Peace in Ukraine remains far off despite Witkoff-Kushner effort

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In a renewed diplomatic drive, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner travelled to Moscow this weekend to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. They then traveled to Kyiv for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said the pair presented him with some "worthwhile ideas." Yet, as the war drags closer to five full years of fighting, chances of success at the negotiating table appear slim. Don’t hold your breath for an end to the Ukraine war before the midterms in November. More likely, Putin will continue to shift the goalposts until he achieves his core goals: Ukrainian neutrality and the political decapitation of Zelensky. More than a year has passed since President Donald Trump met with Putin in Anchorage. The Trump Administration has been unable to deliver upon the compromises offered at that summit. The most notable proposed compromise was that Russia might agree not to conquer the remaining unoccupied fortress towns in Donetsk but rather enter into an arrangement in which control was shared. Offering this was a significant risk to Putin, who had laid claim to the whole of the Donbas. There has been palpable disappointment on the Russian side that the ‘spirit of Anchorage’ was a mirage. Putin had barely taken off from Alaska when it became clear that Trump lacked the leverage either to get the Europeans or Zelensky on board with the idea of compromise to secure peace. There is scant evidence of any change of mindset in Britain and Europe. Britain’s former head of MI6, John Sawers, recently said that peace talks with Russia appear inconceivable while Putin remains in power. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski recently argued that there should not be renewed dialogue until Russia’s strategic position was weakened. The ‘Ukraine can win this’ mantra appears a psychosis that has gripped the European elite since the war began. With his image in Europe shredded by America’s ill-considered war against Iran, Trump will therefore not be able to shift European resistance to peace in Ukraine anytime soon. Putin can see this and appears to have refocused Russia’s military effort to the capture of the rest of Donetsk. After very little movement of the frontline during the first half of this year, gradual grinding progress is now being made towards the remaining fortress towns of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. There are signs that improvements in Russian tank armor technology is starting gradually to blunt the effectiveness of Ukraine’s drone defense. Estimates vary about how long it will take to seize control of Donetsk, from the end of this year through the end of 2027. In the intervening period, Ukraine will suffer a harsh winter in which its electricity and heating infrastructure will be further decimated. Europe will need to figure out how to find the money for a continuation of the proxy war. Many more service personnel and some civilians will die. Meanwhile, Zelensky will come under mounting pressure to step aside amid ongoing corruption scandals and more vocal opposition from key figures inside Ukraine, including his former defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov. Russia has undoubtedly suffered badly during this war too, not least through the hundreds of thousands of personnel killed or injured. Ukraine’s campaign of deep strikes against oil refineries caused gasoline shortages and shifted the dial downwards on Putin’s popularity at home. Russia can’t fight on forever. Yet Putin appears guided by the sense that Ukraine and its western backers will run out of the political and economic stamina to fight before Russia does. Russia has the manpower, the financial reserves, the energy supply and the industrial base to keep fighting. Ukraine and Europe do not. Putin’s core goal has always been Ukrainian neutrality and, given a history of broken tacit understandings since the collapse of the Soviet Union it is likely the will want a treaty-based commitment not to expand NATO. He also undoubtedly wants to see the fall of Zelensky. Until, at the very minimum, he achieves both, Putin won’t hurry to commit to peace, whatever exhortations Trump makes. Rather, he will continue to increase the cost of any future peace deal. There is history for this going right back to 2014. Having armed the Donbas separatists in 2014, Putin finally went all-in with direct Russian military involvement to seize the transport hub of Debaltseve in fierce fighting in January 2015. This action leveraged the Europeans to negotiate the Minsk II peace deal. When Putin’s efforts to negotiate new security treaties with the West came to nought in late 2021, he committed to launching a war in Ukraine to force the issue. After Britain and the U.S. scuppered the proposed Istanbul peace deal in April 2022, he committed to the grinding attritional war that we see today. Having indicated that Russia might trade the small pockets of land occupied in Kharkiv and Sumy Oblasts, Putin now appears to have hardened his position; Russia’s military is now making further advances in these areas. Having been open to some form of shared occupation of Donetsk in Alaska, Putin now seems determined to take the lot. That doesn’t mean Putin is unwilling to settle. Speaking about the need for peace at his yearly Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok last week, he emphasized the role other countries, including China, might play. Indian Prime Minister Modi renewed his call for Putin to move from “an endless war to the end to the war” at the recent Shanghai Cooperation Meeting in Bishkek. It was revealed that 51 Indian nationals recruited into the Russian Armed Forces have been killed since fighting began. The White House wants and probably needs to resolve the Ukraine war, particularly with the Iran conflict raging. Peace in Ukraine before the midterms might be a boon for Trump’s flagging popularity. But it’s not going to happen. In Donald Trump’s book The Art of the Deal, he says, “The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have. Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs. Or best of all, simply can’t do without.” Right now, and despite the challenges that war has imposed on Russia, Putin probably feels that he holds the bigger lever. If Trump can’t get Ukraine and Europe on side to compromise over peace, then he’ll start to think about how to increase the cost of any deal after Donetsk has been conquered. The salient question is what that cost will be.

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