Ukraine: walking away
By Richard North - April 19, 2025
From top of the news agenda in early March, it is difficult now to discern the relative importance of the Ukraine-Russia peace deal, especially if we go by the news headlines, where not a single British national newspaper is running news of the latest developments as the lead story on its front page, and only one (the Guardian) seem to mention it at all on its front page.
That makes for a stark contrast with the BBC, which had been running “Ukraine” as it news website lead for most of yesterday and, at the time of writing, has carried it through into today, with the headline: “Trump says US will ‘pass’ on Ukraine peace talks if no progress soon”.
Probably, when it comes to the BBC, the headline reflects the broadcaster’s obsession with Donald Trump, rather than any great interest in Ukraine, as it is the response of the US president to the lack of progress that makes the story.
In detail, for what it is, the bones of the story emerge from comments made to reporters in the Oval Office yesterday, when he observed that he was not expecting a truce to happen in “a specific number of days” but he wanted it done “quickly”.
Those comments came only hours after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the US would abandon talks “if it’s not going to happen”, declaring bluntly that: “We’re not going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end”, and then adding pointedly that the US had “other priorities to focus on”.
It was then up to Trump to fall behind those comments, or not and he is somewhat wont to do, casting his own people adrift. But this time, it seemed that Rubio was “on message”.
This came clear when Trump was asked about the deal between Russian and Ukraine. Immediately reiterating his general objectives – almost on autopilot – be said: “We’re talking about here people dying. We’re going to get it stopped, ideally”.
With that over, he launched into his substantive comment, saying: “Now if, for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people’, and we’re going to just take a pass”.
It is this, really, that should have propelled the story to the top of the news agenda for, in one lengthy, convoluted sentence, Trump has just re-written the history of the last six months and – as he has done with his tariffs – has completely upended the established order, potentially wiping out the plans of Ukraine’ supporters and playing havoc with their expectations.
As one might expect – although it isn’t always the case – the US media is paying attention. The New York Times has rushed out an analysis piece headed: “Trump administration bolsters Putin with hint of abandoning Ukraine talks”.
The paper posits two scenarios, asking rhetorically whether Rubio and Trump are planning “simply wash their hands of the peace effort, and walk away”, or whether they are actually washing their hands of Ukraine itself,
Of the two, the NYT feels that the latter was implicit in Trump’s confrontation with Zelensky in the Oval Office in February, when he and Vice President JD Vance made it clear to the world that the three-year wartime partnership between Washington and Kiev was shattered.
Whatever the actualité, the paper feels that Rubio’s words are the latest American gift to Putin’s cause, asserting that at every turn since the inauguration, he or his top national security aides have issued statements that played to Russia’s advantage.
Among other things, it lists taking Nato membership for Ukraine off the table, repeatedly declaring that Ukraine would have to give up territory and even blaming Ukraine for the invasion itself. Now that Trump is suggesting that the United States could walk away from the conflict, the paper invokes the ghosts of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, where we saw exactly that process.
Yet, it was only on Thursday that Rubio and Steve Witkoff – Trump’s negotiator in Russia – met in Paris for talks hosted by president Macron, attended by top British, French, German and Ukrainian officials.
A French official said at the time: “The Americans are ready to discuss security guarantees, but the exact content of those guarantees will depend on negotiations allowing Ukraine to achieve a solid and durable peace starting with a complete ceasefire as soon as possible”.
As host, Macron got to do his bit of grandstanding, declaring as the talks got under way: “Everyone wants to get peace. A robust and sustainable peace. The question is about phasing”, leaving Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine – who was also at the talks – to say that the talks had been “very productive”.
Now the NYT pick up the story, citing European officials who were familiar with the discussions in Paris, who assert that the basic stance of the United States had not changed.
The consensus to emerge that Thursday was that the United States did have a serious cease-fire plan, essentially the one that Ukraine agreed to in mid-March. This was to take in partial cease-fires that the administration thought they had negotiated – one to prevent attacks on energy infrastructure, and another in the Black Sea – but have never taken hold.
But the complaint now is that the Russians have dragged their feet, supposedly insisting on new conditions, including the “de-Nazification” of the Ukrainian government – code for replacing Mr. Zelensky.
This is matched by a confusion over apparently conflicting statements for, a few hours after Rubio’s doom-laden comments, vice president J D Vance had been meeting in Rome with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni. At that point, he happily declared that: “We do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this brutal war to a close”.
Not only have these remarks appeared out of sync with Trump and Rubio, the NYT observes that it is hard to find anyone else on Trump’s national security team who seems to share Vance’s public optimism, speculating that this may have been designed to push some kind of agreement over the finish line.
Nevertheless, while the paper finds it hard to decode the administration’s game plan, it is confident that the direction seems clear, based on public comments and conversations reported by European officials.
Yet The Times of London is less certain, suggesting that Rubio’s declaration of the intent to abandon Ukraine reflects the many warnings allies have already given, that peace-making with Putin is far from as easy as Trump believed.
In fact, though, cutting a deal with Putin could not be easier. All Trump has to do is give the Russian president everything he wants, without anything inconvenient like reciprocal concessions.
And, rather that Putin imposing new conditions, it always was very clear – as I pointed out in mid-February – what Putin would accept. As well as keeping all the territory he currently holds, he also rejected any idea of “peacekeepers” in Ukraine, while insisting on the “denazification” of the country and its demilitarisation, whence only a small militia, of no more than 50,000 troops, will be permitted.
Looking at the situation from Putin’s perspective, I observed, he has little to gain in the short-term from an early ceasefire, as long as he continued to make gains and progress his objectives.
Here, though, there is some broader confusion, with some commenters pointing to the Russian’s lack of progress in reaching declared territorial objectives, with many large-scale assaults having failed.
But this is to misunderstand the Russian way of making war, where the parallel objective it to destroy the enemy army, in this case the Ukrainian armed forces, a task in which the Russians have been spectacularly successful, driving the Ukrainians to the point of exhaustion.
With a major offensive planned for the late spring/early summer, the Russians are doubtless confident that they will continue to dominate the battlefield, systematically degrading the Ukrainian will to fight.
Once the parallel objective is understood, it becomes clear that Putin was never going to agree to a peace, short of a complete capitulation by Ukraine, while Zelensky has no incentive to give up the fight, knowing that a peace deal would likely end his political career.
Thus, if the situation was going to break, it would do so at the weakest link, which is turning out to be president Trump. As the expectations of a peace deal fade, Trump’s only option for ending the war is to walk away, which is precisely what he is signalling.
“In a matter of days”, Trump is to decide whether or not the peace deal is “doable”. “If it’s not possible, if we’re so far apart that this is not going to happen”, Rubio says, “then I think the president’s probably at a point where he’s going to say, well, we’re done”.
