So much for the Ukraine peace process. So much for ending the war there in 24 hours flat, metaphorically or otherwise. So much for Donald Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize. Patience is one of the many virtues President Trump lacks, and so, not quite a whole week on from the “historic” Alaska summit, he has seemingly lost interest in getting the deal of the century brokered.
Instead of bilaterals and trilaterals being organised “almost immediately”, as he boasted a few days ago, Trump has had enough of Vlad and Volod.
In the words of the White House: “President Trump and his national security team continue to engage with Russian and Ukrainian officials towards a bilateral meeting to stop the killing and end the war… It is not in the national interest to further negotiate these issues publicly.”
Now, it is perfectly understandable that Trump is bored with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky’s reluctance to talk turkey, like proper real estate guys arguing over some prime oceanside development site. Both sides, in reality, have their preconditions for talks, though more the Russians than the Ukrainians – and, on that basis, there’s not that much to be said for Trump trying to get them to do something they don’t actually want to, such as talk to one another.
Putin judges that the longer he plays for time, the more progress his “meat grinder” will make on the ground, so that if and when the contact line does ever get frozen, he’ll have maxed out his gains, albeit at huge human cost. His is a war of attrition almost as much on his own side as on the Ukrainian forces and civilian population.
Conversely, Zelensky cannot – rightly – bring himself to surrender sovereign territory he doesn’t have a divine right to give away. Even if he did, and even if the Ukrainian people voted for it in some version of a referendum, it would still make no sense if there weren’t any strong security guarantees to ensure that Putin, or some Putinist successor, wouldn’t be along later for another stab at conquest.
The experts say that if Zelensky were to trade the two provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk for peace, he would also lose potentially strong defensive lines, and basically leave Kyiv so wide open to a successful assault, even Putin’s disorganised forces would be able to take the capital.
Given that Trump’s commitment to Ukrainian territorial integrity appears on par with his respect for marital vows, Zelensky is entirely right to be ultra-cautious. From his point of view, he knows that the Russian economy, with 40 per cent of GDP devoted to the war machine, is in some jeopardy and could, quite plausibly, collapse. He might also hope, sadly, with little real reason for confidence, that the “coalition of the willing” will win the war for Ukraine.
Left to their own devices, there will always be some excuse not to meet – wrong venue, timing, pre-conditions, lack of a ceasefire – and nothing will happen.
Trump, with a notoriously short attention span and a dotard-like tendency to distraction, was never going to spend months and years of his presidency trying to win peace in one of the world’s most intractable and biggest wars. He was not going to emulate Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton by devoting his limited energies to remodelling the world. Trump, after all, is an “America first” isolationist, has admitted little interest in the history behind these great global schisms, and sticks to what he’s good at, or thinks he is, which is making deals.
To be fair, though, he may also be simply reluctant to be associated with near-certain failure. That would also account for his hands-off attitude to Gaza, subcontracting US policy to Benjamin Netanyahu.
He seems to have twigged, at last, that Putin is tagging him along, even admitting, to himself as much as anyone else, that “maybe he [Putin] doesn’t want to make a deal”. The president is “disappointed” by Putin, but not to the extent that he’s going to apply any pressure to him.
As things worsen on the battlefield, Trump can easily plead that this is “Joe Biden’s war” and deny he had any intention of ending it. The alibi for failure has already been constructed.
It could be worse. When he entered the White House for his second term, Trump basically made America switch sides in Ukraine. Even now, he parrots Kremlin talking points, still hints that he thinks Ukraine started the conflict, blaming it for “taking on a nation 10 times your size”, even though it was the one that was invaded. And who can ever forget the disgraceful scenes in the Oval Office in February?
But now Trump seems less in Putin’s pocket, and less viscerally hostile to Zelensky. He used to want the war to end, and for Russia, in effect, to be rewarded for its aggression. He sympathised with Russian grievances. Now, he’s weary of the whole business and less inclined to help his “friend” Putin out. That’s about as good as it is going to get with Trump.
