It has been a week or so of events that were alarming for Ukraine and its Western allies. They first learned that Vladimir Putin, the president of the United States, and US President Donald Trump had a 90-minute telephone conversation. In one injury, Trump upended three times in which his father, Joe Biden, had sought to remove Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Pete Hegseth, the newly appointed secretary of defense for Trump, stated to a gathering of mature military authorities in Brussels on February 12 that Ukraine had never hope to rejoin NATO or restore the territory Russia had illegally occupied since 2014.
Hegseth added that any peace activity in Europe would not be conducted under the shelter of Nato’s Article 5 and that not only would the US certainly add to any security force to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal, but that any peace activity in Europe would not be conducted under the shelter of NATO’s Article 5.
This was soon followed by the US vice-president, J. D. Vance, telling the Munich Security Conference that it was Europe, not Russia or China, that was the main security threat – the “enemy within” that fostered anti-democratic practices and sought to curtail free speech.
This week, a US team led by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, sat down with their Russian opposite numbers led by the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, to discuss peace negotiations. Ukraine was not represented. Nor was Europe. Lavrov declared that Russia would not accept any European peacekeepers in Ukraine, whether or not they were there, and perhaps by taking his cue from Hegseth.
Trump has since repeated several of his favorite Kremlin talking points on his TruthSocial platform. Ukraine was responsible for the war, he said. Its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was a “dictator” who had cancelled elections, and whose popularity with his own people was now as low as 4 % ( it’s actually 57 %, at least 10 points higher than Trump’s rating in the US).
Trump also mocked Zelensky’s concern at his country’s exclusion from the Riyadh talks, telling reporters:” Today I heard: ‘ Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ You’ve been there for three years, so you ought to have stopped now. You could have made a deal”.
This leads us back to the Istanbul communique, produced at the end of March 2022 after initial peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Antalya, Turkey. Some US observers have suggested that if Ukraine had signed this deal, it might be in better shape.
Istanbul communique
What happened in Istanbul, and how close Russia and Ukraine were to an agreement, has been hotly debated, with some arguing a deal was close and others refuting this.
Despite declining to join NATO, Ukraine reportedly agreed to a number of concessions, including a commitment to avoiding upcoming neutrality. Russia, in turn, would apparently have accepted Ukraine’s membership of the EU. This concession, incidentally, is still on the table.
But there were sticking points, primarily over the size of Ukraine’s armed forces after a deal – Kyiv reportedly wanted 250, 000 soldiers, the Kremlin just 85, 000 – and the types of weaponry Ukraine could keep in its arsenal.
There were also issues about Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territory, particularly Crimea – this was projected to be resolved over 15 years with Russia occupying the peninsula on a lease in the meantime. Zelensky was asked by the Kremlin to step down as president, and Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Russian politician, took over the presidency.
Negotiations ended in April 2022 when Russian atrocities were discovered in Bucha, a town that Ukrainian troops had taken back as part of their spring counter-offensive. However, a conclusion never came to an end.
The UK’s former prime minister, Boris Johnson, has taken much flack over reports that he urged Zelensky not to accept the deal. However, there was never a reasonable chance that Ukraine would approve of this deal. A weak Ukraine would have no way of defending itself against any incoming aggression.
If Ukraine had struck a deal based on the Istanbul communique, it would have essentially resulted in the nation becoming a pro-Russian province under the auspices of a pro-Russian government and being prohibited from forming alliances with western nations. Regarding joining the EU, the Kremlin’s opposition to Kyiv’s participation in the EU in 2013 sparked the Euromaidan protests and led to Russia’s initial Crimea annexation the following year.
What next?
Kyiv’s signing of the Istanbul communique may have quickly put an end to the hostilities and the killings. However, the Kremlin has repeatedly demonstrated that it can be relied upon to follow agreements; all you need to do is to take a look at how it has repeatedly broken the Minsk accords of 2015, which sought to put an end to hostilities in eastern Ukraine.
A deal that rewards Russian aggression by requiring the victim’s neutrality and agreeing to its territory seizure would further undermine international security and encourage other illegal foreign policy aventurism.
If the Trump administration has the blueprint for a fair peace agreement, it’s effectively hiding it at this time. Instead, European leaders have been forced to deal with the possibility of having to fund Ukraine’s ongoing defenses while adjusting to the US’s withdrawal from its security guarantees for Europe as a whole.
Either that or accept some pretty awful consequences, as my University of Bath colleague Patrick Bury wrote on X this week.
Europe is in a crisis that it could have anticipated following Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The US and European relations appear to be getting more and more tense now that Trump is back in power. However, Europe is also bitterly divided on how to deal with this crisis.
Germany vehemently opposed the idea of providing troops as peacekeepers in Ukraine after initial discussions between Britain and France. Despite a report that the UK prime minister has considered creating a 30-person “monitoring force” outside the ceasefire line, both Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer have since changed their minds.
The Kremlin reacts to signals. Joe Biden’s statement that he would not send troops to defend Ukraine demonstrated the limitations of US involvement, even though it was clearly in full swing toward the invasion in late 2021. A clear signal to Putin and the Trump administration that Europe is serious would be sent a strong signal that Europe is prepared to dispatch peacekeepers to Ukraine right away.
Stephen Hall is a lecturer ( assistant professor ) in Russian and post-Soviet politics at the University of Bath.
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