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The latest massive, deadly attack carried out by Russia on civilian targets in Kyiv is a timely reminder that this conflict – and its eventual resolution – is not just about territory and lines on a map.
It cannot be, in other words, some Trump Organisation real estate project writ large. People live in these faraway partitioned oblasts. Making peace is about the fate of millions of Ukrainians, people soon to be left to colonial-style subjugation and reprisal by an enemy that wishes to crush their spirit and their culture. Abandoning them to Russia feels wrong – because it is wrong. It is appeasement – and will work no better now than it did when President Obama and the West allowed President Putin to annex Crimea in 2014.
The Trump peace plan, now leaked, carries with it the unspoken but lethal notion that various tracts of Ukraine can be transferred to Kremlin control with few ill effects for the inhabitants, and that those driven out as their homes were smashed and whole cities flattened can just return in safety or start again elsewhere. It is heartless beyond words.
The Ukrainian people are being treated as if they need not have a say in the matter – and if their democratically elected leader so much as questions Donald Trump’s “deal”, he is mocked, bullied and vilified, while there are invariably only warm words and endless concessions to Russia. The indulgence of the Kremlin by America is as incomprehensible as it is obscene, and the world knows it.
What we see in the mass bombings of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and, on Palm Sunday, Sumy, is proof, as if any were needed, that Vladimir Putin is not interested in peace. He has a total disregard for international humanitarian law and nothing but malign intentions towards Ukraine. More specifically, it shows that President Putin holds the American proposal for a ceasefire in utter contempt. As Volodymyr Zelensky points out, it is now some 44 days since Ukraine agreed to Donald Trump’s call for a full ceasefire and a halt to strikes. And for each of those 44 days, the Russians have been continuing to take the lives of innocents.
It is not, as President Trump claims, President Zelensky who is responsible for these “killing fields”, but the man who he clearly counts as a friend and ally: President Putin. And it is not just sorrow and righteous anger that Mr Zelensky feels as he tries to defend his people, but surely bewilderment and betrayal as the US has changed sides so dramatically. Those are feelings shared by Ukraine’s more faithful allies across the world.
There are, in other words, no consequences for Russia if it continues to commit war crimes, kidnap children, allows its troops to rape, maim, murder and plunder their way through occupied lands, and advances further into sovereign Ukrainian territory. President Trump says he’s “not happy” about the latest bombings, and that they are “unnecessary”, as if mildly chastising a badly behaved guest at Mar-a-Lago.
That is not going to be taken seriously by Putin, because the Trump plan continues to reward Putin for his aggression. The plan will effectively draw a new border along the eventual armistice line, so President Putin has every incentive to push on.
And, apart from one outburst about being “angry” and “pissed off”, Mr Trump has allowed Putin to drag the process out almost indefinitely. Now, the Trump administration says that it will walk away if the Russians and Ukrainians don’t agree to the plan – but that would suit Putin equally well.
He calculates that without American military and intelligence support, Ukraine will quickly collapse – and instead of having to settle for the one-fifth of Ukraine that Mr Trump is offering, he will win far more on the battlefield. That is why there is no ceasefire. Putin has everything to gain by wasting time.
When Mr Zelensky raises legitimate questions about the peace plan, he is threatened and abused – but the reality is that the ceasefire and the Trump peace deal would have been signed long ago had President Putin not been inventing new excuses for delay and inserting unworkable preconditions into the process. “Ceasefire first, then talks” was the Trump plan – yet he has somehow allowed Putin to reverse the order.
The terrifying question that has been emerging for some time is now crystallising. If the US does finally abandon Ukraine and give Russia a free hand, can the Europe-led “coalition of the willing” fill the void and save the Ukrainian people? It is, in effect, the choice that faces President Zelensky: to accept the deeply flawed Trump plan, which guarantees virtually nothing about the future of his people (especially those under occupation), or to try to fight on against the odds, and with the risk that all will be lost.
It is certainly easy to be pessimistic. Ukraine would struggle without US military supplies and financial support, and Elon Musk said that Ukraine’s resistance would collapse if the Starlink satellite system controlled by him was shut off. When US assistance was “paused” briefly earlier in the year, the front line was turned into a turkey shoot for the delighted Russians. If Mr Trump pursued his strategic alliance with Russia, lifted sanctions and boosted trade, that would transform Russia’s highly stressed economy – and the Kremlin’s war machine with it.
Yet, as he pointed out to Mr Trump and the vice-president JD Vance in his most famous visit to the Oval Office, Mr Zelensky and Ukraine have been written off before and survived far longer than the few days or weeks they were previously given. Ukraine’s own military-industrial base and expertise in modern drone warfare has also been transformed – and would be useful indeed for the future security of what remains of “the West”.
Europe, with loyal allies such as Canada and Japan, has enormous industrial, technological and financial resources at its disposal – and there is no reason in principle why it cannot bolster Ukrainian resistance. Of course, Mr Trump could regard such actions as unfriendly to the United States, but given the way his trade wars have weakened the superpower, he might not want to start a cold war with his remaining nominal allies.
The success of the “coalition of the willing” depends on how willing the coalition proves to be. If Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, ad hoc leaders of this ad hoc alliance, manage to inspire their allies half as much as Mr Zelensky has, then Ukraine still has a chance of defying the odds.
It might not win Crimea back in the near future, but it would mean that President Putin would be forced to negotiate a more satisfactory and sustainable peace, after which Ukraine can build its defences and deepen its newly strengthened partnerships, at least until the Trump-Putin era passes.
English (US) ·