Ukraine’s best chance at peace

The ball, as Donald Trump said after the 30-day ceasefire deal agreed by US and Ukrainian negotiators in Riyadh, is firmly in Russia’s court. And “it takes two to tango”. The onus to bring an end to the killing is on Russian President Vladimir Putin, and it is imperative that the world unites to exert pressure to halt his rampage against the people and sovereignty of Ukraine. Washington has reactivated intelligence-sharing with Kyiv and the flow of military aid, which were cut off following the damaging stoush in the Oval Office between Mr Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky. That should weigh heavily with the Russian tyrant as he considers his options.

In a welcome reversal after the bitterness during their contretemps, Mr Trump says the Ukrainian President will be welcome to make another visit to the White House (assuming the unpredictable US leader does not change his mind). Restoring their relationship matters, and Mr Trump says he hopes the ceasefire will come into force in the next few days.

But caution is needed. According to Western intelligence reported in London, Putin, despite three years of costly miscalculation and failure in a war he believed would last three days, appears unwilling to bend on his “maximalist” goal of dismantling the Kyiv regime. His ambition to subjugate Ukraine as part of his hegemonic goal of re-establishing the former Soviet empire he served as a KGB colonel remains unchanged. According to the reports, Putin has “no intention of dropping (his) extreme demands on land (territorial gains), Ukrainian neutrality and rejection of European peacekeepers”.

That was underscored by Putin’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, an arch defender of the atrocities of the Russian army and its North Korean allies. He dismissed the proposal for peacekeepers, a key part of the deal: “What will the peacekeepers protect? The remnants of the Kyiv-Nazi regime?” Such turpitude when thousands on both sides die each day (in December, then US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said 700,000 Russian soldiers had been killed) amplifies the need for global pressure on Putin to give peace a chance, despite his being indicted as a war criminal by the International Court of Justice.

Nor should he underestimate the significance of Tuesday’s gathering in Paris of the defence chiefs of 34 nations – mostly NATO countries without the US, but including Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. The aim, French President Emmanuel Macron said, was “to define credible security guarantees” for Ukraine. The Riyadh agreement calls Putin’s bluff. He would be foolish not to sign up to the ceasefire.