Ukraine must keep an eye on Washington as well as Putin

This week alone has seen Russia stepping up its bombardment of Kyiv’s energy infrastructure, while the outgoing Biden administration has given the green light for Ukraine to use ATACMS missiles to strike further inside Russia and stepped up the US provision of antipersonnel land mines to Ukraine.

In response, Russian president Vladimir Putin on Tuesday formally lowered the threshold for Russia’s use of its nuclear weapons arsenal. Frighteningly, this new doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power.

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This sudden uptick in activity, coinciding as it does with 1000 days of war, has to be seen in the context of both sides and their allies scrambling to improve their strategic positions before the full onset of winter and above all before US president-elect Donald Trump takes over from Joe Biden on January 20.

While Trump is inheriting a bitter conflict in Ukraine, this has not stopped him from insisting with characteristic bluster that he would end the war in 24 hours even before taking office in January 2025.

If viewed from a purely humanitarian perspective of course, Trump’s goal is certainly commendable but call me cynical if you like when I say that humanitarianism is not a quality I immediately associate with the president-elect. Neither are sound geostrategic judgements. For evidence of that, just cast your mind back to February 2020 when as president, Trump negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

As history now confirms, this was done without the participation or even knowledge of the Afghan government, and without as much as a serious nod or wink to America’s allies fighting alongside Afghans and Americans.

In short, Trump’s plan was fatally flawed from the outset in that it also relied on the Taliban’s non-existent good faith and promise it would consult with the Afghan government regarding the future of the country. Neither of these two things came to pass.

Not that Trump’s replacement as president in the shape of Biden acted any better, pushing on recklessly as he did with Trump’s plan, resulting in an ignominious exit that left the Taliban in total control and ordinary Afghans at the mercy of their extremist Islamist rule.

I mention all this because imagine you were a Ukrainian right now, and along comes Trump with a plan to end your own “forever war” of which the US has been a big supporter.

Quite rightly, you might be a tad concerned about the possibility that your fate and that of your country could be hung out to dry just like the Afghans or indeed Iraqis in that earlier conflict of which the US played such a major part.

The fact is there’s simply no escaping the reality that in Ukraine, just as in Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington’s approach has at times been erroneous.

Yes, the US and its Nato allies have provided Kyiv with billions of dollars’ worth of arms and munitions, but not before endless wrangling and delays or frankly the wrong types. As a result it has sometimes hindered rather than helped Ukraine’s undoubted battlefield prowess, sometimes to the point of almost paralysing it.

Ultimately, the end result has been a war of attrition that has suited the Kremlin, supplied as it has been by massive supplies of munitions or key component parts for weapons by its own allies in the shape of Iran, North Korea and China.

While I accept – up to a point – that Russia’s invasion might have stemmed in part from a fear of Nato expansionism, it clearly had as much – if not more – to do Vladimir Putin’s unbridled imperial expansionist plans of his own in the shape of a “new Russia.” Ambitions that most likely would not have – and might still not – end with Ukraine.

How curious it is then that there’s hardly been a peep about the fact that 12,000 North Korean troops are now fighting on Russian soil from those that never tired of warning about the dangers of having Nato boots on the ground in Ukraine.

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Personally, I would have preferred had there been neither, but we are where we are and the stakes have now again risen exponentially. So, what to make of the idea of a Trump-brokered peace deal to end the war?

Well, the obvious answer is that ending war is always a good thing, but then there is the question of the terms. The most important thing here is that Kyiv’s allies assert themselves to ensure that it’s done in the genuine interests of Ukraine.

This will be a hard task. For not only can Kyiv ill afford a continuation of the war, but the terms on which most likely a Trump deal will be brokered don’t look good.

The president-elect might not have given much of a clue as to the substance of his plan, but vice president-elect JD Vance during the US election campaign called for Ukraine to cede territory to Russia and drop its pleas to join Nato in exchange for peace.

Both are high unpalatable to the government of Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelenskyy (above). The Ukrainian leader knows that if Trump follows through on his threat to cut all military support for Ukraine then his options are limited. That’s why on November 16 Zelenskyy, acknowledged that Kyiv “must do everything so that this war ends next year … through diplomatic means”.

And to that end what Europe does now is crucial. For it cannot afford to allow Ukraine to be simply written off. It’s vital that a viable and proper plan to protect the areas Ukraine will control at the time of any ceasefire sits alongside any Trump-brokered deal and not just imposed as it was on Afghanistan back in 2020 to the great cost of the Afghan people.

Yes, right now at this vulnerable moment Zelenskyy and his European allies need to keep an eye on Putin who senses he has the initiative. But they must also keep an eye on both the current and incoming US presidents who have form when it comes to leaving nations – and allies – hung out to dry.