Don’t be Fooled. There is No Deal on Ukraine
All the diplomacy in recent weeks is meant to massage Donals Trump’s ego not to get a real, lasting, let alone just peace in Ukraine
Lost in all the sturm und drang about the latest negotiations to end the war in Ukraine is this reality: there is no basis for a deal. This is all a massive effort to massage one man’s ego.
Donald Trump hates he hasn’t been able to end a war that he repeatedly claimed during last year’s campaign he would solve in one day. But rather than telling the president he’s wrong, that he doesn’t understand the reasons for the war and therefore the impossibility of reaching a deal now, his aides, the Europeans, and even the Ukrainians are playing along, talking seriously about this or that proposal, and incessantly claiming that “real progress is being made” and “we’re very close” to a deal. There isn’t any progress and we’re not close to anything real for one simple reason: Vladimir Putin isn’t playing the game.
To be sure, Putin is willing to meet for hours with Trump’s amateur diplomat, Steve Witkoff, who blithely listens to the Russian president’s hours-long distortion of history and then makes Russia’s talking point his own. Putin is happy to get on the phone with Trump and assure the US president he’s more than willing to end the war and really does wants peace, if only Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who he calls an illegitimate leader, would just step down and hand his country over to Russia. Putin is delighted to fly all the way to Alaska for a red carpet treatment in the full knowledge that Trump will never blame him for the lack of progress.
But none of that matters. It doesn’t make peace more possible. It’s just an effort to deny, delay, and deflect. And it’s working because Trump consistently blames Zelenskyy for the lack of progress. Trump berates the Ukrainian leader who has led a valiant nation under attack. He scolds him. Gets angry with him. Throws maps at him. Threatens him. That’s how Trump negotiates. He calls it the Art of the Deal. It’s theater. But it won’t get a deal done.
And the reason is simple. Trump and his negotiators really don’t understand what this war is about. They see war as something unnatural, not the real and violent expression of profound political differences. Trump compares the war in Ukraine to kids fighting on a playground. He blames his inability to get a deal on the fact that Putin and Zelenskyy “really hate each other.“ For sure they do. But hate isn’t the issue. The underlying reason for that the hate is what counts.
Sovereignty, Not Territory
Trump, Witkoff, and Jared Kushner who has recently joined the negotiating team approach the negotiations like the real estate developers they are. They think the war is about territory, and that a territorial swap of some kind will finalize the deal. Worse, they think that Zelenskyy’s refusal to accept a swap is what is holding up the deal. But they are wrong. Dead wrong. For two reasons
First, not all territory is equal. The territory Trump wants Zelenskyy to give up, the remainder of the Donetsk province, is what Russia has sought to occupy for more than 11 years. And it has failed. One reason for Russia’s failure is that Ukraine has built a massive protective belt in that region to prevent Russia from taking over not only the rest of the province but then have a relatively straightforward path west toward Kyiv. In other words, this is the most strategic territory Ukraine holds, not just some swath of land that can be swapped for another piece of land Russia currently occupies.
More importantly, Russia isn’t interested in territory per se. Putin is interested in control. He didn’t go to war in 2014 just to take Crimea and try and take the Donbas. He didn’t launch a full-scale invasion in 2022 just to take more territory. No. Putin went to war to control Ukraine. All of it. He believes, as he told successive US presidents, that Ukraine is not a real country. It is and must be part of Russia. Some territorial swaps won’t be enough. He wants the whole thing. He wants a government in Kyiv that does Moscow’s bidding. He wants Ukraine to be like Belarus, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Russia. He wants ultimately to reincorporate Ukraine and White Russia back under Moscow’s rule. And he then wants to extend Moscow’s influence further West—to the Baltic States, Poland, and beyond.
So, for Putin and for Zelenskyy, this isn’t a war over territory. It’s a war over sovereignty. It’s a war over who gets to decide Ukraine’s future—Moscow or Kyiv. Russians or Ukrainians. To approach this war as if it is a real estate deal is to fundamentally miss the point of the war. And no amount of screaming, name-calling, or outside pressure is going to end this war unless Ukraine’s sovereignty can be secured.
It’s All About Security Guarantees
That is why for Ukraine and its president, the only thing that truly matters are the strength and credibility of security guarantees. Because even if Ukraine has to cede control over some territory, it cannot and will not cede control over its sovereignty. That is why Ukraine will never recognize Russia’s sovereignty over any inch of Ukrainian territory Moscow seized by force. To do so is to weaken its own sovereignty. And it is why it can only agree to end its military effort to defend the territory it currently holds and regain the territory it has lost if its sovereignty is fully guaranteed once the fighting ends.
That sovereignty includes right of Ukrainians alone to decide who governs them, including when and how elections are conducted. It includes the sole right to decide which alliances and organizations it joins. Moscow cannot have a veto over Ukraine’s NATO or EU membership. And it includes a strong, legally binding guarantee that if Russia violates the terms of a ceasefire, armistice, or even peace agreement, Europe and the United States will be directly involved in responding militarily to such a violation. Without that guarantee, Ukraine’s sovereignty would, as it has over the past 35 years, depend on Russian goodwill and Ukraine’s internal capacity to resist. After 11 years of war, including four years of warfare the likes of which Europe has not seen since World War II ended, relying on Russian goodwill just isn’t an option.
No Deal
In the past few weeks, ever since the publication of the leaked 28-point plan Witkoff copied from a Russian draft, Ukraine, Europe, and the United States have engaged in frantic diplomacy to craft an agreement that is acceptable to them. But there is no draft that Ukraine can accept that Russia can live with. Nor is there a draft plan Russia can accept that Ukraine can live with. This isn’t a question of who gets the furniture in a house up for sale. It’s a question of who gets to live in and own the house. Ukraine, its current occupant, isn’t about to leave. Nor cannot it swap the basement for the rest of the house. This isn’t a real estate deal. This is about the future of Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine will not end just because Donald Trump wants it to end. It will end, like all wars do: either one side achieves what it wants or both are sufficiently exhausted and worn out that they settle for a stalemate that either leads to a lasting end of the war or, more likely, buys both sides time to recover and seek a change of circumstance that will allow them to achieve their goal in alternative ways or even through a resumption of war.
But one thing is clear. There is no progress being made in these discussions. We’re not close to a deal. Trump may be frustrated. But Ukraine cannot and will not settle for anything that compromises its sovereignty. It’s the biggest card Kyiv holds. And Zelenskyy isn’t about to give it up.
Thank you.
An excellent commentary, as always.
Europeans need to step up and provide meaningful security guarantees for Ukraine. Enough dallying.