5 hours ago
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At this stage of the crisis, it is important to be clear-sighted. The US-Ukraine meeting in Jeddah was a damage-control operation. Both parties reset relations that had been damaged, largely by Washington’s impatience. The US reversed its previous decisions in exchange for something Ukraine was ready to provide anyway: privileged access to Ukraine’s natural resource wealth and a willingness to start a peace process.
It is encouraging to see renewed US-Ukraine dialogue to end the war. As Churchill said, the only thing worse than fighting with allies is fighting without them. The public mugging in the Oval Office, calling Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator and the pause in military and intelligence support were hard to fathom. Ukrainians wondered why President Trump was putting the blame and the pressure on the victim, and protecting the aggressor. Trump’s “beautiful” deal involved bullying the weaker and reassuring the stronger. He finds it more natural to put pressure on allies, be it Ukraine or Canada, and relax it on adversaries.
This week’s meeting in Jeddah may have been an effort by the White House to re-balance the pressure scale and expose Putin’s real intentions. By the beginning of this week the US had lifted the pause on intelligence-sharing and resumed security assistance. This intelligence is critical for defending Ukrainian cities from the nightly aerial bombings. US satellite images and communication systems sustain several targeting and air-defence platforms. The night the delegations met in Saudi, the port of Odesa was hit, killing four in a strike on a grain vessel. Ukraine is waging a defensive war and perhaps the White House has understood that the best leverage over Putin is powerful and well-equipped Ukrainian armed forces.
Nobody wants more peace than Ukraine. When President Trump was accusing Zelenskyy of not wanting peace, it must have pleased the Kremlin immensely. Trump was reciting Russian talking points. The US-Ukraine meeting dispelled that falsehood and demonstrated Kyiv’s constructive and cooperative position.
The joint statement points out that “Ukraine expressed a readiness to accept the US proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire, which can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties, and which is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation”.
So what will be Putin’s move? I think his agreement on a ceasefire will be driven by two factors: whether his country can stay in the fight for much longer and the terms of the arrangement imposed on Ukraine. Putin may decide that the costs of losing a seat at the superpower table with the US president outweighs any benefits of conquering a few more villages in eastern Ukraine. Putin may, therefore, settle for a ceasefire that secures his interim gains: he gets his “grey zone” with a weakened Ukraine outside of Nato and an unresolved war that can be reignited at any time. This would mean Ukraine would need to continue to spend a huge portion of its national budget on defence, straining its economy and struggling to deliver on the EU integration agenda. Putin, meanwhile, gets a secure “land bridge” connecting Crimea to Russia via the coast of the Azov Sea.
A ceasefire would gift Russia much-needed economic relief and buy time for a military reconstitution. Given Ukraine’s persistent destruction of Russian oil refineries, it will need time to rebuild them too. For this, the lifting of energy-related western sanctions will be key to get new equipment in. And a pause allows for regrouping of manpower, since Ukraine has killed or wounded nearly 80% of the ground troops that Russia has mobilised for this war. Its struggle to take large chunks of Ukraine is due to a deficit of men and equipment.
The final incentive to pause the war may come from Putin’s confidence in his ability to wreck Ukraine from within. Recent US insistence on elections and calls for Zelenskyy to resign are also part of the Kremlin’s plans. Putin is determined to destroy Zelesnkyy’s government. The grey zone scenario enables the forces of chaos, fuelled by disinformation, to damage pro-democratic parties. The blame for this neither-war-nor-peace situation will fall on Zelenskyy. Issues of war trauma, lack of foreign investment and new outflows of people when travel restrictions are lifted make a ceasefire risky for Ukraine. A ceasefire that doesn’t lead to a just settlement will worsen regional security in the long run.
Ukraine may not “have all the cards”, but nor is it bluffing when it says it will not capitulate to Moscow’s demands. Support for Zelenskyy remains high. Despite its own difficulties with manpower, only 38% of Ukrainians believe Kyiv should agree to relinquish Ukraine’s sovereign territory to Russia. This is mainly driven by the understanding that Russia is waging a genocidal war to destroy the Ukrainian nation – 87% of Ukrainians believe Moscow will not stop at the current frontlines.
If the US manages to curtail Russian appetites and pressure it to approach a ceasefire as the start of a genuine settlement, peace has a chance. If not, it will create a quagmire that will sink Ukraine and further weaken the rest of Europe. Moscow is already in a non-kinetic war with the west; but western intelligence assessments show it is preparing for a “hot”, conventional conflict. The stakes of these peace negotiations could not be higher.
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Orysia Lutsevych is head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House
