Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are offering Kiev a “terrible” deal, but there will never be a better one, writes the British newspaper The Telegraph after the meeting between the two presidents in Alaska, which ended without a breakthrough.
After the meeting in Alaska, Donald Trump conveyed Vladimir Putin's demand to Ukraine and Europe: that the Ukrainians give up the rest of the Donbas in exchange for guarantees of peace and security. This is a terrible proposition, but perhaps the best option Kiev has at the moment.
If a final agreement is signed under these terms, it should be seen as a national tragedy for Ukraine, which has fought valiantly on the front lines only to see Putin’s expenditure of blood and treasure rewarded with land it never conquered in battle. It would be a setback for the West, which sought to provide Kiev with the means to secure its territory, but instead has watched as Europe’s borders were redrawn by force.
The conclusion of the past three and a half years of grueling war is that Russia cannot take all of Ukraine, and that Ukraine cannot drive Russia out of all of its territory. Leaders in Washington and Europe could have tipped the scales by providing more support to Ukraine more quickly, which would have put Kiev in a far better position today. But we are where we are, and we must deal with the world as we find it.
There is still some optimism. These proposals fall far short of what Putin may have envisioned when his forces reached Kiev at the start of the conflict, and are better than many feared in February, when Donald Trump and J.D. Vance had a public spat with Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. The subsequent suspension of American military aid threatened a nightmare scenario in which Putin’s forces could resume their advance.
The key issue is security guarantees. This requires that the military guarantees offered by the United States be clear, binding, and backed by sufficient force to make the prospect of further territorial gains unthinkable. Europe and Britain must also make a real commitment, which will require a faster increase in defense spending than currently planned.
Ukraine will draw on past experience. In 1994, with the Budapest Memorandum, Kiev handed over to Russia the nuclear arsenal inherited from the Soviet Union, in exchange for which the United States, Britain and Russia pledged to respect Ukraine's "sovereignty" and "existing borders", and promised to "refrain from the threat or use of force" against them and to “seek immediate action by the UN Security Council to provide assistance“ if Ukraine ever becomes “the victim of an act of aggression“.
Putin’s actions in 2014 and since have shown that these words are worth less than the paper they are written on. Meaningful security guarantees require not only ironclad promises but also the will and ability to implement them. Even better would be to provide Ukraine with the resources it needs to defend itself, so that delays and hesitations on the part of Western powers never again leave Kiev vulnerable to aggression.
That would be a terrible deal. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a shameless and horrific crime, a flagrant crime committed against every norm of international behavior. The fact that if he can make a peace deal, he will undoubtedly try to claim victory should be little consolation. And the fact that he has achieved less than he set out to do should be little consolation. The just end of the war would be Putin’s complete defeat and his removal from power in Moscow. But we are dealing with the world as it is, not as it should be. This deal, as appalling as it is, could be the least bad option left for Ukraine and its Western allies.