6 days ago
23
There was a grim familiarity to the unveiling of Donald Trump’s latest peace proposals for Ukraine last week. As in August, when the US president invited Vladimir Putin to a summit in Alaska, Kyiv and its European allies were excluded from discussions that ended up echoing Kremlin talking points. Yet again, Mr Trump publicly scolded Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not being more grateful for his ongoing mediation efforts. And as in the summer, Mr Zelenskyy and blindsided European leaders strove to stay polite while scrambling to limit the damage.
The salvage operation appears to have been relatively successful, following Sunday’s meeting in Geneva between the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and a Ukrainian delegation. The 28-point plan reportedly drafted by Mr Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin adviser, Kirill Dmitriev, was in effect a repackaging of Mr Putin’s maximalist demands. A deal premised on the handing over of new territory in the Donbas region to Russia, restrictions on Ukraine’s sovereignty, and drastic limits on the size of its future army, could never be acceptable to Kyiv. Mr Rubio, suggesting a more “refined” framework was now being developed, seemed to at least acknowledge this fundamental difficulty.
As the usual stream of self-regarding bluster and bombast emanates from the White House, it is impossible to know whether a negotiating endgame is truly at hand. But certain principles bear restating as a starting point for meaningful talks. Future European security, and the basic principles of international law, demand that Mr Putin’s brutal aggression is not simply rubber-stamped and rewarded, and that Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence is prioritised. To Kyiv’s persistent disadvantage, Mr Trump’s administration likes to position itself as a neutral broker between unequal warring parties. In response, European countries must insist on a proactive role in forthcoming peace negotiations, and try to exert some moral leverage.
Europe, after all, is now bearing the bulk of the cost of Ukraine’s continued resistance. It can use its influence and collective weight to furnish Mr Zelenskyy with the negotiating cards which Mr Trump has previously asserted that he lacks. If the EU can belatedly reach agreement on a €140bn “reparations loan” to Kyiv, underwritten by frozen Russian assets, Mr Putin’s apparent judgment that he can outlast Ukrainian resistance may begin to look questionable. A combination of arms and financial support, and greater economic pressure on Russia, are needed to alter calculations in the Kremlin and genuinely bring Mr Putin to the negotiating table.
This, rather than attempting to bully Mr Zelenskyy into a form of capitulation, is the path to achieving a just and sustainable peace. As Ukraine’s president wearily restated at the weekend: “The crux of the entire diplomatic situation is that it was Russia, and only Russia, that started this war, and it is Russia, and only Russia, that has been refusing to end it.”
There are already signs that the Kremlin is preparing to reject modifications to Mr Witkoff’s Putin-friendly plan. Yet whether through naivety, a crude notion of realpolitik or a greedy desire to open up Russian markets, Mr Trump and his aides seem repeatedly minded to lobby for peace on Moscow’s terms. Searching for a moral compass in the White House is a futile exercise. Europe’s leaders need to start trying to shape some facts on the ground.
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