The Onerous Task of Bringing Peace to Ukraine
February 24, 2025
Today marks the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The war continues but the diplomatic picture has changed dramatically. President Trump’s first month in office was frenetic, to say the least, and led to the fracturing of the US-Europe relationship as NATO and the EU were sidelined. The background to the conflict, and differing views on whether history could have been differently aside, Mr. Trump’s reversal of Washington’s policy has shocked allies. If his words were to be matched with action in the months ahead this would have lasting consequences for trust in the Trump White House, US foreign and security policy, relations with NATO allies, and relations with allies/partners in the Indo-Pacific.
On February 18, in Riyadh, the US and Russia had their first significant meeting since the latter’s invasion of Ukraine. The participants were Secretary of State Rubio, National Security Advisor Waltz, and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff on the US side, and Foreign Minister Lavrov and President Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov on the Russian side. Mr. Lavrov, who has been in office since 2004, is the longest-serving Russian foreign minister since Andrei Gromyko during the Soviet Union.
The talks were assessed positively by both sides. Mr. Witkoff, said, “It was positive, upbeat, constructive, everybody there to get to the right outcome, solution-based. We discussed it afterwards. We couldn’t have imagined a better result after this session. It was very, very solid.”[i]
The next day, answering questions from media representatives, President Putin said “Overall, as I was told, the atmosphere was very friendly. As I was told by the participants from our side, unlike the US representatives we dealt with earlier, these people from the American side were open for negotiation without any bias or condemnation of what has been done in the past.”[ii]
And when asked about a meeting with Mr. Trump, he said, “You know, this meeting should be properly prepared. I would be happy to meet with Donald… I would gladly meet with him again. I believe he feels the same way – it was evident from the tone of our telephone conversation.”
In Riyadh, the two sides agreed,
- to take measures to allow their embassies in Washington and Moscow to function properly;
- to appoint a high-level team to help negotiate an end to the Ukraine conflict, “in a way that’s enduring and acceptable to all the parties engaged” to use Mr. Rubio’s words;
- and, to begin discussing at a high level the geopolitical and economic cooperation that could result from an end to the war in Ukraine.
At this stage, President Trump’s priority appears to be ending the war in Ukraine and proving that he is a peacemaker.
On Ukraine, President Putin’s objectives are “demilitarization” i.e. Kyiv renouncing its aim of membership in NATO and accepting a neutral, non-aligned, non-nuclear status. Ukraine became a non-nuclear weapons state in 1994 through its accession to the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Later the US, Russia, and the UK extended security assurances to Ukraine in what became known as the Budapest Memorandum. Following the signing of the Memorandum, Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s new president, said, “If tomorrow Russia goes into the Crimea no one will even raise an eyebrow. Besides…promises, no one ever planned to give Ukraine any guarantees.”[iii]
In looking for clues on the Russian position at the Ukraine peace talks it could be useful to look at the two draft agreements Moscow proposed to the West before launching its invasion of Ukraine. These are, the “Treaty between The United States of America and the Russian Federation on security guarantees”[iv] and the “Agreement on measures to ensure the security of The Russian Federation and member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization”.[v] Both rejected by the West at the time, these two documents are likely to characterize Russia’s position at the Ukraine peace talks.[vi]
Today, President Putin has other larger objectives such as breaking Russia’s political and economic isolation, restoring its status as a major global power and an equal of the US, securing the end of the West’s Russia sanctions, and getting assurances regarding the future of Russia’s assets in the West.
Among the areas of mutual interest with the US, Mr. Putin has mentioned the Middle East, Russian presence in Syria, the Palestinian-Israeli settlement, and the renewal of START-3, adding “… of course, the situation in Ukraine is our priority. But we also have other matters to consider such as the economy, and our joint activities on global energy markets.”
Since these sanctions were imposed in close coordination between the US and the EU, Brussels would also have a say in changing allied policy. This is probably why, a day after the Riyadh meeting, President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov had harsh words about “unelected” senior EU officials who often went beyond national leaders and acted in tandem with Mr. Biden in their criticism of Russia.
When talks to end the war in Ukraine start, the top issues would be territory and security guarantees. NATO membership is not going to be in the cards. Recently, asked if Ukraine could one day join the European Union, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “This is the sovereign right of any country.”
“We are talking about integration and economic integration processes. And here, of course, no one can dictate anything to any country, and we are not going to do that,” Peskov said.
Peskov added that Russia’s position was different regarding Ukraine joining military alliances. “There is a completely different position, of course, on security-related issues related to defense or military alliances,” Peskov said.
The most challenging issue on the path toward peace in Ukraine would be the security guarantees offered to Ukraine. At the meeting of “the main European countries” in Paris, Prime Minister Starmer reaffirmed that when Russia and Ukraine sign a peace treaty, the UK would consider sending British peace-keeping forces to Ukraine alongside others and with a US backstop. Prime Minister Scholz called the idea “premature”. Polish Prime Minister Tusk reportedly said they do not want their military imprint on Ukraine’s soil. And President Macron was non-committal. Even if all EU members were willing, Moscow would not agree to such an arrangement that it would regard as unofficial yet de facto Ukrainian membership in NATO.
Looking at the huge loss of life and the devastation the war has caused in Ukraine, the resumption of dialogue between Washington and Moscow to end the conflict could largely be seen as a positive development, provided US allies were properly consulted. This was not done. Moreover, President Trump’s almost daily remarks to the media, his press gaggles, conflicting statements, his demands from Kyiv, and the insults he deals President Zelensky complicate the picture.
On February 19, aboard Air Force One, he elaborated on how Ukraine could pay back Washington for its support during the past three years. Mr. Trump expressed his anger at Mr. Zelensky for treating the US Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent rudely and refusing to sign a deal about “the rare earth and some oil, et cetera, et cetera”.
