What a relief that Vladimir Putin is more of a bully than a strategist. Had he been as savvy as Benjamin Netanyahu he would have suckered the US president into backing a “ceasefire” that meant a victory and impunity.
Instead the White House has announced that planned talks between Donald Trump and Putin to be held in Budapest are off. They were cancelled after Trump said that the current front lines should be frozen as part of an immediate ceasefire.
Putin had reason to believe that he’d renewed backing from the US president for his demand that Ukraine must hand over more territory than Russia has already stolen as part of a deal to stop the shooting – because Trump had earlier said as much.
But now that the Europeans and the UK have made it clear that, alongside Ukraine, a ceasefire can only happen where the fighting actually is going on at the moment, Putin has decided to snub the summit in the Hungarian capital, which had been expected in the next few weeks.
According to the Bloomberg news agency there are now plans for a European proposal modelled on the Trump-inspired Gaza plan, that would give him the chair of a “peace board” to oversee a ceasefire.
Ukraine has long agreed up front to an immediate end to fighting and then progress to longer term peace talks.
Some experts, like Field Marshal David Richards, believe that Ukraine cannot defeat Russia which has captured about 20 per cent of its territory in the east, while Putin has been indicted for war crimes.
Ukraine may now be tilting towards accepting this as a long term status quo but maintaining its legal claims to territories that Moscow has already illegally annexed. Kyiv would only do so if it had cast iron security guarantees.
In Budapest, if Putin had turned up, he may have been able to persuade Trump that eastern Ukraine is naturally part of Russia because it was won at war; and because its population mostly speak Russian. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s guileless and clueless envoy to the Middle East and Russia, has repeatedly accepted this canard.
Trump described Netanyahu’s destruction of Gaza as a “victory” and claimed he had brought peace to the Middle East after 3,000 years. Israel and the Palestinians have been in conflict only since 1947, but global leaders have allowed Trump to bask in false glory because the slaughter in Gaza has, mostly, stopped.
Leaders like Sir Keir Starmer seem to have forgotten that Netanyahu is also under an indictment for war crimes.
But Putin cannot enjoy Netanyahu’s benefits now. He cannot even get a pause in the fighting to be used as a breather and an opportunity to rearm and replenish his forces before forging on into the parts of the Donbas and other regions that he still covets in Ukraine.
Ukraine, Canada, the European Union and the UK are now trying desperately to cement Trump’s support for their scheme because it is seen as the least bad outcome for Kyiv.
Trump may now even agree to sell Tomahawk missiles for use by Ukraine for deep strikes against Russia in an effort to force Putin back into talks that are less obviously favourable to the Kremlin.
But while Ukraine is not winning the war it isn’t, as president Volodymyr Zelensky has said, losing either. On visits to the front lines near Kramatorsk and Zaporizhzhia it is clear that Russia’s advances are being bought at gigantic human cost to Putin’s motherland.
Drone warfare has taken the edge of its ability to send thousands of men against machine guns into meat grinder assaults. Some 40 per cent of Russia’s economy is dedicated to the war effort, it is staggering under the weight of economic sanctions, and could be further hobbled by stopping fuel imports from Moscow to Hungary and Slovenia.
Ukraine has agreed to a ceasefire because it would only do so if there are clear and real signs that other nations are going to genuinely protect Kyiv against further Russian attacks.
Doing so would be a massive undertaking that would absorb the £100 million that the UK has pledged for a future security force in a few days. To keep Russia out of more of Ukraine, and out of the other parts of eastern Europe Putin wants back under Moscow’s yoke, would take the sort of total effort that Lord Richards says Europe cannot manage.
It might be cheaper to actually help Ukraine to defeat Russia outright by giving it the total support it needs to make war not secure peace.
Russia’s forces in Ukraine are poorly motivated and badly led. But they are learning the art of drone warfare fast and will have an understanding that eclipses any other nation in the world on how to make war in the 21st century other than Ukraine.
Their command structures are weak. Ukraine has shown it can break its logistics chains with deep strikes against Moscow. Russia’s forces can be collapsed in the Donbas and if a defeated Russian army went home and toppled the dictator that sent them to kill their neighbours that would be a worthwhile second order effect of actually giving Ukraine the means to avoid a ceasefire until it is free of invaders.
Soldiers here are exhausted and tired. Many are avoiding military service and would be relieved by a ceasefire now. None believe it would end their war, or protect Europe any more than Trump has brought peace to the Middle East.
