As transatlantic relations have fallen into crisis and the United States is tightening the screws on Cuba and Iran, Russia and Ukraine were required by the U.S. to strike a deal in Abu Dhabi.
Progress has been made. According to Ukrainian President Zelensky, agreement has been reached with the United States on security guarantees. For months there has been talk of “Article 5–like” guarantees that would come into force if Zelensky were to voluntarily give up the entire Donbas and Russia were then to violate an agreement.
According to the Financial Times, Ukraine would have to absorb the first blow with an armed force of 800,000 troops. If that fails, primarily European forces would come to its aid, and if that still has no effect, the Americans could step in. It sounds interesting, but first a ceasefire would have to be reached.
How complex the negotiations is becomes clear from Russia’s persistent demand that the root causes of the conflict be removed. What those causes are varies depending on which senior Russian official is speaking, but it is certain that Ukraine is seen as a NATO vassal state, with both Ukraine and NATO posing a threat to Russia. According to Putin, that threat must be eliminated. But this will not succeed if Europeans are not allowed to have a say. Russia does not want that and believes it can make agreements with Trump over the heads of the Europeans on spheres of influence and limitations on NATO’s military power. In recent weeks, Putin has therefore done everything he can to get Trump on his side.
Putin has reluctantly agreed to direct negotiations with Ukraine. Here too, he is trying to play Trump. In doing so, he makes clever use of Trump’s fickleness and impatience. Putin continues to emphasize the results of “Alaska.” What those results exactly are is unclear, but it is certain that during his meeting with Putin in August last year, Trump said that in exchange for peace, Ukraine would have to give up territory. But Ukraine does not want to relinquish the rest of the Donbas, which at the current pace would only be conquered by Russia around August next year.
Via Trump, Putin wants to obtain that territory without having to fight for it, in order to sell at least some form of victory to the Russian people. After all, his war propaganda is built on the alleged “Ukrainian aggression” against Luhansk and Donetsk, which together form the Donbas. Moreover, Sloviansk, located in the unoccupied part of the Donbas, is of symbolic significance. It was here that Putin encouraged the pro-Russian separatist uprising in 2014.
In Abu Dhabi neither Putin nor Zelensky were willing to budge. Yet the situation is becoming untenable for both sides. Zelensky, due to the suspension of U.S. weapons deliveries, is now dependent on European arms purchases in the United States and on suppliers within Europe itself. But all these European efforts are far from guaranteed.
For Putin, the losses are too great, too little territory is being conquered, and the economy is increasingly groaning under a war that costs roughly €170 billion per year. Oil prices have collapsed, and Russia’s shadow fleet is being targeted ever more aggressively.
The solution is a ceasefire along the existing front line, followed by negotiations on a final settlement. Zelensky is open to this, but Trump would have to put pressure on his “friend” Putin. So far, Trump has shown no willingness to do so.
Experts
Related Content
