Devastatingly Clear

They used to want it so as to cut taxes, those who demanded that Javier Milei’s chainsaw be taken to Britain’s middling level of welfare spending by OECD standards, but with near-bottom individual benefit generosity and value. Now, though, they want it only because the sixth highest military spending in the world, for only the twenty-second highest population, was still not enough for them, meaning that no amount of money ever could be. Read Owen Matthews both for his own sake and with all of that mind:

What does ‘victory’ in Ukraine mean – or ‘defeat’? Can there be lasting peace without justice? Direct talks between Russia, the US and Ukraine will finally commence in Abu Dhabi early next month, marking the beginning of the end of this bloody war. As Kyiv and Moscow, plus their respective allies, prepare to thrash out the details of a grand bargain, it’s vitally important to clarify what we mean by ‘victory’ or ‘capitulation’, as those terms get thrown around by politicians observing the war’s closing act.

A hot mess of false starts, betrayals, Russian dissembling and European denunciation lies ahead. And like exhausted sumo wrestlers taking up position on opposite sides of the ring before the final bout, both the Kremlin and Kyiv have, on the eve of talks, retreated to something close to their most maximalist negotiating postures. Vladimir Putin, who clearly believes that the momentum of the war is on his side, will continue playing for time at the negotiating table as his missiles and drones knock seven bells out of Ukraine’s cities in a final push to crush its people’s morale. Ukraine, by the same token, will continue its deep-strike wrecking campaign against Russia’s war production and energy infrastructure. Peace is not close. But the outline of what that peace is going to be – partition, security guarantees short of Nato – is obvious.

First and foremost, it’s worth clarifying what talk of Ukraine’s ‘capitulation’ actually means. While the Kremlin has remained grimly inflexible, there is no denying that the focus of the Trump administration’s diplomacy has been essentially on bullying Kyiv into making concessions. Donald Trump cut aid in 2025, and over the past few months has dialled down on US intelligence-sharing with Kyiv, throttled the ability of European countries to buy US military equipment to donate to Ukraine, and reportedly coordinated with Elon Musk to restrict the use of the Starlink mobile internet platform on Ukrainian drones. Volodymyr Zelensky was personally humiliated and told that he ‘had no cards’ in the Oval Office last year, and last week Trump openly called for his ousting. So, yes – Zelensky is being emphatically pushed by Washington to make a deal.

What if, however, after the guns have fallen silent and the new de facto border has been drawn, Ukraine remains free, democratic and emphatically western-aligned? Will it be a capitulation if Ukraine loses land but retains its freedom? That’s precisely the opposite of what Putin set out to achieve, which was to bring Ukraine back into Russia’s sphere of influence and prevent it from developing into an independent state, integrated with the West.

The flip side of the same question is whether signing a peace deal means that Putin will have ‘won’. Again, it’s in no doubt that Putin’s aggression will have been rewarded insofar as he has redrawn the map of Europe by force. The territory of Russia will have expanded by 0.4 per cent, and Putin will doubtless tell his people that he has ‘protected’ the Russian speakers of Donbas by bringing them inside the Motherland. But that will be bluff and lies. Putin failed to establish a puppet regime in Kyiv and showed that even at full tilt, with the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of his own people and at the cost of turning Russia into a war economy, he’s only been able to conquer 22 per cent of the territory of a far weaker regional enemy. If that’s a victory, it feels distinctly hollow. As for raising Russia’s standing in the world, Putin has done the opposite. Far from proving that Russia is a superpower, he’s shown it to be fanatically aggressive but too weak even to impose its will on its closest backyard – while economic isolation from western markets and investment has made Moscow into an economic vassal of China.

The next question is whether Ukraine is defending all of Europe. Many Europeans, including Poland’s deputy prime minister, Radek Sikorski, argue that Putin is an inveterate imperialist who wants to restore the Russian empire. By this logic, if Putin is not defeated in Ukraine, Europeans will have to fight him on their own territory in a few years’ time. Compromise is, in this world view, synonymous with the appeasement of Hitler. But the evidence that Putin actually intends to attack Nato is thin to nonexistent. Sift out the hysterical posturing of Russian TV pundits and the rantings of former president Dmitry Medvedev – who all exist in the carefully managed circus of Russia’s media world to make Putin sound calm and reasonable – and there is precious little that Putin has actually said that signals imperialist intent towards the Baltics, Poland or any other Nato country.

