The Ukraine Ceasefire Will Test US Intentions Most of All

The general view is that a 30-day ceasefire agreed between US and Ukrainian negotiators this week has, at a stroke, put the burden on Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to show he really does want to end the war. I suspect that’s wrong. It’s the US that will have to make the hard choices.

Let’s be clear on exactly what’s on the table for the Kremlin to consider: Ukraine has agreed to call an “immediate” halt to being invaded by Russia, in exchange for the US renewing support for its defense. Or as Putin’s most trusted foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, put it in an interview with Russian state TV on Thursday, the proposed truce would be “nothing more than a temporary respite for the Ukrainian military, nothing more."

The idea as transmitted after eight hours of negotiations in Saudi Arabia was that this brief pause in fighting should create the space needed to begin more substantive talks. These would focus on terms for a permanent settlement, including territorial issues, security guarantees for Ukraine and the finalization of a contract in which President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signs half of his nation’s future mineral resource revenue over to the US.

Putin has said many times that he wants concessions on long-term issues before any ceasefire, and that’s probably the best way to read his cryptic comments on Thursday. He said Russia supported the US approach “unconditionally,” but also with “nuances.” He named quite a few that he said would need “meticulous” discussion. Those include a halt to all military aid for Ukraine during the ceasefire — not just arms from the US — as well as to Kyiv’s recruitment of fresh troops, the thorny question of how to monitor 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) of ceasefire lines and how to ensure the truce leads to a long-term settlement.

So not unconditional and not immediate. In fact, it sounded an awful lot like the opening bid for negotiations before any ceasefire. But Russia was “grateful” to President Donald Trump for his interest, Putin said. Clearly, he’s noticed that showing gratitude really matters to the new administration.

This might have been a little easier a month ago, when Russian territorial gains in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region had sharply slowed, casualties remained high and the economy was finally beginning to show signs of strain. The situation today is quite different. Trump’s decision to cut Ukraine off from all American military aid, intelligence and even commercial satellite imagery allowed Putin, finally, to don khakis and congratulate his troops in Russia’s Kursk region. With Ukrainian forces blinded, his men have — after seven months of trying — broken through.

Like his so-called nuances, Putin’s words of encouragement to Kursk-operation commanders didn’t give the impression of a man anxious to stop the war. First “rout” the enemy and then look at creating a “security zone” along the border, he told them. One can safely assume this would be carved from the Ukrainian side and would be as big as Russian forces could make it. Next, Ukrainian forces who had fought inside Russia should be treated not as soldiers, but terrorists. Any foreign mercenaries, he volunteered in a particularly chilling comment, weren’t covered by the 1949 Geneva Convention.

As Sergey Mironov, head of A Just Russia - For Truth, one of the Russian parliament’s very loyal opposition parties, bluntly put it, the Russian view is that: “It makes sense to stop a special military operation now only if the Kiev (Kyiv) regime surrenders."

In truth, seeing Western support for Ukraine’s defense begin to crumble three years into his invasion, Putin would be foolish not to squeeze what he can from Washington and Kyiv, even in exchange for a short ceasefire. The more important question is, what does Trump do next? Does he agree to revise the ceasefire terms, and so again give away Ukrainian cards before any true negotiation begins? Or does he refuse to be used in this way and add to sanctions on Russia, as he has threatened? Perhaps, but these are always a slow-burn solution, and this is a president who likes instant results.

There are several ways this can go. We might discover that Putin really does fear Trump, because he not only agrees to an unconditional ceasefire, but also negotiates a good-faith peace with Ukraine after that. Russia’s position has been so strengthened in recent weeks that the Kremlin would have few reasons other than fear of US retaliation to compromise. But this seems wishful thinking, to put it mildly.

The second-least probable revelation is that Trump gets as tough on Russia as he has been on Ukraine, as he tries to pressure Putin into an unconditional truce. That would show the US president as the hard-as-nails negotiator he so often says he is.

More plausible is that Trump enters a negotiation with Putin over his conditions and returns with some or all of them to Kyiv, perhaps once again portraying Zelenskiy as a warmonger and the primary obstacle to peace in the attempt to browbeat him into acceptance of the unacceptable. Putin would have every incentive to drag the talks out and watch the US-Ukraine relationship implode again, all the while expressing his gratitude and ordering his troops to press forward. He is, as Zelenskiy said on Thursday, a master manipulator.

Putin may at a point calculate it is best to give Trump the 30-day ceasefire he needs to prove he still has the “art of the deal,” before finding a pretext to return to Ukraine’s invasion. But what this and the other scenarios have in common is that the big decisions quickly come back to the White House, where patience and strategy are in short supply. Believe me when I say that I want to be proved wrong.

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