Later, The US National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, told Fox News that Zelensky, should “tone down” his criticism of the US and take a “hard look” at the deal. Reportedly, the “deal” proposes giving Washington $500bn worth of minerals in return for US military aid.
Last week, Foreign Minister Lavrov called President Zelensky a “pathetic individual”. Mr. Trump called him a “dictator”. Mr. Trump’s co-president Elon Musk claimed that Ukrainians “despised” their president and that Trump was right to leave him out of the talks with Russia. Moreover, Mr. Trump once again targeting President Biden said that Mr. Zelensky “played Biden like a fiddle”. He must have mixed names. Nonetheless, such harmony between the US and Russia must have shocked Europe.
At least, the US envoy to Ukraine, General Keith Kellogg, at the end of his three-day visit to Kyiv praised Mr. Zelensky as “the embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war”. But that came only amid conflicting reports about how close the US and Ukraine were to a deal about minerals.
The first month of the Trump presidency, no doubt to the satisfaction of Moscow, has wreaked havoc not only in the EU but also in NATO leading to questions about US commitment to the Alliance. After all, the EU and NATO have 27 and 32 member states respectively, of which 23 are members of both.
Mr. Trump has pressed NATO countries with greater force than in his first term in office to raise their defense expenditures to 5% of their GDP. Last week, however, Defense Secretary Hegseth ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans to cut 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years. And, Robert G. Salesses, a senior Pentagon official, said in a statement that the money saved could be “realigned” to pay for new priorities in the Trump administration, including the “Iron Dome for America”.[vii]
What kind of a final Ukraine deal is on Mr. Trump’s mind? Would he allow Mr. Putin to call the result a win for Russia if not an outright victory? How would NATO member states react/adapt to Washington’s policy reversal on Ukraine? Would they remain divided or together rebuild NATO’s European column? What would be the middle and long-term consequences of the rise of the far-right in France and now in Germany? If the gap between the two sides of the Atlantic were to widen, who would lead Europe? These questions are likely to remain on the West’s agenda for a while.
Relations with Europe aside, is Mr. Trump inspiring confidence in the US? Looking at the polls, it is hard to say. He has mentioned, on more than one occasion, running for an unconstitutional third term, setting an example for those elsewhere with similar aspirations. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk’s aggressive tactics to reshape the federal government are causing growing concern, even among some Republicans. Last Friday President Trump fired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown and six other senior Pentagon officials in a purge regarded as an injection of politics into the selection of the nation’s top military leaders, according to the Washington Post.
It remains to be seen whether or not the Turkish saying, “two acrobats cannot dance on the same rope” would eventually define the Trump-Musk relationship.
Mr. Trump has proved a huge challenge for Europe. However, autocrats in the Middle East and beyond, while on edge because of Mr. Trump’s unpredictability and hard-to-meet demands, must be delighted with the way he governs.
A must-read Foreign Affairs essay titled “Trump and the Perils of Ungoverning” by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum draws attention to the risks of undermining government reliability and authority. They say:
“Trump will judge both appointees and civil servants by one criterion: loyalty, defined not by commitment to a programmatic agenda but by unquestioning obedience to the president.
“Staffing the federal government with sycophants is not about ensuring loyalty to an agenda. It is about ensuring submission to the president. And it serves to amplify what we call “ungoverning”: the degradation of state capacity and the substitution of unchecked personal will for the difficult, necessary business of shaping, implementing, and assessing policy for the nation. The administration will sideline experts and circumvent regular processes of information gathering and consultation. In so doing, it will degrade state capacity; the premium Trump places on personal loyalty will result in confounding his ability to govern.
“The question now is whether those around Trump will work to check his appetite for ungoverning. As subject-specific experts are replaced by flatterers, the government’s ability to achieve lasting, large-scale results shrinks. As process is shunted aside in favor of one person’s will, the state’s ability to gather accurate information and make effective judgments corrodes; its capacity to design, refine, and implement policy disappears. Ultimately, ungoverning makes the strongman weak.”[viii]
My conclusion of the essay is that the replacement of meritocracy with personal loyalty risks turning the government and even the state into a non-entity.
As for Türkiye, we are mostly preoccupied with economic decline, investigations, arrests, the future of our democracy, and the increasing “combination of powers” as opposed to the “separation of powers” that defines democratic rule. Foreign policy is the last worry of the average Turk. And it seems the government’s priority is to host a possible Putin-Trump summit to show our people and the world that we remain engaged in the highest levels of global diplomacy. We should not forget, however, that every favor by Mr. Trump comes at a cost.
[i] https://www.state.gov/secretary-of-state-marco-rubio-national-security-advisor-mike-waltz-and-special-envoy-to-the-middle-east-steve-witkoff-with-jennifer-hansler-of-cnn-and-matthew-lee-of-the-associated-press/
[ii] http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/76288
[iii] https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2014-12/features/looking-back-ukraines-nuclear-predicament-and-nonproliferation-regime
[iv] https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/rso/nato/1790818/?lang=en
[v] https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/rso/nato/1790803/?lang=en&clear_cache=Y
[vi] https://diplomaticopinion.com/2022/01/03/russia-proposes-a-new-security-architecture-in-europe-and-beyond/
[vii] https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/article/4071371/statement-by-performing-the-duties-of-deputy-secretary-of-defense-robert-g-sale/
[viii] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/trump-and-perils-ungoverning?s=ERZZZ005ZX&utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=weekend_read&utm_content=20250208&utm_term=ERZZZ005ZX&utm_campaign=NEWS_FA%20Weekend%20Read_020825_Trump%20and%20the%20Perils%20of%20Ungoverning
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