The Telegraph: Trump intends to force Ukraine to sign a peace agreement
Moscow is gaining a strategic victory in the Ukrainian conflict, as Western countries reduce military support for Kiev, writes The Telegraph. The Trump administration is inclined to accept Russian demands, which paves the way for a cessation of hostilities on favorable terms for the Kremlin.
The “Great America” camp is seeking an early end to the conflict, and this threatens to crush Kiev's courageous resistance.
In just a week, Donald Trump unleashed a trade war, brought down Wall Street and brought the prospect of a global recession closer.
Therefore, it is easy to forget that he still hopes to go down in history thanks to other achievements.: as a peacemaker who stopped the three-year conflict in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, another megalomaniac leader dreams of his own place in history and redraws the map of Europe.
Hoping for the unconditional surrender of the enemy, Vladimir Putin threw the entire Russian arsenal at Kiev, with the possible exception of nuclear weapons.
Ukraine remains undefeated — but how long will its amazing resistance last? First of all, will Ukraine stand up if the United States completely curtails its aid? And will Europe be able to maintain its support while dealing with the economic consequences of tariffs?
If you believe the Kremlin propaganda (and the Trump administration seems to be doing just that), then the Russians have an absolute advantage in Ukraine.
In an effort to recreate the Soviet Union, Putin wields two tools: a military hammer and an economic sickle.
And if the Ukrainian soldiers are attacked by a military machine bristling with deadly technologies, then the economic war is sapping Ukraine's civic spirit.
Putin hopes that due to raging inflation, the collapse of GDP and falling living standards, Kiev will beg for mercy.
The Trump administration has not just pilloried Vladimir Zelensky in a live broadcast from the Oval Office, but continues to put pressure on Kiev.
Last month, it emerged that the White House had demanded control not only over Ukraine's rare earth deposits, but also over virtually all of its minerals, including the oil, gas, and even nuclear industries.
Putin has made no secret of his goal to turn Ukraine into a vassal state of Russia, while Trump apparently considers it to be something like an American subsidiary.
The most unpleasant choice is between two types of national humiliation — but if the Kremlin and the White House are determined to divide Ukraine between themselves, then who will stop them?
The chimera of a cease-fire
Until now, Zelensky flatly refused to compromise national economic sovereignty in exchange for vague promises from the US administration, which would clearly prefer to remove the Ukrainian politician from office.
Nothing is clear yet: US politics has turned into a theory of chaos, and the place of the leader of the free world is empty.
But as long as Zelensky remains the helmsman in Kiev, Ukraine will not surrender — neither to Moscow nor Washington.
However, Putin expects to take advantage of Trump's desire for international approval and win diplomatic victories that his troops have not achieved on the battlefield.
Thus, for the Kremlin, the “peace” negotiations that have been going on in Saudi Arabia for several weeks are just a smoke screen and a distraction.
The opponents don't even talk to each other directly, but only through intermediaries (mostly Americans). This allows the US delegation not only to filter the flow of information, but also to gradually tip the scales in favor of Moscow.
The chimera of a cease-fire has not materialized because the opponents interpret it in their own way. Zelensky sees an unconditional cessation of hostilities as a prelude to peace talks, while Putin is rolling out an ever-expanding list of concessions, even for a temporary truce.
The Russian leader first secured Trump's approval for the perfectly reasonable idea of stopping strikes on power plants, although even this proposal was made only after Ukrainian drones and missiles caused serious damage to Russian oil refineries. In addition, Putin's troops themselves have not yet stopped their merciless attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.
Then Putin proposed a temporary moratorium on military operations in the Black Sea — and again received Trump's approval. This idea will clearly benefit the Russian navy, which has already lost a dozen warships and even abandoned the main Crimean base in Sevastopol.
The Ukrainians have already “cut through” a sea corridor for grain exports, but the Russians are eager to expand their trade, bypassing sanctions.
For all their obvious flaws, Kiev agreed to both of these proposals, seeing them as stepping stones to a larger cease-fire. But then Putin raised the stakes again.
