Ukraine: slow-motion ceasefire

By Richard North - March 31, 2025

There is much chatter on the legacy media and elsewhere, conveying the frustration of Donald Trump over his inability to pin down president Putin on the ceasefire in Ukraine.

Alongside that, there is much analysis, including a long dissertation from Mark Galeotti in the Sunday Times on how Putin has been able to manipulate the US president, thereby pursuing his own agenda.

One has to spend the time reading much of this stuff, but the reality is that the outcome of the Trump initiative was never going to be any different. As long as Putin’s troops are masters of the battlefield and they continue to chip away at their opposing forces, biting into Ukrainian territory, there is no incentive for the Russian president to stand down his forces.

That, of course, is the point that the media (and the politicians) so often miss, brought about by their failure to attend to the minutiae of what is happening on the ground, where the Russians have almost completely evicted the Ukrainian forces from Kursk and continue to make gains elsewhere.

Soon enough, it is anticipated that the Russians will mount a major offensive in the Kharkiv and Sumy oblasts, while currently fending off a number of small-scale Ukrainian counter-attacks, probably intended to unbalance Russian forces and disrupt their plans.

Zelensky is currently claiming that Putin had originally planned to launch this operation eight months ago but had been forced to delay it due to his own invasion of Kursk. And, although there may be a hint of self-justification there, for a failed offensive that has cost the Ukrainians dear, it would not be surprising that, if Putin is committed to this operation, then he will not be looking for a ceasefire any time soon.

Thus. without constant reference to that situation on the ground, the high-level political posturing lacks any contact with the real world, giving the interplay the character of an empty soap opera, where the day-to-day script is designed to titillate and entertain, but will never reach a conclusion.

Galeotti suggests that, to a degree, Putin cannot have a fixed sense of an endgame to the war. He sees the Russian leader as a tactician and an opportunist rather than a strategist and argues that Putin retains his maximalist goal of wanting to see Ukraine firmly under Moscow’s thumb, which is indeed the case.

But, says the analyst, it is unclear how far Putin may be willing to compromise, speculating that he may well not know himself. That, of course, none of us can know, more so if Putin doesn’t have a fixed view, but it is virtually certain that he will continue stalling for as long as there is a prospect of battlefield gains.

What is interesting in all this, from a domestic perspective is the disappearance of Starmer’s high-profile attempt to forge a “coalition of the willing” and lead a multinational peacekeeping force for when the ceasefire is declared.

In a way, Starmer might be secretly pleased that the Trump initiative can so far come to naught, as is saves him from the embarrassment of having the cracks in his own initiative brutally revealed should his bluff have been called, and he was actually required to put boots on the ground.

With the Spectator dismissing Starmer’s proposals as “destined to fail”, risking squandering precious time Ukraine does not have, the prime minister may be fortunate in having milked the situation for publicity, with little risk that he will have to deliver the goods.

And yet, the Spectator, through its writer Matt Whatley, is still of the view that “a durable path towards lasting peace be established”, except that his idea of the “realism” required to resolve the issue is to have the UN assume a monitoring role.

In this case, he says, personnel would likely be drawn from nations experienced in previous peacekeeping missions – such as Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Kenya, Jordan, Cambodia, Cameroon, Nepal, Morocco, Tanzania, Ethiopia.

His view is that the predominance of peacekeepers from the Global South is strategically important. Putin frequently positions himself as a defender of Global South interests against what he characterises as a hypocritical western-led order. Thus, their presence should help temper infractions, particularly those that might endanger peacekeepers.

This is certainly a view, although one struggles with the idea that poorly equipped and often badly-led third world forces might successfully intervene in a conflict dominated by one of the world’s largest and most powerful military forces, especially as there would be no ready availability of the sophisticated airpower needed for such a role.

But then Whatley is a former army officer who was part of the Kosovo verification mission. He has also held senior positions in the EU monitoring mission to Georgia and the OSCE special monitoring mission in Ukraine, which all goes to underline the premise that one sees solutions through the filter of one’s own experiences.

Oddly enough, Putin himself is involving the UN, not as a peacekeeping force, but to organise and supervise a presidential election in Ukraine, delayed by the imposition of martial law – a broad hint that Zelensky can’t be trusted to arrange a fair election in his own country.

For the moment, however, the focus is very much on Trump, with even the BBC elevating his response to its lead story on its website, retailing an outburst from the US president who has said that he is “very angry” and “pissed off” with Putin after his weeks of failing to pin down the Russian leader.

The outburst came in an NBC News interview, when Trump expressed his anger at Putin’s attacks on Zelensky’s credibility, adding a threat to impose a 50 percent tariff on countries buying Russian oil if there was no ceasefire.

Specifically, Trump said: “If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault – which it might not be – I am going to put secondary tariffs… on all oil coming out of Russia”.

How much of this is theatre, one can never tell with Trump, but as he is saying that the Kremlin “knew of his anger”. He also stresses that he still has “a very good relationship” with the Russian leader and the “anger dissipates quickly” if Putin “does the right thing”.

That might actually indicate that the “anger” is somewhat confected, but it is also probably the case that Putin, a former KGB official, is immune to such outbursts, real or otherwise.

Zelensky doesn’t seem particularly impressed, writing on social media after the NBC News interview that “Russia continues looking for excuses to drag this war out even further”, which appears to be precisely Putin’s gameplan.

The Ukrainian president says that “Putin is playing the same game he has since 2014”, when Russia unilaterally annexed the Crimean peninsula, adding that: “This is dangerous for everyone – and there should be an appropriate response from the United States, Europe, and all our global partners who seek peace”.

The problem for Zelensky, though, is that his definition of an “appropriate response” is probably very different from those of his partners and, between the United States and Europe, with the UK as an outlier, there is no consensus on what the response should be, or who should be responsible for making it happen.

The ultimate irony here is that, after all the delays and prevarication, Germany – which has so far stood aloof from the fray – is now signalling a preparedness to participate in a European peacekeeping force.

This comes from defence minister Boris Pistorius, who is nevertheless urging caution in making any public commitments while a potential ceasefire is still being negotiated. “This is nothing we should discuss publicly on the market places before it’s even clear whether we will have a ceasefire or not”, he says.

Given the political turmoil in Germany though, with talks on forming a new government yet to be concluded, this idea may be junked by the incoming coalition when it is eventually formed.

Whether the prospect of German panzers powering up once again for a drive on the Ukrainian steppes will actually help the peace process is only to be imagined, but one suspects that there might be some slight reservations on the part of Putin.

But since the chances of an early ceasefire seems increasingly remote, the spectre of armour with German Iron Cross insignia bearing down on Russian forces remains somewhat hypothetical. This is probably just as well as some may think that there would be few better ways of starting WWIII.