The difficult path to peace in Ukraine

Donald Trump with Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. Picture: Getty Images.

Where does Europe end and Russia begin? This centuries-old question underlies the meeting between President Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders in Washington on Monday. The resolution of Russia’s war against Ukraine will settle this question, at least for now.

Ukrainians are a separate and distinct people. Ukraine is a nation with its own history, language, poets, heroes and myths. Vladimir Putin denies this, but the facts speak for themselves.

Generations of Ukrainians struggled for independence, and it has fallen on this generation to preserve it. They’ve fought the Russian invaders with courage, ingenuity and persistence in the face of daunting odds. They’ve exposed the hollowness of Mr Putin’s claim that he has restored Russia as a great power. Although Russian troops outnumber Ukrainian troops, Russia’s army has paid dearly for incremental gains.

Russia doesn’t deserve an inch of Ukraine’s territory. In April 2014, during a period of Russian aggression against Ukraine, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology polled the inhabitants of eight southern and eastern Ukrainian regions that the Kremlin was targeting. Only 15 per cent of the population supported the idea of seceding from Ukraine and joining Russia, while 70 per cent opposed it. Pro-Russian sentiment never reached a majority, even in Donetsk or Luhansk — regions with a high percentage of Russian speakers.

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky pose for a picture with European leaders following a meeting in the Oval Office. Picture: Getty Images.

Most Ukrainians want to be part of Europe, not Russia. They want to join the European Union, not an economic association led by Mr Putin’s cronies. They deny what Mr Putin affirms, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century. They certainly don’t want to help restore Russia. They want to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the strongest barrier against this outcome.

The war’s resolution will determine the extent to which Ukrainians can attain these goals. After meeting with Mr Putin in Alaska, Mr Trump abandoned his pursuit of an immediate ceasefire in favour of a comprehensive settlement, the approach on which Mr Putin has insisted. In Monday’s meeting, however, France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz made it clear to Mr Trump that they would continue to push for a ceasefire in the first phase of these negotiations.

Mr Trump also took off the table the economic sanctions he had threatened to impose if Mr Putin refused to accept a ceasefire. In an interview Sunday on “Meet the Press,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio made it clear sanctions would be imposed only if Mr Trump concluded that Russia was stonewalling the negotiations.

Volodymyr Zelensky with Donald Trump and European leaders at the White House. Picture: The White House.

What’s next? Mr Putin won’t relinquish the Ukrainian territory he has seized, Ukraine can’t win it back on the battlefield, and neither Europe nor the US is prepared to take the steps necessary to push out the Russians.

Meanwhile, Mr Zelensky won’t sign a document giving Russia sovereignty over the territories it has claimed. Nor will he give up a region that Mr Putin has reportedly demanded must surrender: the portion of Donetsk that remains outside Russia’s control and contains some of Ukraine’s strongest defensive lines. Relinquishing it would be the modern equivalent to the Munich Agreement that Czechoslovakia was forced to sign in 1938, in which it agreed to cede its critical border regions and defences to Nazi Germany.

Rather than agreeing to a settlement that would leave open the possibility of Ukrainian membership in NATO, Mr Putin appears prepared to continue the war indefinitely. Mr Zelensky can’t accept any arrangement that would leave his country facing Russia alone. He needs formal security guarantees along the lines of NATO’s Article 5 from Europe’s best-armed countries and the U.S. By opening the door to U.S. participation in such an arrangement, Mr Trump has removed, at least in principle, a significant obstacle to ending the conflict.

It’s hard to imagine that Mr Zelensky would take seriously any security guarantee without foreign troops on Ukrainian soil. France and the U.K., Europe’s only nuclear powers, would have to take the lead. The Poles and Italians might agree to participate. Mr Trump may baulk at stationing US troops in Ukraine, but without U.S. intelligence, air power and commitments to back them up if Russia reneges, most Europeans would be reluctant to leave their own forces exposed.

The majority of Ukrainians are “firmly against” any territorial concessions. If negotiations proceed, Mr Zelensky may confront a challenge even harder than rallying his country against aggression: persuading his fellow citizens that Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence can be secured only at the price of its territorial integrity.

Peace may not be possible without some concessions to Russia, but courageous leaders in Kyiv can allow most of Ukraine to move toward the West — a process that the U.S. should facilitate and the EU should accelerate. Only then will Europe’s boundary be secured.

The Wall St Journal