military supplies. Everything we have learned about Trump is that he is focused on easy wins and not interested in difficult military engagements.

So why would Ukraine surrender its defenses in Donbas on some vague, wishy-washy offer of support from Trump, who surely cannot be trusted on this issue?

They won’t.

My read here is that these peace talks are just a sham, phony process where Russia, Ukraine, and Europe are just playing along with Trump for their own interests, but all are buying time.

Europe and Ukraine are trying to draw down as much U.S. weaponry as they can until they reach a point where they feel they can better sustain their own defense through continued investment in their own military-industrial complexes.

And Putin thinks time is on his side, the longer he holds out in the war in Ukraine the more likely the NATO alliance will collapse and with it its support for Ukraine, or that Trump will force Ukraine to accept a terrible peace which leaves it unsustainable.

I think the peace deal on the table at the moment is unacceptable to both Ukraine and Russia. And that this current peace process is more about massaging Trump’s enormous ego. Nothing more. And it’s a bit like the emperor with no clothes, that no one is willing to come put in the Trump circle, or Europe, or Ukraine, or even Russia, and tell Trump exactly what they think of this sham.

It’s like a cult; everything has to be upbeat and positive when the reality is something quite different. It’s like a fantasy Trump world.

Reprinted from the author’s @tashecon blog. See the original here.

The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.

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