Owen Matthews

There’s one key thing that one should know about Ukraine peace talks scheduled to begin in London today, and that is that they will fail. The reason is simple: Volodymyr Zelensky is being asked to concede Russia’s legal possession of the Crimean peninsula which Moscow annexed in 2014. And Ukraine's president has said, in the most emphatic possible terms, that he will not do it. Zelensky cannot accept it because such a concession will be political suicide That’s not because Zelensky is pig-headed, a warmonger, or refuses to accept the reality that there is no way for Ukraine ever to recover the lost peninsula. Zelensky cannot accept because such a concession will be political suicide. It runs the strong risk of triggering a civil war inside Ukraine.

Perhaps Donald Trump is not quite the chump the Kremlin has taken him for. Trump is ‘pissed off’ with Russia over its foot-dragging over a ceasefire in Ukraine, he told NBC’s Kristen Welker. More, Vladimir Putin’s demands that Ukraine’s government be replaced with a transitional one as the price for peace negotiations made Trump ‘very angry.’  If Putin has any sense at all, he’ll take those words very seriously. Because like an orange version of the Incredible Hulk, the Kremlin won’t like Trump when he’s angry.  Over the last month Putin has worn his trademark smirking smile at all his public appearances. And well he might, as the new US administration seemed to spontaneously have switched sides from Kyiv to Moscow.

Hark ye now, O despots of the world and enemies of freedom: as the American beacon of democracy fades, Europe stands ready and willing to take its place as the arsenal of democracy. ‘We have agreed on a strategy for fully re-arming and re-equipping Europe,’ tweeted French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday. ‘We will fully restore our independence in the coming five years.’ Take that, Trump and Putin! Europe is stepping up to defend Ukraine and defend itself. To that end, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week announced a ReArm Europe plan that could see up to €800 billion poured into the defence sector over the next four years. Small problem: that little weasel word ‘could’ is carrying a lot of weight.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have very different negotiating styles. Trump lines up his offer in advance, browbeating everyone on his side into compliance before slapping his bottom line on the table. Putin, by contrast, is a haggler. He loads his proposals with excess demands that he intends to discard during the negotiation process to get to a final deal. Put simply, what Putin says he wants and what he realistically expects to get are two different things. At first glance, Russia’s initial response to US proposals for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine includes several major deal-breakers that Ukraine could never accept. Most notably, the Kremlin demands international recognition that Ukraine’s Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces are now part of Russia.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have very different negotiating styles. Trump lines up his offer in advance, browbeating all the parties on his own side into compliance before slapping his bottom line on the table. Putin, by contrast, is a haggler. He loads his proposals with superstructure intended to be jettisoned in the course of getting to yes. Or to put it another way, what Putin says he wants and what he realistically expects to get are two different things. On the face of it, Russia’s first response to US proposals for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine contain several major deal-breakers that the Ukrainians could never swallow.

The main achievement of the US-Ukrainian talks in Jeddah was to produce a ceasefire document that Russia might actually want to sign. A long list of Ukrainian red lines – such as a partial ceasefire in the air and sea only, and security guarantees before any ceasefire was implemented – were swept aside. What’s on the table is essentially an unconditional ceasefire on all fronts, initially limited to thirty days. Putin now needs to decide whether it’s in Russia’s interests to accept.

Make no mistake: whatever higher moral authority they may have invoked in their defence, Soviet and Russian spies have never been good or honourable people. Kim Philby, the suave Martini-sipping traitor sent dozens of brave anti-Communist volunteers to their deaths. Konon Molody – alias Gordon Lonsdale, Canadian vending machine salesman and kingpin of the Portland Spy Ring – did not balk at blackmailing and threatening his hapless sub-agents into doing the KGB’s dirty work. But as the sordid revelations about the latest crop of Russian spies convicted yesterday in the Old Bailey’s Courtroom Seven reveal, the major difference between Moscow’s agents of yore and those of today is how lowbrow, how pathetic, how amateurish Russian intelligence operations appear to have become.

Will the real Volodymyr Zelensky please stand up? On Sunday, Ukraine’s president defiantly stated that ‘the final deal about ending the war is very, very far … nobody’s even started all those steps yet.’ But just three days later, Zelensky’s office issued a statement saying more or less the opposite. ‘None of us wants an endless war,’ read his official communiqué. ‘Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer … we are ready to work fast to end the war.’ So is Kyiv’s plan a quick ceasefire or a fight till victory? Zelensky’s mixed messages have left his allies confused and provided his enemies with political ammunition.

Days after the disastrous White House showdown between Volodymir Zelensky and Donald Trump, Sir Keir Starmer has done an undoubtedly impressive job in quickly rallying western leaders to Kyiv’s cause. The ‘Europe Plus’ partnership suggested by Starmer will be a ‘coalition of the willing’ to protect Ukraine that includes major non-European players such as Canada and, crucially, Turkey.  But make no mistake over the nature of Europe Plus’s new role. It is not, as some more excitable commentators have called it, a ‘mini-Nato.’ Europe is not taking over responsibility for its own security. A new European world order is not being built before our eyes.

Seldom in modern times has the fate of a whole nation been so dependent on a single meeting and on a single relationship. When Volodymyr Zelensky entered the Oval Office on Friday he had one job: to repair a deep and catastrophic rift between him and Donald Trump, who the previous week had called the Ukrainian president a ‘dictator’. Zelensky held the future of US support for his country’s defence against Russia in his hands.  But instead of a reconciliation, the meeting turned into an epochal diplomatic train wreck. So disastrous was the exchange that by the end Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington Oksana Markarova was holding her head in her hands.

US President Donald Trump has announced that Ukraine is ready to sign a deal that gives US investors a share in the country’s mineral riches. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, who two days ago vowed not to sign any deal that his countrymen would be paying for ‘for ten generations’ is due in Washington on Friday to sign a revised accord. The US’s most controversial demand – that Washington keep $500 billion in revenue from exploiting Ukraine’s resources as payback for military aid – has reportedly been removed from the final text.  While the final details of the deal remain undecided, one thing is certain: the scale of Ukraine’s mineral wealth and its actual value on world markets have been spectacularly overstated by both the US and Ukraine.

Three years ago today, Russian tanks rolled over the Ukrainian border in a massive surprise attack. Russian unit commanders and soldiers were told to prepare for a three-day campaign – and indeed by the end of the day parachute units were fighting for control of the vital Hostomel military airport just a few miles from the centre of Kyiv. But over a thousand days later, many of the fundamentals of war and politics have been changed forever.  For one, Europe found its conscience. In the run-up to the full-scale Russian invasion, some European countries – including Britain – were training Ukrainian infantry units in scattered partisan warfare and supplying man-portable anti tank weapons such as NLAWs and Javelins.

Is there any truth to Donald Trump’s extraordinary and, to many, highly offensive comments apparently blaming Volodymir Zelensky for starting the war? Speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said he was ‘disappointed’ that the Ukrainian leader complained about being left out of talks between the US and Russia in Riyad and claimed that Zelensky ‘could have made a deal’ to avert war. A ‘half baked’ negotiator could have secured a settlement years ago ‘without the loss of much land,’ claimed Trump. Trump is factually wrong – but not for the reason most commentators have assumed. Zelensky could indeed have averted the war back in October 2019, and came very close to doing so.