Photo by Roman Pilpey / AFP via Getty Images
Ukraine, after nearly 1,400 days of heroic resistance against a far bigger enemy, is now in mortal danger. Desperate attempts by European leaders to mitigate the damage done by Donald Trump’s stab in the back may yet succeed. Last-minute talks in Abu Dhabi based on a modified plan have brought Russian and Ukrainian negotiators together.
In itself, that may be a good sign. But there is still no evidence that the US has been able to solidify a plan that preserves a secure Ukraine and persuades Vladimir Putin to stop his war. Ukraine is struggling. If the original so-called peace proposal from Washington had been stuffed down Volodymyr Zelensky’s gullet, the consequence would be decades of greater danger for Europe and the world.
We don’t know if Ukraine’s political economy will collapse. We don’t know whether Putin, calculating the odds, will refuse any deal, and drive for a final victory, pushing to the borders of Poland, Hungary and Romania. We don’t know whether he believes imminent German rearmament means he should spread a war of expansion now. We don’t know where, given the opportunity to regroup and rearm, Russia would go next.
But we can clearly see the following. After the private, “no-Kyiv here”, talks between President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s go-between, Trump put his authority behind a plan to formally dismember Ukraine, reward the invader and then leave the maimed country, having evacuated its front line, shorn of vital defences. The 28-point plan seemed effectively written in Moscow. It was certainly one-sided, very much against Ukraine. Of Zelensky, Trump snorted, “He’ll have to like it.”
It is hard to convey the shock and brutality of that ultimatum. Last week, I spoke with Kurt Volker, the well-informed and moderate former US ambassador to Ukraine. He was confident that the Witkoff plan was a fantasy, soon to be forgotten, and that Trump would not associate his name with it.
In No 10, there was horror. There is particular concern about the potential loss of US intelligence, which Europe cannot replace, and Trump’s use of Russian frozen assets, which Europe dithered over for too long. But the British view is that “we must at all costs stay in the game, not flounce”, taking a lead from Zelensky. One silver lining is that Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, is leading the negotiations – “the most constructive of these guys”, as one Whitehall insider puts it.
But despite all the determination to restore order and calm, there is a real sense of crisis. The Ukranians are now scrambling to arrange a flying visit to Washington to agree a compromise deal at the earliest opportunity. It’s not a surprise that in the end Kyiv bows to Trump, but what we don’t know is whether the bowing will make any difference. Is the aggressor having second thoughts? There’s no sign of it yet. Trump accused Zelensky of showing “zero gratitude” and has returned to the theatrics of February, when he humiliated the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office on live television. Trump’s plan, as the French have put it, is close to Ukrainian capitulation. There are vague promises of American help under certain circumstances, but the Ukrainian army is to be limited in numbers and weaponry, as Russia prefers. And given his instincts on this, who would trust a Trump military-security guarantee? The bear is nearby. The fence is down. The man with the big stick is walking away.
If this sticks – if it is agreed under duress by Kyiv – the world may ask: what was it all for? The tens of thousands of Ukrainians, nurses, teachers, computer scientists, poets and chemists, blown to pieces, maimed and pulped by Russian artillery? The children orphaned or abducted, the families splintered, the refugees? The shells of devastated cities? All that fear, cold and hunger?
Yes, Ukraine could clearly reject it all and fight on without America’s help, relying more heavily on Britain, France and other EU allies. But when President Zelensky addressed his country on 21 November – warning of a choice between sacrificing its dignity and losing its main ally ahead of a bitter winter – he sounded almost done. There comes a point in any conflict, from a boxing match to the Western Front in 1918, when the wind goes out of one side. The fight is effectively over. Is this such a moment?
Western Europe, including Britain, protests. It insists on a stronger, better deal. But Europe was blindsided. European protests are regarded by the United States as mere chirruping, the cicada chorus to the real action. We knew it before, I suppose, but never was it clearer that we are the background noise in a world carved up by emperors.
We should not blame Donald Trump entirely. He is only being himself, doing what he knows – a man mostly interested in money, deals and the few who are powerful enough to earn his respect. There is no spark left of the Enlightenment or any moral order coming from Washington, any more than there is from the dismal Orthodox imperialism of Moscow. It is an old world again: the Gilded Age meets Tsar Nicholas II.