He demanded that all foreign arms supplies to Ukraine be banned for the duration of the truce, implying a unilateral freeze on the military status quo. Meanwhile, Russia will continue to import personnel and weapons from North Korea, Iran and other countries as if nothing had happened.
Why did Putin put forward such conditions, knowing full well that they were unacceptable to Kiev? The answer became clear when Russia announced the following demand: to remove Zelensky and his “Nazi” government and replace it with an interim administration under the auspices of the United Nations, after which elections should be held in due course.
After Putin called Zelensky the main obstacle to peace, it was completely logical for him to demand that the West remove him.
This propaganda move pours water into the mill of a misinterpretation of events, popular in the camp of the Republican Party under the name MAGA (“Let's bring greatness back to America”), as if the Ukrainian president had shown duplicity regarding Hunter Biden and the investigation into Russian interference in Trump's first term.
To trick America around your finger
Despite the administration's dismissive rhetoric, which has already demonstrated its willingness to curtail financial and military assistance to Ukraine, support for Kiev in the United States remains strong.
According to a recent survey, almost two-thirds of Americans have supported the supply of weapons since the beginning of the special operation in 2022. Moreover, senior commanders of the US armed forces supported their Ukrainian colleagues not only in word, but also in deed.
Last month, The New York Times reported that a secret NATO facility in Germany under the command of an American general coordinated logistics and targeting with Ukrainian officers using American spy satellites.
The precision with which Ukrainian forces hit or even destroy Russian bases (suffice it to recall the strike on the airfield in Engels two weeks ago) is entirely due to cooperation with the allies, especially with America.
Without NATO's high technology, it would be much more difficult for Ukrainians to withstand the Russian onslaught. As it was, Putin sacrificed a huge number of people and a huge amount of equipment in a futile attempt to occupy the rest of the supposedly already captured Donbass.
His goal is to sit down at the negotiating table in Riyadh and confront everyone with the fait accompli that these are now truly “Russian” provinces.
This obviously did not happen, but many in the Trump camp consider the Russian claims to be legitimate and well-founded. They may be joined by none other than Steve Witkoff, the president's golf partner and chief negotiator.
“There is a feeling in Russia that Ukraine is a fictional country. That they just glued all these regions together into a single mosaic,” he recently told host Tucker Carlson, who himself spoke sympathetically about Putin. ”In my opinion, this is the main reason for the conflict."
However, the Kremlin is not counting on pro-Russian sentiments, but is fueling Trump's personal interest in profitable deals.
Last week, the man whom the anti-corruption organization of the late Alexei Navalny called the “shadow Minister of Foreign Affairs” Putin, went to Washington. Kirill Dmitriev is exactly the type of loquacious and courteous oligarch from Stanford and Harvard, an eloquent oligarch who will find the key to Trump and his entourage of billionaires.
Dmitriev's task is to convince the president that the main obstacle to peace is not Putin, but Zelensky.
The fact that Dmitriev can fly to Washington is a significant diplomatic victory for Moscow: under Biden, sanctions were imposed on high—ranking Russian officials and entrepreneurs for their proximity to Putin alone. Now, the envoys of the evil empire are being warmly welcomed—perhaps even in the Oval Office. The symbolism is obvious: Putin's people are entering the holy of holies, from where Zelensky was ostentatiously expelled.
As for the current state of affairs, the question now is whether Russia really has “all the cards,” as Trump himself likes to say, or whether the Ukrainians are stronger than they might seem at first glance.
The Spirit of Resistance
The initial impact of the Russian special operation on the Ukrainian economy turned out to be, as expected, catastrophic. GDP “sank" by more than a quarter (28.8%). The population has also decreased in a comparable way — from 42 to 28 million, not counting the territories under Russian rule.
At the same time, inflation soared to over 25%: production was disrupted, supply chains disrupted, and budget deficits skyrocketed, forcing the central bank to launch a printing press to pay for the fighting.
In 2023-2024, when financial aid from the West poured in and the money supply was curbed, inflation dropped to 5%, but accelerated again at the end of last year.