Indeed, last week Putin called statements about the threat of Russia invading Europe ‘political schizophrenia’. True, Putin also denied that he was going to invade Ukraine in 2022 and outright lied about it when he annexed Crimea in 2014. But the more compelling argument is a practical one. If Putin cannot take Donbas, even after half a decade of trying with every weapon in his power, what makes us think that he poses a threat to the world’s greatest military alliance, with 25 times Russia’s GDP and eight times its military spending? And what would the point of a reckless military adventure against Nato be? Putin may be misinformed, but he is not suicidal.

But the most fundamental issue of all is the question of peace vs justice. Europe will continue to argue that defeating Putin is a matter both of principle and of regional security, and thus unless Putin’s aggression is somehow punished there can be no lasting peace. But if Europe truly felt that, maybe it shouldn’t have bought €230 billion (and counting) of Russian oil and gas or allowed Putin to continue his oil exports in Greek ships. Maybe it should have sent Ukraine heavy weapons and rocketry when it needed it. Trump, for all his many flaws, is insisting on peace before further humanitarian catastrophe as a result of Putin’s relentless war against Ukraine’s cities. We can and should question Trump’s motivation, including reports of lucrative back-room energy deals with Russians in Alaska, his quixotic quest for a Nobel prize and his readiness to throw Zelensky under the bus in a desperate bid to reduce gasoline prices before the midterms. But the question Trump has posed is the most urgent one at this stage in the war: what is the point of fighting on?

Peace at the cost of justice is exactly what Trump is calling for. Many will find that position cynical and shocking. But it’s worth taking a hard look at Zelensky’s realistic alternatives. If Ukraine fights on, how long will it be before it will be able to bring Russia economically to its knees with long-range strikes? How long can Ukraine’s manpower hold to maintain the war on the ground? Who in Europe will pay for all this continued war? Is there any realistic chance for Kyiv to reverse the invasion, or liberate its territory, or force Putin to back down from his harshest demands – and if so, how?

The Russian economy and Putin’s political control have proved far more resilient than anyone expected. At the same time, Europe’s self-imposed green-agenda energy vulnerability ensured that cash has kept flowing into Kremlin coffers despite 22 rounds of supposed sanctions. Europe’s military-industrial production proved unable to supply the needs of Ukraine’s war effort. And now a gathering European fiscal crisis means that pretty soon there will be no spare cash to continue funding Ukraine.

Trump will be blamed by Ukrainians and Europeans alike for stabbing Kyiv in the back. And it’s clear that Trump’s current friendliness to Putin is driven in large part by the unexpected consequences of America’s ill-conceived war on Iran. But in an important sense, Trump is also stating the obvious: the Ukraine war is at a stalemate, and it’s best to end it sooner rather than later, before Zelensky runs out of money and men. Russia has not won. And Ukraine has not lost.

It’s worth remembering Joe Biden’s position at the very beginning of the conflict. In a New York Times op-ed on 31 May 2022 entitled ‘What America Will and Will Not Do in Ukraine’, Biden wrote that the US had moved quickly to send Ukraine weaponry and ammunition so it could resist Russian aggression and be ‘in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table’. (He also made clear that the US would never get into a ‘kinetic war’ with Russia.) In November of that year Biden said he’d be prepared to speak with Putin ‘if Putin showed a real interest in ending the war’, and a few weeks later, as he stood next to Zelensky, Biden repeated that talking to Putin would eventually be necessary.

The moment to negotiate has now arrived. True, Trump has comprehensively betrayed Biden’s promise to put Ukraine in the ‘strongest possible position’, and Europe has similarly betrayed Kyiv with its fat financial contributions to Russia’s war economy. Whether Putin has a ‘real interest’ in ending the war also remains to be seen. But the ugly but necessary process of compromise is about to begin.

In a grimly un-comic version of Groundhog Day, all the debates that circulated during the failed Istanbul peace talks of March and April 2022 are swirling once again. Reports are circulating that top Kremlin aides discussed the withdrawal or at least limitation on Nato forces in eastern Europe with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff. That’s a retread of the Kremlin demand often repeated in the months running up to the full-scale invasion in February 2022 that Nato-Russia relations return to a pre-1997-expansion status quo. For Kyiv’s part, Zelensky has once again insisted that the issue of Ukrainian neutrality – in other words, a pledge never to join Nato – is off the table, along with a cap on the size of the country’s armed forces. Zelensky further claims that any question of territorial concessions can only be discussed in person between leaders.

One thing is devastatingly clear: what-ever final deal emerges will be denounced as a betrayal of Ukraine by its allies, as well as by many Ukrainians themselves. But let us not forget that Ukraine has, against all expectations, succeeded in fighting a far larger and better-armed neighbour to a standstill. That is an extraordinary achievement. Ukraine’s survival, against terrifying odds, is its strategic and moral victory. Putin’s failure to bring Kyiv back into Russia’s sphere of influence is his defeat.