It is a new world, too. Should Europe blame itself? Its leaders told us they were standing shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine. They may even have believed it. But Europe, despite its vast wealth, was never fit for a modern war. EU countries, with honourable exceptions, would not cut welfare budgets or other state spending to rearm at speed. A British government insider puts it like this: “Europe is such a long way from being able to secure the skies. We can’t move lethal equipment there. Europe is at the foothills of being serious.”
We have all been caught short. And for all of us – whether relying on easily sabotaged undersea cables (carrying between 95 and 99 per cent of all intercontinental internet traffic and international data transfers), enduring persistent drone disruption at airports, or facing the threat directly over the Baltic – the world looks more dangerous after the American ultimatum. We have known for some time that we could no longer rely on the United States. But what, really, have we done about that?
With Europe’s centrist and social democratic leaders besieged by a surging populist right – much of it sympathetic to Russia – it is clear that the continent lacks convincing leadership for these dark times. Keir Starmer and President Emmanuel Macron both prided themselves on a special understanding with Trump; both now seem hideously exposed by what is happening, even if the Starmer relationship is being deployed again. The collective leadership of the EU under Ursula von der Leyen looks so unthreatening to the Kremlin that Russia’s peace plan for Ukraine includes allowing its former enemy to join the union. Why not? After all, in terms of hard power, the EU means nothing.
Perhaps even a more active Europe would not have been able to turn aside the great forces at play. For all Ukraine’s heroism, there was no chance of her recapturing the Donbas or Luhansk – never mind Crimea. For all the pressures on Russia, with European countries continuing to buy its oil and the world market, particularly India, as thirsty as ever, the Kremlin has successfully run a war economy that would have long outlasted Kyiv. All those who hoped for a democratic internal uprising against Putin have been repeatedly disappointed.
And meanwhile, with his primitive instinct for weakness, Trump seized the perfect moment to strike. After expressing irritation and disappointment with Putin in the aftermath of the Alaska summit on 15 August, and even talking of punishing Russia with further sanctions, Trump has pirouetted. He may have concluded that Putin’s forces are winning on the battlefield and that Ukraine cannot survive another harsh winter. Sadly, there is something in this: even Downing Street believes that the current trajectory of the war needs to be broken.
For, despite horrendous losses, the Putin regime is able to continue recruiting and sending troops to the front, while an exhausted and depleted Ukraine suffers from desertions – now numbering as many as its active service personnel. At least 90,000 investigations have been opened since the invasion, with the numbers rising sharply last year and into the next. Meanwhile, according to Ukrainian newspapers, more than 250,000 criminal cases have been opened into soldiers’ absence without leave.
Almost 100,000 fighting-age Ukrainian men left the country between August and October of this year. Conscription officers patrol towns and cities to seize those without the right papers and send them straight to training, where the age of the conscripts rises. The overall recruitment picture is becoming less like the patriotic enthusiasm of conscripted Europe in 1914 and more like the naval press gangs roaming Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. Of course, there are plenty of parallels in Russia – a far more authoritarian society, but also a much larger one. Even now, war isn’t all drones and robots. Size tells.
Volodymyr Zelensky is unpopular and, one way or another, probably on his way out. Still admired abroad as patriotic and courageous, the huge corruption scandal festering around him has been eroding his authority for months. Key government figures are implicated in a plot to siphon $100m (£76m) from contracts for building protective shelters over critical equipment used to supply power to nuclear plants, which, after relentless Russian attacks, cannot keep the lights or heating on. The accused include Zelensky’s justice minister, German Galushchenko, the energy minister, Svitlana Hrynchuk (both dismissed), and members of the state-owned nuclear power company Energoatom.
As with so many political scandals, the details and personal connections get people talking. The well-connected conspirators were scuttling around Kyiv carrying bags of cash so heavy that one was heard complaining of back pain. They used Hollywood-style nicknames such as “Sugarman” and “Professor”.
One of Zelensky’s closest allies, Timur Mindich, with whom he co-founded a television studio before entering politics, has recently fled his opulent Kyiv apartment – with its notorious golden toilet – probably for Israel. Zelensky now disowns Mindich, saying that the president of a country at war can have no friends. Yet as recently as July, he clipped the wings of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor, attempting to limit their powers, until public protests and diplomatic pressure from Britain and other allies forced a U-turn.