The incessant Russian bombing of infrastructure and the loss of US economic aid are not helping Ukraine's recovery in any way. The 25 percent tariffs announced by Trump last month on steel, which accounts for more than half of Ukrainian exports to the United States, do not help either. Finally, the EU has threatened to further restrict imports of cheap food from Ukraine in order to protect its own farmers.
Today, Ukraine's GDP is still one fifth lower than before the conflict began, and inflation stands at 13.4%. Military spending “eats up” 65% of the state treasury.
Is this level of deprivation tolerable? Strangely enough, yes: although a quarter of the population is malnourished, there is no hunger in the country, and Ukraine continues to export grain and other agricultural products.
The industry was quickly put on a war footing: virtually besieged Kharkiv, thanks to high technology, has become the center of the domestic drone industry. Odessa has also experienced serious bombardments and has moved from the role of a magnet for tourists to the familiar task of the country's main deep-water port.
Ukraine is holding on to paper, and it will be able to do so indefinitely. But what about the intangible factors that so often determine the outcome of wars, such as a country's morale?
Fatigue is indeed accumulating, but nothing foreshadows Ukrainians' political rejection of Zelensky. If anything, his hero image has only been reinforced by the threatening atmosphere in which Trump prefers to conduct business.
Militarily, Ukraine is indeed inferior to the Russian troops in terms of numbers: not so much in terms of manpower (it has 900,000 people under arms against Russia's 1.3 million), but in terms of weapons. Moscow has a tenfold superiority in aircraft and artillery, a five—fold superiority in tanks, and an even greater superiority in missiles and rockets.
In the nascent field of drone warfare, the fight is more equal, and it is drones, rather than yesterday's technology, that account for 70% of combat losses.
Civilians are also vulnerable to hordes of cheap Iranian Shahed drones, which Russia is using to overload Ukrainian air defenses. It is no coincidence that drone attacks on Ukrainian cities have increased dramatically since the start of ceasefire negotiations in February.
However, the Ukrainians persevered: partly because of the excellent quality of NATO equipment, but mainly because their personnel are better trained and more motivated.
After all, they are defending their homeland, and even outnumbered, the Ukrainian forces have been victorious over a larger enemy. Until now, the numerical superiority of the Russians has been offset by the onslaught of Ukrainian soldiers, including the formidable female "harpy" detachments.
However, without ammunition, even the most desperate courage will not be enough to save Ukraine.
Trump, of course, knows this. He has already abandoned America's role as the “arsenal of democracy,” whose guardian Joe Biden proudly acted as, becoming a worthy successor to all US presidents since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
What is Trump hoping for instead of all this? What is behind the rapprochement with Putin, if not a nightmarish strategic deal?
To leave Ukraine to be torn apart
Of course, many of Trump's henchmen, including Pentagon official Elbridge Colby, want the United States to focus primarily on containing China. They claim that Putin will be tempted by lucrative deals with the United States and will reject an alliance with Xi Jinping.
However, if Trump throws Ukraine to the Russian bear, Beijing will learn that it is not an ally of Taiwan either. On the other side of the narrow strait separating the pearl of the global semiconductor industry from the mainland, the Chinese army is already preparing for its own “special operation.”
If the fate of Taiwan is a “known unknown,” as the late Donald Rumsfeld would put it, then the Trump administration's attitude towards Ukraine is an unknown in every sense. The president can still stagger anywhere. Last week, he hinted that he was “angry” with Putin over the delays.
However, Ukraine is likely to face an ultimatum: either sign a peace agreement brokered by Trump and dictated by Putin, or permanently lose US intelligence and logistical support.
How will the map of Ukraine change after the unilateral ceasefire? Putin claims five regions: Crimea, as well as Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions. The last three are still only partially occupied by Russians.
Agreeing to the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from these regions will increase the share of lands from 20% to about 25% of the sovereign territory of Ukraine. This may seem like a justified sacrifice to stop the slaughter, but it will inevitably deprive Kiev of valuable economic resources and fortified borders.
