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After the verbal assault on Volodymyr Zelenskyy by Donald Trump and his vice-president JD Vance, Ukraine was facing catastrophe. The obvious risk was that Trump would work with Vladimir Putin to force an isolated Ukraine to accept a de facto Russian victory.
That risk still remains. But some highly adept diplomacy by Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, working closely with France’s Emmanuel Macron, has staved off the worst for now. At a meeting in London, Zelenskyy was warmly embraced by European political leaders and later met King Charles — who seemed unconcerned that the Ukrainian leader was not wearing a suit. The message was clear. Zelenskyy and Ukraine are not alone.
Even more important, Starmer and Macron may have temporarily wrested the diplomatic initiative from Trump and Putin. By announcing that European nations will work with Ukraine on a peace proposal — which will then be presented to the US — they have made it harder for Trump to treat peace in Ukraine as something to be negotiated between America and Russia alone.
Rather than simply bleating that Europe and Ukraine must be at the table, Starmer and Macron have taken important steps to make sure that happens. The French are also pushing for a temporary ceasefire, which underlines that they are working for peace.
But any excitement about these developments needs to be heavily qualified. It is still likely that the peace initiatives will founder. There is no real sign that Russia is prepared to stop fighting. In fact, Putin’s incentives to cut a deal are diminishing fast, since he now has a realistic hope that the US may soon end military aid for Ukraine.
It also seems very unlikely that the US will agree to provide a military backstop to an Anglo-French “reassurance force” in Ukraine. Trump’s obsessive fear of a third world war will make him extremely reluctant to take that risk. And yet Starmer is insistent that no deal can work without an American backstop.
Even if a peace deal is achieved, it will take many months to negotiate. In the meantime, Ukraine is likely to have to fight on against an emboldened Russia. Even before last week’s showdown between Trump and Zelenskyy, it was already evident that Trump will not agree to another package of US aid for Ukraine. In the row’s immediate aftermath, there was even talk that America would immediately cut off all shipments of military aid to Ukraine
Kelly Magsamen, who was chief of staff to Lloyd Austin when he was US defence secretary, responded to those reports by commenting: “This could cripple Ukraine within weeks . . . We would basically be handing Ukraine to Putin.” Another former Biden official reckons Ukraine could fight on without American support for months — but probably not years.
However, the mood among many Ukrainians involved in the war effort is more positive — as I discovered in Kyiv last week. This is not mere bravado. It is based on a reasoned assessment of how the war is being fought.
Ukraine’s expertise in drone warfare, developed during three years of fighting, has changed the nature of the conflict. Oleksandr Khomiak, who runs Drone Space Labs, believes it would now be impossible for Russia to mount an assault on Kyiv of the sort that Putin attempted at the beginning of the war. Any large concentration of troops or tanks would be decimated by Ukrainian drone attacks.
The impact of drones, manufactured in Ukraine, largely accounts for the shocking losses that Russia has taken over the past year. Western sources reckon that Russia lost 400,000 troops killed or wounded and gained just 0.5 per cent of Ukrainian land in return.
The snag is that the Ukrainian military uses Elon Musk’s Starlink service to help connect and fly their drones. American intelligence also provides Ukraine with real-time information that helps identify targets. Those services could be cut off. But Khomiak believes that — with European assistance and domestic expertise — Ukraine could find workarounds to keep fighting.
Rather than physically conquering all of Ukraine, Russia’s preferred outcome at this point is probably the installation of a pro-Moscow puppet government in Kyiv. That is why Putin — with Trump’s support — is pressing for elections in Ukraine. But even massive Russian interference might not be enough to deprive Zelenskyy of victory in a vote. Trump has inadvertently given the Ukrainian president a huge boost in the opinion polls.
By standing up to Trump and Vance in the Oval Office, Zelenskyy once again demonstrated that he is capable of withstanding pressures that would crush other leaders. Trump and Vance enjoyed playing the tough guys on home turf. But Zelenskyy is the real thing. He stayed in Kyiv, when Russian forces were closing in and the city was under bombardment. Vance, by contrast, chose to move to a secure location when confronted with a few hecklers on a skiing trip this weekend.
The western imagination — and its approach to the war — is still understandably haunted by the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021. But Ukraine is not Afghanistan and Kyiv is not Kabul. Zelenskyy’s nation is in a perilous situation. But with Europe’s help, it can stay in the fight long enough to achieve a real peace — one that guarantees its independence and sovereignty.
gideon.rachman@ft.com
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