The timing of Trump’s victory in the American presidential en congressional elections in November can hardly be less appropriate for Ukraine, as it suffers painful setbacks at both the southeastern frontlines and the western political fora. But still Ukraine is not lost, writes Mykola Riabchuk. After three years of Western homeotherapy that neither heals nor kills the patient, the Ukrainians face a radical surgery for a decent life or Putin’s graveyard.
Kharkiv after yet another Russian attack on civilian targets. November 8, 2024. Photo: Sergey Kozlov / ANP / EPA
The day after Trump’s election, Ukrainian media sounded like obituaries. ‘The blue wall failed’; ‘Ukraine will be thrown under the bus’; ‘Ukraine is f***ed’; ‘NATO will collapse without American membership’; ‘A great victory for China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea’; ‘Welcome to the new world order of Fascists’. This is only a small portion of comments produced by Ukrainian bloggers and journalists.
International experts were less emotional but equally gloom. ‘A second Trump presidency in the US would be disastrous on every level. [And] the first victim would be Ukraine’, Anders Aslund woefully professed. ‘He [Trump] promises to end the war in Ukraine in a day, something that could only happen on terms favorable to Russia and a man he admires, President Vladimir Putin’, pondered Dan Balz of the Washington Post. ‘The road ahead for Kyiv is extremely stark’, CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh summed up the dominant moods.
Losses at the eastern front….
The timing for all this news can hardly be less appropriate for Ukrainians as they suffer painful setbacks at both the southeastern frontlines and the western political fora.
Domestically, they are forced to retreat gradually in the Donbas, losing village by village under Russian 'meatgrinder' attacks and formidable preponderance in the air and artillery. In October, they lost 500 sq. km of territory – the most since March 2022, and probably around 30,000 soldiers were killed and wounded (provided that the Ukrainian losses are somewhat comparable to the Russian losses, which are reported to be over 1,000 a day). Civic casualties are equally dreadful since the strikes at civilian objects have become a daily routine, too repetitive and therefore boring for international coverage, but bringing about a daily toll of at least several people killed and wounded, if not several dozen – as it recurrently happens in Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro, Zaporizhia and elsewhere.
…. setbacks at western political fora
At the political/diplomatic front, Ukrainians received a lukewarm response to Zelensky’s victory plan, an extended ban on the use of the Western weapons to strike deeper into Russian territory, the suspended supply of much-needed (and highly effective) British Storm Shadows, the deployment by Russia of 8,000 to 12,000 North Korean troops at Ukraine’s border, multiple hurdles from the old Hungarian frenemies in the EU, and minor but pretty annoying blackmail from the new Polish government that appears to be no less nationalist than the previous one.
For many Ukrainians, Donald Trump’s victory came just as one more insult among daily injuries.
Analysis of domestic problems
The next reaction to this event, after the initial shock, was a sober analysis of domestic problems, government failures and military deficiencies, with a strong accent on civic mobilization and gradual build-up of national self-sufficiency. Another kind of reaction was an attempt to suppress the panic and alleviate the anxiety. A popular image of Trump as an erratic and unpredictable politician was interpreted as a mixed blessing, with an accent on possible positive aspects of his cowboy-style political manners and double-edged unpredictability.
Zelensky in an arms-factory in Pennsylvania. Photo: Office President Ukraine.
The commentators recalled that it was Donald Trump who broke Obama’s taboo on lethal weapon for Ukraine and supplied in particular the Javelin missiles that played a decisive role in repelling Russians from Kyiv on the first days of the war. They were thrilled with Trump’s ‘peace through strength’ words, which he used during his previous presidency from 2016 to 2020, and which were a trademark of Ronald Reagan’s policy in the 1980s. ‘It is no coincidence that Ronald Reagan is now so often mentioned’, president Zelensky said in his congratulatory speech, titled remarkably the ‘True peace can only be achieved by the truly brave’ (a subtle hint at Trump’s earlier brags to finish the Russo-Ukrainian war in 24 hours). ‘People want confidence, they want freedom, they want a normal life... [Both] the U.S. and the whole world will definitely benefit from this Reagan-style policy’.
It might be wishful thinking to see Donald Trump as another Reagan since he has neither Reagan’s integrity nor competence, but Ukrainian politicians have little choice but to make these awkward curtseys, hoping to incline him into the right, i.e. Reaganist, direction.
American public opinion stable on Ukraine’s side
Some Ukrainian hopes are not entirely groundless. Donald Trump’s first term was indeed not as bad as predicted. American institutions appeared quite strong and resilient, the expert community not fully impotent and subordinate.
Crucially, public opinion in the U.S. nowadays is still fully on Ukraine’s side. Only 2% of respondents in the latest survey (August 2024) declared being sympathetic to Russia, while 62% (including 58% Republicans) felt more sympathetic to Ukraine. And, worth noticing, this pro-Ukrainian attitude is quite stable, it slightly declined in 2023, but increased again since the last fall.
Obsession with China may be beneficial
It seems that the American political class is fully aware of this. ‘Ukraine matters to U.S. security for four blunt reasons. Putin’s war is a direct threat to European security, a clear challenge to our NATO allies, an attack on our shared values, and a frontal assault on the rules-based international order that keeps us all safe’, the US secretary of defense Lloyd J. Austin III declared recently upon his snap visit to Kyiv.
