The following is an analysis of the two most likely, but not the only possible scenarios.
During yesterday's rally Trump said the following:
I will end the war in Ukraine, end the chaos in the Middle East, and prevent World War III. And you have no idea how close we are to that.
He did not mention a timeline this time, but it is the fact he made the promise that is important. He could have easily avoided the issue, but he has stuck to his promises and made good on them by pacifying the Middle East already. He did so by pressuring Israel even though he is a “great friend” of the Zionists. During his first presidential term, Trump went “against everyone”: he recognized the annexation of the Golan Heights and the transfer of the capital to Jerusalem, but now he has sold an unfavorable deal to quickly fix the end of the war even despite the fact that Bibi is a much more independent figure than Zelensky. One can make the assumption that the stance of the new American administration is much tougher than Biden's, and he made sure to convey this position to everyone.
CNN has indicated that Trump has already instructed his staff to schedule a conversation with Putin in the coming days, where he wants to arrange a personal meeting. This flies in the face of the principle that Ukrainian diplomacy has worked so very hard on: no decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine. Although we do not know the format of the meeting, Zelensky is not likely to be invited.
At the same time, we know nothing about Trump's “plan” except rumors that it will probably be based on Kellogg's suggestions: postponement (but not a complete ban) on NATO membership for Ukraine and a "freeze" of the borders that will exist at the time of the talks. Ukraine considers this plan to be a defeat because it accomplishes none of its stated goals. Having said that, things are not looking good for the Kremlin either: effectively,
Ukraine has won the war because none of Kremlin's stated goals have been accomplished. Ukraine will come out of the conflict a much more militarized country, Moscow itself put “Ukrainian Nazis” from Azov on Abramovich's plane to Turkey, and the real goal of the special military operation, i.e. the change of power to a pro-Russian one, does not look achievable in the coming decades.
But wait. Ukraine could have achieved all this if not in Istanbul in the spring of 2022, then in the fall or winter of the same year after it managed to conduct a successful offensive on Izyum and force the Russian Armed Forces to leave Kherson. What happened? NYT reports: in late 2022, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Milley suggested that Ukraine take advantage of gains on the battlefield and begin peace talks with Russian Federation, but Secretary of State Blinken insisted on continuing the war. "Let's just fight", the very same song that Boris Johnson was singing. Well, since that time Ukraine has achieved obviously negative results.
The war came down to the fact that in the fall of 2022 Ukraine could get a ceasefire along the existing front line in exchange for concessions such as not joining NATO, aka another iteration of the Minsk agreements. Then they fought for two more years, had tens of thousands of people killed, lost a number of settlements, and yet it is still being forced to sign yet another iteration of the Minsk agreements.
However, there are some positive signals for Kiev from the Trump team. His future finance minister has promised tougher sanctions:
I believe that the sanctions were insufficient. If President Trump asks... I will 100% support tougher sanctions, especially against Russian oil companies. But note the wording,
if Trump asks. But will Trump ask?
The situations of Ukraine and Israel are in some ways similar in that there is one clear party refusing to negotiate and sabotaging deals. And for exactly the same reasons: in both cases, the end of the war is a blow to the incumbent government. For Bibi, it is the risk of coalition collapse and re-elections, after which he will most likely be blamed and all past corruption cases will be recalled at the same time, while for Zelensky it is the lifting of martial law and, as a consequence, the holding of elections that should have been held a long time ago. In other words, it is not the population of the countries, not the objective interests of the state, but the personal interests of the presidential figures that are against stopping the war, and Trump seems to be ready to put pressure on these presidential figures.
But what if Zelensky refuses and decides to just keep fighting? Ukraine did not receive military aid from the U.S. for the first half of 2024, but nothing happened. Plus military aid is still trickling in from the EU. The supporters of the war in Ukraine have, some secretly and some quite explicitly, expressed the hope that Ukraine will keep fighting, Trump will suspend the supplies for a while, and then opens the spigot back again.
And now the interesting part. The two most likely scenarios that could be realized if Putin and Trump agree. They both have some historical analogy: Korea and Vietnam. In both cases, the U.S. was directly involved in the wars and played a key role in ending them by participating in the negotiations between the parties. The difference was that the South Korean army was defeated and could not fight on its own; instead, a joint UN force led by the United States was already operating in the country. But the South Vietnamese army could still continue the war even with the almost complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. The governments of the countries in the two cases did not agree to peace, and many parallels can be drawn as to how they disrupted the negotiations, almost exactly like Kiev seems to be planning to do now.
Note the signatures.
General Nam Il (DPRK)
Marshal Kim Il Sung (DPRK)
Peng Dehui (PRC), commander of the “volunteer forces”
General Clark (USA/UN)
General Harrison (USA/UN).
Note that the signature of the South Korean representative on the South-North Korean armistice agreement is missing. He was present at the signing but refused to sign because the government led by dictator president Lee Seung Man was in favor of continuing the war, and the man generally considered himself a victim in the whole situation. And Eisenhower was in favor of signing the armistice even before his inauguration. I am sure you can see where this is going.
