Ukraine

At a time when western commentators are tying themselves in knots trying to parse the ongoing Ukraine peace discussions, the Russian media is suddenly strikingly united in its coverage. There is a common misperception that, like their Soviet forebears, the Russian press simply reproduces some standard party line, day in, day out. In fact, there is often surprising pluralism, with different newspapers having their own interests and angles. However, the Kremlin does impose its will when it comes to especially important or sensitive matters, with editors receiving tyomniki, informal but authoritative guidance from the presidential administration on lines to take and topics to avoid. When the press is speaking in one voice, that voice is Putin’s.

With Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s political authority already under grave assault in the wake of a major corruption scandal, he now faces a new challenge – this time from his erstwhile ally, the United States. A high-level US delegation led by army secretary Daniel Driscoll is meeting Zelensky in Kyiv today to present the latest version of a peace plan aimed at ending the war. The contents of the plan have not been officially revealed and so far it has not been publicly endorsed by Donald Trump. But two things are already clear. One is that there’s nothing new in it. And two, there’s nothing good in it for Zelensky.

Very well then – war. That is the bottom line of Vladimir Putin’s response to Donald Trump’s latest attempts at mediating an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In August, Putin rejected the peace deal that Trump lined up in Alaska. Now, the Kremlin has scuttled the White House’s plan for a summit in Budapest by insisting that Russia’s demands for Ukrainian demilitarization and “de-nazification” remain in force. Clearly, the Russian President still believes that he can win the war on the battlefield – and terrorize Ukraine’s civilians. What is Putin’s plan?

Here we go again. Now that Russian president Vladimir Putin has resumed his bombardment of Ukraine, President Donald Trump is responding by sanctioning the oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil. So much for the vaunted peace push that Trump has been engaging in since he met with Putin in August in Alaska.  The atmosphere has turned distinctly frostier since they held their pow-wow. Budapest was supposed to be a reprise of the brief thaw that took place in August but Trump has got cold feet after the Kremlin indicated that it was in no mood to compromise over the actual boundaries between it and Ukraine.

The identity of the saboteurs who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022 was for years the western security establishment’s worst-kept secret. Just two weeks after a series of explosions within the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark crippled three of the four undersea natural-gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany, Scandinavian diplomats in Brussels were already being quietly briefed that the most likely culprits were Ukrainian. By January 2023, a forensic investigation by German police had discovered traces of the explosives on board the charter yacht Andromeda and found that the vessel’s movements aligned exactly with the location of the blasts.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine continued his excellent sartorial adventure at the White House, appearing in an elegantly cut black suit and shirt on Friday as he met with President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room. But while they may have helped avoid any emanations of wrath from his host, his habiliments did not appear to prompt Trump to approve the dispatch of Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv, a coveted item indeed. “We’d much rather not need Tomahawks,” Trump said. “We’d much rather get the war over. It could mean a big escalation. It could mean a lot of bad things could happen.”  Back to square one, in other words. In August, Trump had claimed that his summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin would lead to a breakthrough. It never happened.

President Trump has once again played the global foreign-policy commentariat for fools. They have taken a startling statement from Trump’s Truth social-media account on Tuesday as a sign of a new policy – or at least a new attitude – toward the Russia-Ukraine war. Yet what Trump actually wrote says nothing of the sort.  If Trump really were newly committing himself to Ukraine, why would say, as he’s so often said before, “I wish both countries well”? One country has invaded the other; wishing one of them well means wishing defeat on the other. Wishing them both well indicates indifference.

As peace in Ukraine seems still far and the conflict is witnessing a new escalation of violence, a new breed of private military companies is already emerging, ready for a post-conflict Ukraine. Rooted in a draft legislation “On International Defense Companies” proposed on April 2024, the Ukrainian government aims to channel combat-seasoned veterans into regulated, transparent security firms rather than leave them adrift or, worse, turn them into mercenaries for hire in distant conflicts from the Sahel to the DRC.

“The purpose of NATO,” Lord Hastings Ismay, the alliance’s first secretary general, once quipped, was “to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.” That formula defined Europe’s security for decades, and it worked because US power anchored the alliance. But as President Donald Trump’s administration demands its European allies carry their share of the burden, shows little appetite for sending troops to Europe and worries more about the Southeast Asian theater, Europeans are being forced to confront their lack of political will for their own security, underinvestment in defense and dwindling public appetite to fight for their country.

The summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin ended predictably, without a ceasefire deal or, it seems, assent on much else. Trump said “Many points were agreed to, and there are just a very few that are left,” but failed to offer any details. Even if true, the leftovers are critical, and the gulf between the two governments on the war remains huge. Critically, Putin cares more about security than image or economics, and understandably believes that he would lose leverage by agreeing to halt military operations before winning the concessions he demands from Ukraine. Nevertheless, the summit improved, however slightly, the prospects for negotiating an end to the war.

"Alaska," said the mountaineer Jon Krakauer, "is a place that constantly reminds you of just how small you are in the grand scheme of things." I doubt somehow that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will echo that sentiment when they meet tomorrow in the Last Frontier to carve up the future between themselves – Plumb-Pudding-in-Danger-style. The two leaders will have each traveled some eight hours over their own mighty lands to see each other. It will be a case of today, Ukraine; tomorrow, ze world.  Yesterday, the Trump administration went to great lengths to assure nervous European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Trump would not, in their absence, simply roll over for Putin.

Already the Kremlin is setting the terms of the forthcoming summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Steve Witkoff, Trump's emissary, set the meeting in motion with his mission to Moscow on Wednesday, which Trump called “highly productive.” But productive of what? Putin’s foreign-policy adviser Yuri Ushakov stated today that it was the White House, not the Kremlin, that wanted the meeting. He went on to dismiss Trump's proposal that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could take part in a tripartite negotiation, noting that “for this to happen, certain conditions must be created. Unfortunately, such conditions are far away yet.” Those conditions remain the complete surrender of Ukraine.  The Kremlin, in other words, has a strategic plan.