Even Trump’s strong obsession with China, which is seen (perhaps reasonably) as a much bigger strategic threat to the U.S. and world order than Russia, might be beneficial for Ukraine inasmuch as the U.S. president and his team grasp the obvious. Beijing's way to Taipei goes through Russia’s victory in Ukraine.
Still, even the most optimistic scenarios in regard of Trump’s Ukraine policy provide no clear answer to the most daunting question: how to finish the murderous, genocidal war that the powerful nuclear-armed state wages against a much weaker neighbor, with the openly stated goal of its thorough elimination.
Russia demands more, not less
The simplest way to achieve peace within ‘24 hours’ (as Donald Trump boasted) would be to throw Ukraine under the bus, i. e, to force the Ukrainian government to capitulate unconditionally, by accepting all of Moscow's demands. The Kremlin would hardly be satisfied with anything less. As Putin reiterated shortly after Trump’s election: ‘Russia will interact with the new administration when it comes to the White House, firmly upholding Russia’s national interests and working to achieve all the goals of the special military operation [as they euphemistically define the war aimed at the elimination of the Ukrainian state and extermination of all disobedient Ukrainians as alleged ‘Nazis’]. Our conditions have not changed, and Washington is well aware of them’.
Indeed, as Robert Kagan remarks sarcastically, why should Putin demand less? ‘Because he recognizes the injustice of his own actions?’ In fact, it is not Ukrainians who are the main obstacle to peace settlement, as Moscow propagandists claim, and many foreigners tend to believe. ‘If the United States and NATO wanted to force Kyiv to accept it’, Kagan contends, ‘they could. Brave and determined as the Ukrainians may be, they cannot continue fighting without U.S. and Western support and so must eventually accept the West’s dictation’ – just as the Czechs were forced to accept Chamberlain’s notorious ‘peace for our time’ in 1938. But what about Vladimir Putin? Why must he go along?
‘It would be one thing if the United States, NATO and Ukraine were in a position effectively to dictate terms to Putin — as might have been the case had the Biden administration not failed to give Ukraine what it needed in the first months of the war, and as still might be the case if the administration gave the permissions and weaponry Ukraine needs right now. But it didn’t, and it isn’t’.
So, Kagan maintains, unless Russia is demonstrably losing the war, Putin has no reason to accept any peace deal. And at the moment, he is fully confident that it is Ukraine and the West, not Russia, who are ‘short of breath’. The optimists may believe the unbelievable – that Donald Trump will not abandon, but double down on U.S. military support for Ukraine (as Mike Pompeo implies), and will withstand ‘Putin’s threats of escalation that have so far frightened the Biden administration’, but he is no match to Reagan and is unlikely to become one.
Biden’s failures fueled Putin
Back in January 2022, the Americans and their allies had a good chance to prevent the war should they have refrained from signaling to Putin their unwillingness to interfere (as Biden infamously did) and if they had promptly dispatched instead a limited contingent of the U.S.-UK troops to Ukraine upon the request of the Ukrainian government and fully in line with the spirit (if not the letter) of the Budapest memorandum. This would definitely have been enough to discourage Putin from the full-scale invasion. All his bullishness and bluffing skills notwithstanding, he always rolls back when he encounters real strength and determination. The maximum he could do at the time was escalate in Donbas on behalf of the Donetsk and Luhansk self-declared 'people's republics' – but Ukrainians could manage that problem themselves. It is much more difficult to do something like this right now when war goes in full stream and the Russian dictator has invested all his symbolical capital and personal future in this adventure.
Most experts agree that Ukrainians cannot liberate all the occupied territories without direct Western military engagement, and the chances of mustering such a coalition of willing against nuclear-armed Russia are close to zero.
Richard Haass. Picture Wikimedia Commons
So, if the first best option (‘peace and justice’) is unachievable, Ukrainians should consider the second-best option. That might be a decent peace, while the issue of justice is relegated into some remote future. Richard Haass (former president of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington) who provides a detailed plan of such a settlement recognizes that Putin would not be eager to accept it unless he gets a strong signal from the West that his army ‘will not prevail on the battlefield’, which means that the military support for Ukraine should be doubled down.
No trust but firm guarantees
But even if he accepts a deal, he definitely cannot be trusted. Ukraine will need firm security guarantees from the West and a continuing flow of arms for the long haul. Even if Putin rejects the deal, Haass argues, ‘the initiative [of armistice] should make it less difficult to galvanize continued military and economic support for Ukraine. It would highlight that it really is Putin’s ambitions, not Zelensky’s, that stand in the way of an end to the fighting. Either way, Ukraine would be better off than it is now’.
There are too many ‘ifs’ and ‘unless-es’ in Haass’ plan, but as a template for Trump’s eventual peacemaking it is certainly more responsible and perhaps feasible than simply leaving Ukraine at Putin’s mercy.
In any case, peace in Ukraine remains a remote prospect, and its shape and strength will be largely determined on the battlefield. Ukrainians may still expect better but should always be ready for the worse. After three years of the dubious Western homeotherapy that neither heals nor kills the patient but, rather, keeps him on a life support, the Ukrainians face radical surgery that may push them to decent life or, quite possibly, Putin’s graveyard.
