US-brokered peace process limps on, amid contradictions, argues Vladimir Unkovski-Korica 

Donald Trump boasted that he would end the Ukraine war in one day when he became US president. Six months on, Russia is poised to launch a summer offensive across the front. 

What is going on? On the face of it, Trump has clearly failed, but the situation is markedly different now compared with where it was half a year ago. To understand where the conflict is going, we must put Trump’s theatrics aside, and focus more on the brutally transactional approach he has taken to brokering negotiations. 

Trump’s apparent goal since becoming US president has been to demonstrate that Washington had understood that its proxy war with Russia was running out of road. Militarily, Russia was on the front foot, as Ukraine faced severe manpower shortages. Politically and economically, Russia was not internationally isolated, receiving support from many Brics states. 

The Biden strategy in Ukraine had been to implement a creeping escalation of the war without provoking direct military conflict between Nato and Russia. The goal had been to bleed Russia to the last Ukrainian. Short of putting troops on the ground, however, the West could not reverse Russia’s gradual advances. In a war of attrition, Russian imperialism would always ultimately outmatch Ukraine, especially as it would gain the tacit support of Washington’s rivals in world affairs, most importantly Beijing. 

Back to bargaining 

Trump was therefore keen to change course. This proceeded on twin tracks. He wanted firstly to demonstrate to Kyiv, and its European backers, that it could no longer expect the levels of support it had had under Biden, in order to entice the Ukrainian leadership into a peace deal with Russia. He wanted secondly to demonstrate to Russian president Vladimir Putin that he was prepared to make significant concessions to Moscow, for a peace deal in Ukraine, yes, but also to soften the emerging Beijing-Moscow axis in international affairs more broadly. 

Hence Trump’s humiliation of Zelensky in the Oval Office, then the deal that was meant to guarantee US control over Ukrainian rare-earth minerals, and, finally, critically, the pause in US intelligence supply to Ukraine in Russia’s Kursk region, leading to the rapid collapse of Ukraine’s incursion into Russian territory. Meanwhile, Trump has simultaneously attempted to placate Putin. He has spoken with Putin directly, above the heads of his allies in Europe. And Trump’s terms for peace included legal recognition of the annexation of Crimea and gradual easing of Western sanctions, as well as an end to Ukraine’s Nato ambitions. 

This is also how we should read Trump’s repeated warnings that he will walk away from potential Russia-Ukraine peace talks: symbolically, he is saying, the US could just leave Ukraine to Russia. The reality of course is different. It is one thing to let Kursk slide back in Moscow’s hands, and to offer peace terms to Moscow which allow Russia territorial and geopolitical concessions. It is another to walk away with nothing in Ukraine after all the military expenditure there by the West. 

That is why, in reality, things have been stickier than Trump’s initial boast that he could end the war overnight. Indeed, while Trump has been keen to offer Putin concessions, he has not actually stopped US military aid to Ukraine, and he has also insisted on a thirty-day ceasefire, to allow negotiations to proceed. Moscow has in turn rejected any suggestion of a ceasefire until the contours of a deal are agreed. From the Russian standpoint, accepting a ceasefire during which Nato openly says it will continue to rearm Ukraine is to relinquish its military advantage for no tangible diplomatic gain. 

It should not be surprising, then, that when Ukrainian and Russian delegations met to talk peace in Istanbul on 16 May, little of any solidity was agreed. However, Western claims that Russia had simply turned up to make maximalist, unchanged demands of neutrality, territorial concessions and force limitation on Ukraine, ignore the fact that, during the last round of talks in Istanbul, in March-April 2022, Russia made similar demands, but climbed down on issues like demilitarisation during the negotiations. It also remained and apparently remains open to Ukraine continuing EU accession talks. Putin must be aware that falling oil prices spell problems for the Russian economy, and he will not be closed to making some concessions. 

Realism 

None of that is to say that Russia certainly would negotiate in good faith or not wish to inflict a painful and unjust peace on Ukraine. Indeed, that remains likely, and Russian officials continue to threaten that each round of negotiations will see worse terms for Ukraine, implying that the military reality on the ground will determine the character of any final peace deal. That is why Russia launched some of the biggest drone attacks on Ukraine since the peace talks on 16 May, and why it has continued to intensify military operations as part of a summer offensive.  

Moscow continues to signal to Kyiv and Western capitals that any peace process will not proceed according to the formula of ceasefire first, negotiations after. Nevertheless, on 28 May, Russia proposed the continuation of 16 May negotiations in Istanbul, starting on 2 June. Despite their breakdown, the 16 May negotiations did agree to the largest prisoner exchange since the start of the war, of 1,000 on each side. The continuation of negotiations, according to Moscow, would work out conditions for a ceasefire. 

Russian sources told Reuters that ‘Putin wants a “written” pledge by major Western powers not to enlarge the U.S.-led Nato alliance eastwards – shorthand for formally ruling out membership to Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova and other former Soviet republics.’ Furthermore, Moscow wants, ‘some Western sanctions lifted, a resolution of the issue of frozen Russian sovereign assets in the West, and protection for Russian speakers in Ukraine.’ 

Choice 

Despite talks not proceeding according to Trump’s formulae, then, some kind of process now appears to be under way, in fits and starts. That is less due to Trump’s desires, though, than his recognition of the reality that Russia currently has the upper hand in Ukraine. The West and Ukraine now face the same choice as in March-April 2022: hammer out a deal with Russia, in which all sides make compromises, or continue the war, in which there have been hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides so far. 

With Russia successfully mobilising more than is necessary to replenish its front lines, and Ukraine struggling to do so, it is hard not to conclude that negotiations in the autumn or next spring will be worse for Ukraine than the terms that could be agreed now. As Ukraine’s Ambassador to the UK and former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Valery Zaluzhny, recently said, in the days after Istanbul II, it is no longer credible to claim that Ukraine will return to its 1991 or even 2022 borders. 

Yet this was precisely the premise on which the decision to continue the war back in March-April 2022 was made. Tellingly, within Ukraine, the mood has changed. Zaluzhny  himself speaks now of a high-tech war of survival instead, claiming that ‘Ukraine is not capable of another war in terms of demography and economy, and we shouldn’t even entertain the thought.’ Not long ago, Kyiv mayor Vitaly Klitschko told the BBC that Ukraine should temporarily cede land to get a peace deal. 

Surely, making compromises to get peace is better than going with what Western leaders have been signalling in recent days, with permission being given to Ukraine to use long-range missiles on targets in Russia without restriction. The use of such weapons will not help end the war. In fact, it risks more escalation, destruction and death. By contrast, ending the war as soon as possible, painful as the compromises will be, is the preferable and more rational course of action, as it will save lives on all sides and allow for the rebuilding of Ukraine. This is what the anti-war movement has argued for all along.