A Russian rejection of a Trump-brokered ceasefire could see Ukraine’s defence bolstered by the US, the Defence Select Committee has heard.
Taking evidence on what the upcoming year holds for the war in eastern Europe, the cross-party panel of MPs heard of a potential ‘carrot and stick’ scenario that could swing battlefield outcomes.
President-elect Donald Trump’s pending decision on how the US, the primary military donor to Ukraine, should handle the conflict has been anticipated for several months.
Dr Patricia Lewis, former director of the International Security Programme at Chatham House, said: “One proposal that’s been moving around for a while is that President Trump would offer, essentially, a deal to Putin – but if Putin were not to take it then he would then support Ukraine much more strongly.”
Describing this as a plausible “counter-offer”, Dr Lewis described a scenario whereby the “carrot” offered to Moscow would be demilitarised zones dividing Russian-controlled Ukraine and Ukraine itself – “not dissimilar perhaps to West and East Germany back in the Cold War”.
“But the alternative would be a strengthened Ukraine, by President Trump’s administration. And that would be the stick,” she added.
Dr Lewis said a decisive battlefield victory for either side is less likely than the ceasefire outcome in 2025, or simply more of the same.
Retired Air Marshal Edward Stringer, a Senior Fellow at the think tank Policy Exchange, said Russia, as well as Ukraine, will be drained if war persists in a similar fashion, and that the frontline will have hardly shifted in a year if things continue as they are.
“[Russia] is losing through tanks and artillery, 300-odd gun barrels a month, and its forges allow it to make about 20,” he said.
All experts, however, agreed that the actions of a Trump administration present a huge variable when predicting the outcome of the war in 2025.
Orysia Lutsevych, director of the Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House, told the committee the concept of a ceasefire for Ukraine, on the back foot, currently without protective security arrangements agreed and facing up to an adversary unwavering in its objectives, is considered “a big threat”.
The expert says Trump will engage in mediation “if he can win”.
“He wants to do it quickly, and he will be very transactional,” she added.
