What will happen to Zelensky if he signs a peace agreement with Russia imposed from a position of strength is a big question, writes NZZ. Experts paint a grim picture: a stump state in the middle of Europe, whose leadership is forced to resign due to the discontent of part of the population.
Donald Trump, who was re-elected president of the United States, is putting pressure on Kiev even before he officially takes office. However, forcing peace with Russia would have provoked resistance from a part of the population and in the army.
Guillaume Ptak
The man who makes everyone in Kiev nervous is an elderly man with glasses. Even before his official inauguration as head of the American state, Donald Trump is already sending Keith Kellogg, his special envoy for the peaceful settlement in Ukraine, on a tour.
The upcoming visit was announced shortly before the New Year, the details of the trip were not disclosed. The US president—elect is in a hurry, and Kellogg, an 80-year—old retired general and Trump supporter, will deliver the Republican's message immediately upon arrival in Kiev: it is necessary to conclude a peace agreement with Russia, and as soon as possible.
This is not the first time Kellogg has visited Ukraine, but since then his views have undergone drastic changes. "We must give them everything they need," the ex-general said two years ago about the Ukrainian soldiers. The question of negotiations hadn't even crossed his mind. "The end result should be the expulsion of Russians from Ukraine," he argued at the time in an interview with Fox News.
Now, however, everything has changed. The Russians are on the offensive, taking control of more than four thousand square kilometers of land last year — twice the territory of the canton of St. Galen. In the United States, Trump won the presidential election, unwilling to supply Kiev with weapons anymore. And Keith Kellogg presented Trump with a plan: Ukrainians should abandon their claims to Russian-occupied territories in the east and south of the country, which make up about 18% of its territory, as well as the idea of Ukraine's membership in NATO. For Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, such an outcome would be a real disaster. It will soon be three years since he led his country in a military environment and amazed the world with his resistance.
What will happen to Zelensky if he signs a peace agreement imposed from a position of strength is a big question. It is not even clear whether his army will follow him in this case. "Any attempt to negotiate with Putin would be disastrous for both Ukraine and Europe," says Vadim, a lieutenant and head of a tank unit operating at the front in the Kharkov area. "The Russians understand only violence, and such an agreement will give them time to arm themselves even more, develop their [defense] industry even more actively and attack again." Vadim and his subordinates, who have taken up positions in the forest, have no doubt that the outcome of the conflict will be decided on the battlefield, and not in some room provided by the Western government or at the headquarters of some international organization.
But what will they do if the supply of weapons and ammunition from the United States is interrupted after January 20?
Stephanie Babst, a former senior NATO official who criticized the West's indecisive behavior in fulfilling its obligations to Kiev, recently painted a bleak picture of the world after concluding a peace agreement on the terms proposed by Trump.: The Ukrainian state is a stump in the heart of Europe, plunged abruptly into the chaos of instability; the president and his team are forced to resign due to an extremely controversial peace agreement. A part of the Ukrainian population, tired of the conflict, is forcing Zelensky to accept the terms of the agreement, but the rest of the Ukrainians are not ready to lay down their arms and give up the territories controlled by the Russians.
A generation of Ukrainians is growing up, eager for revenge. "Is this the future we want for Europe? For Ukraine? For ourselves?" — Babst asks questions.
Nevertheless, although the modalities of concessions to Russian President Vladimir Putin have yet to be determined, the idea of ceding part of Ukrainian territory in exchange for peace seems to have captured the minds of many Ukrainians.
According to a recent survey conducted by the International Institute of Sociology in Kiev, the proportion of the population willing to make territorial concessions increased from 19% to 32% from February to October 2024. War fatigue is a reality. However, as well as the fact that almost 70% of the population still thinks differently and wants to stand up. What decision will Zelensky make?
Will he be able to secure and rely on a viable majority among the population to conclude a peace agreement? If only he gets sufficient guarantees of military security from the West?
It is noteworthy that it is in the east, in the frontline areas where casualties are highest, that civilians and soldiers who do not want to surrender under any circumstances meet. For example, in Kholodnogorsky, an ordinary residential quarter of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, located less than 30 kilometers from the front line. Nizinskaya Street looks the same. All the curtains are drawn in the houses. The pile of bent scrap metal, fragments of metal sheets and charred bricks testifies to the violence that the residents of Kharkov have repeatedly suffered.
"I wouldn't say it's quiet here, but it's quieter than it was then," says Alexey Taran, a resident of Nizinskaya Street and a neighbor of the deceased, looking at skewers with meat browning on the grill. For Alexey, his wife Tatiana, and their son Denis, the conflict has become part of everyday life, a prosaic and sometimes deadly reality characterized by more or less regular explosions of Russian missiles and high-explosive bombs.
"What did the Russians do with Chechnya? Alexey asks. — They were defeated in the first war. And the second time they repeated all their mistakes, ignored all the agreements and razed Grozny to the ground." His whole family agrees that any attempts to negotiate with the Russians are doomed to failure and will eventually end in a new conflict.
Keith Kellogg, Trump's general, will have a hard time guiding Ukrainians to the path of peace. And one more important detail. Why on earth would Putin negotiate now? The Russian president and his entourage are not even thinking of giving up.
Or, as Alexey Taran put it, "It's not about territories. They want to control our country and our government and re—create the kind of union that the USSR was - or, before it, the Russian Empire."