The situation in Vietnam was somewhat different. The U.S. withdrew its troops from the country for quite a long time, having previously established direct relations with China, which made the war irrelevant for them, as its main goal - to surround China with a belt of capitalist countries - was no longer so important. Negotiations were also going on for a long time, at the end they were disrupted by representatives of South Vietnam, which forced the U.S. already at the end of its participation in the war to conduct the largest strategic operation to bomb North Vietnam Linebacker II. However, the US still withdrew from the war, and South Vietnam continued to resist, with all the conditions for this: a large and well-equipped army, the continued support of the United States. However, it ended with the fall of Saigon. Even against the backdrop of South Vietnam's failures, the U.S. reduced the amount of aid and did not intervene at critical moments, thus allowing the Vietnamese communists to realize that South Vietnam could be crushed.
What these two stories have in common is that the U.S. negotiated the fate of those it supported directly with its adversaries without regard to governmental opinion.
So Trump will make a deal with Putin that he considers acceptable for Ukraine, and then its terms will be announced to the Ukrainian authorities. Kiev will have the option of either accepting the deal as is or continuing the war, but without U.S. assistance. It is difficult to say which option Kiev will choose, Zelensky is obviously determined to continue the war, but recently there have been a lot of voices saying that the war should end in 2025. And Zelensky himself has also made the same statement. However, it was made in a certain context: Zelensky wants to prolong the war, as he hopes that in the next six months or so the offensive of the Russian Armed Forces will finally dry up, and Ukraine will be able to win a few more bargaining chips. There is every reason to believe that the AFU is preparing to conduct offensive operations, as Syrsky said almost directly.
One way or another, the decision is Kiev's to make. Trump can only influence three things: military and financial aid from the US, security guarantees for Kiev and pressure on the Kremlin. That is, Trump is much more limited in his ability to pressure Kiev than he is in his ability to pressure the Kremlin through the threat of sanctions.
Politico made an interesting observation the other day:
If we're not careful, this will turn into Trump's Vietnam. That's exactly what happened to Richard Nixon. He ended up owning the war and it went down in history as his war, not Lyndon Johnson's. It really makes no sense for Trump to get back into the war in Ukraine if he offers Zelensky what he thinks is a good deal, but he turns it down.
Yesterday, TIME magazine published a slick piece saying that
Biden, in fact, never believed Ukraine would win and never promised Kiev he would help get its territories back. Biden's first goal is to preserve Ukraine as a sovereign state. The other two goals are to preserve unity among allies and to avoid a direct clash between NATO and Russia. In his recent speeches, Biden stated that the US has achieved all goals, including the preservation of Ukraine. Obviously, the loss of some territory (and Ukraine still has not lost any regional centers after 2022) is inevitable, but Biden's approach is virtually no different from what Trump openly declares, it's just that it has not been publicly reported before.
Accordingly, what is the point for Trump to get involved in the war and take any responsibility for it if he can end it right now, albeit to Zelensky's detriment, but declaring the deal a victory because Ukraine was able to stand up to Russia? And if Zelensky then decides to fight on, that's a personal choice of the Ukrainian government, maybe Europe, but not the US's or Trump's.
However, Ukraine's situation may not look so hopeless even without the United States. The fact is that Kiev realizes that they will not be able to defeat Russia on the battlefield, but there seems to be high hopes for an economic victory. If Trump doesn't lift sanctions on Russia, Europe enforces sanctions against the “shadow tanker fleet”, and the speculation that the Kremlin is spending a lot more money on the war than stated actually has a rational basis. According to the Ukrainian government, Ukraine has a chance, and in order to capitalize on this chance it needs to prolong the war. Kiev will most likely be inclined to that option. The experience of 2024 plays in their favor, when the stoppage of US aid did not lead to serious changes on the battlefield, Ukraine then passed the nadir of its weakness and even conducted an offensive operation in the Kursk region.
The further events will develop closer to the Vietnam scenario rather than Korea.
TLDR:
- Trump will meet with Putin and negotiate a deal he finds acceptable, which he considers favorable for both himself and Ukraine
- Zelensky will refuse the ceasefire one way or another, with the result that the war will continue until at least summer-fall of this year at the expense of Ukraine's own accumulated resources and what will come from the EU
- The US under Trump will minimize its support for Ukraine, but sanctions against Russia will remain in place and may even be strengthened, which will indirectly benefit Ukraine given its hopes for economic victory. Sanctions benefit the U.S. because they allow America to take Russian oil and gas market shares
And if Russia manages to break the front, it will still force Ukraine to negotiate, but on much worse terms than Trump can offer it. Does Kiev realize this danger and correctly assess its resources? LOL.
So far, all of Kiev's actions have resulted in Kiev getting a worse peace than it could have had before.