There is a theory that Zelensky will actually be emboldened by the scandal – that it gives him more reason to hang tough and remind his countrymen of the need to maintain the authority and discipline while at war. Well, maybe – but corruption at the highest levels hardly makes appeals to patriotism and sacrifice any more persuasive.
Trump, himself no stranger to scandal and its political consequences, smelled the blood in the water and moved. Zelensky was “weak”, and his only other option was to “fight his little heart out”. (This American president has the vocabulary of a natural bully.)
Today, Zelensky seems to the rest of the world an increasingly tragic figure – deeply flawed but genuinely heroic – now caught between Putin’s meat grinder and Trump’s art of the deal. As he said in his recent televised address: “Right now is one of the hardest moments in our history. Right now, Ukraine is under some of the heaviest pressure yet… We might face a very difficult choice: either losing dignity or risk losing a key partner.”
What next? There are many scenarios. One is a world in which Putin takes the win, steps down, and ushers in a less aggressive Kremlin leadership – a world in which we all calm down. Another is one in which he rejects any deal at the last minute, smashes through a demoralised Ukrainian army towards Kyiv and is already planning an assault in the Baltics. A country whose entire ideology and economy is bent on expansion rarely shrugs and gives up. Then again, there is yet another scenario in which Trump listens to European leaders, modifies the plan to allow Ukraine to defend herself effectively in the future and somehow still manages to sell that to Putin.
So many possibilities. But there is one scenario we should focus on – both because it is highly plausible and because it would so radically change life across Europe. Imagine if the conditions demanded by Washington, even if drafted in Moscow, are imposed on Zelensky. And then Ukraine breaks.
It seems highly unlikely that Zelensky would survive accepting these proposals. He could not continue to delay an election, and the polling is very grim for him. Among the candidates to replace him, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi – former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian forces, sacked by Zelensky in February last year and currently ambassador in London – would be a strong contender.
But this would be a humiliated and insecure country, many of whose best and brightest have already fled. Who would want to serve in a Ukrainian military deliberately pruned of its true strength against a rearming Russia so close to home? Who would build a business there? It would be more a territory than a proper country, without true autonomy – the kind of liminal space in which criminality flourishes. Would the most battle-hardened, determined Ukrainian fighters walk away, or would they regroup as guerrilla units?
In No 10, this is also the outcome that most alarms people. As negotiations with Team Trump continue, alongside the desire to keep Ukraine protected, there remains the question of how successfully the post-deal territory can be shored up and given some resilience. As one source puts it, “The strategic question is how much cement and ballast you put into Rump Ukraine.” In today’s climate, that inevitably means huge economic support coming from the rest of Europe, not the US. But once a nation has lost its self-belief and a clear route to a better future for its people, patching it up becomes a horrendous, thankless business.
We would not be talking about a normal European country, even if it were imported into the EU without the usual guarantees. It is hard to think of contemporary parallels, but perhaps the princely states that survived like shadows inside Britain’s Indian empire are the closest – the sad maharajas who did not even control their own railways or postal systems, the disarmed nawabs with no authority. They survived for a long time, but only as pockets of embarrassing corruption and poverty, whose leaders were an international joke.
Perhaps all this seems too bleak, but this is a bleak moment. Prepare next for the great sell: a wave of propaganda rolling soon in our direction, praising Trump, the inspired bringer of peace, brushing aside petty concerns about geography, missiles and tank divisions. Brace for the reassuring, conciliatory speech from a smiling Putin, so eagerly quoted by diminished Western leaders. We will be fed heartwarming stories of returning villagers and of churches being restored; a new age of peace and amity with Russia will be proclaimed. Believe not a word.
Maybe, in the end, this was all inevitable. Small states can defeat great ones – Vietnam, Afghanistan – but they are the exception, and they are rarely neighbours of their greater enemies. Mostly, might prevails. This is what Donald Trump thinks, and this is what Vladimir Putin thinks. And with the vast power of Xi Jinping’s China watching it all, they are in the driving seat. If this capitulation is imposed, that is the big lesson to remember: there are no reliable international rules or norms any more. If you are part of the world of smaller nations, tool up, onshore what industries you can, start filling the sandbags. Because history is back, and our enemies are coming, one day, for us.