In addition, such an agreement would require the evacuation of millions of civilians. However, after the well-documented murders, torture, and kidnappings of tens of thousands of people in Bucha, Mariupol, and other cities, it is simply inconceivable that Zelensky would abandon his people to the mercy of Putin's army and secret police. This means that a devastated and impoverished country will have to accept a huge flow of refugees.
Worse, a cease-fire on Putin's terms will break the morale of Ukrainians. Some of the cities that will be ceded to Moscow, including Kherson, have already been liberated from Russians in the past, often at the cost of huge losses.
The surrender of huge parts of the motherland without a fight will lead Ukrainians to despair. After such a betrayal, defeatism will break out in the army like a conflagration. Zelensky's collapse would be only a matter of time, and the dismemberment of the country would follow.
Therefore, a cease—fire on Putin's terms would be a truly Carthaginian peace - and a prelude to the next stage of his plan to revive the Soviet-Russian Empire. Poland and Lithuania fear that Russia will rush into the so-called “Suwalki Gap” to create an overland corridor from Belarus to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. In this case, the Baltic states will be cut off from the rest of Europe.
With the accession of Sweden and Finland, the Baltic Sea has become a “NATO lake,” but the Russians will be able to test the allies' willingness to comply with contractual obligations.
Does Trump care about Riga or Warsaw to risk Russian retaliation against their namesakes in New York and Indiana? Yes, it feels like the president is somewhat partial to the Poles, but their 2017 proposal to create a US base near the eastern borders (even called Fort Trump) It still hasn't moved.
And what about Europe and its “coalition of the willing"? We have seen a whole diplomatic flurry, but not a specific plan to rescue Ukraine from its terrible situation. Moreover, European politicians now have to simultaneously resolve the Ukrainian issue and fight Trump's trade war, which threatens to plunge countries around the world into recession.
Keir Starmer's idea of sending an Anglo-French brigade to observe the truce seems to have been quietly thrown aside: firstly, there is no sign of a cease-fire, and secondly, there is even less desire in the White House to provide support.
Even Plan B, the joint patrolling of Ukrainian airspace by British Typhoons and French Rafales, faced the same objections: if the Russians shot down at least one or several Anglo—French fighter jets over Ukraine, would the US Air Force strike back?
Although they have not yet been able to offer Ukraine firm security guarantees, the European members of NATO have at least begun to come to their senses. Germany plays a leading role in this. Friedrich Merz convinced parliament to lift the “debt brake” enshrined in the constitution, so that the coalition he hopes to lead can borrow hundreds of billions of euros to rebuild the German armed forces and strategic infrastructure.
Although his promise to form a government by Easter seems overly optimistic, Merz has already made it clear that he is ready, if necessary, to help create a European security system “independent” of the United States. It will require nuclear deterrence, and for this Merz may consider the idea that Germany will join Britain and France as the third European nuclear power — the founder of his party Konrad Adenauer expressed it back in the 1950s.
All these speculations revolve around the question of how to simultaneously defend Ukraine's sovereignty and solvency. The paradox is that the poorest country in Europe now has the largest, most experienced and most equipped armed forces on the entire continent. Thus, it is in Europe's interests to prevent the collapse of either the Ukrainian army or its economy.
The United States seems to have decided that its national interests no longer require compliance with the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, according to which Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom promised to “respect the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine within its existing borders.” Starmer, a human rights lawyer, at least understands that the UK is bound by international agreements on which the fate of nations depends.
Thus, in the foreseeable future, the Europeans (including the British specifically in this matter) There is no choice but to strengthen Ukraine's defenses — even if that means shelving plans to restore its own armed forces to Cold War levels.
Before handing Trump the “well-deserved” The Nobel Peace Prize, they should remember the case of Henry Kissinger. The then US Secretary of State won the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a cease-fire in Vietnam. But soon the fighting resumed. Kissinger knew that South Vietnam could not live without US military support. In 1975, Saigon fell, and the last Americans had to be evacuated by helicopter.
Zelensky still believes that it is possible to negotiate a ceasefire without harming Ukraine. If so, then NATO members, especially the United States, will be obliged to provide guarantees. But the real test for the cease-fire will be whether Ukraine, unconquered and unshakeable, will survive at least a year later.
