Ukraine got a reprieve in Washington — not an escape

Marc Champion, Tribune News Service

In the 1963 war movie “The Great Escape,” 76 prisoners make it out of their camp in what begins with hope and elation, but ends with all but a handful killed or recaptured. Monday’s meeting between the US and its worried Ukrainian and European allies felt a little like those first exhilarating moments of escape, as the meeting passed off better than anyone could have expected in the wake of Russia’s clear diplomatic win in Alaska. There was no toxic throwdown between Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. European leaders weren’t forced into some existential choice between blowing up the transatlantic alliance and agreeing to a peace deal that would spell disaster for Kyiv’s security and their own. Instead, the meeting produced commitments to work out security guarantees for Ukraine and to organize direct negotiations between Zelelnsky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

These were genuine successes, especially given the alternative. But amid the sighs of relief, it’s important to take stock of where we stand on the path to a lasting settlement — and that remains a sobering prospect. The main positive to come out of Washington’s circus of mutual flattery was Trump’s agreement to offer security guarantees as part of any settlement that Ukraine does eventually sign with Russia. This is the gateway requirement to any discussion of territorial concessions, and therefore of a settlement. That could not work without US participation and, until Monday, that had been far from given.

Trump says those guarantees will be strong, with “lots of protection” for Ukraine. What form they take has yet to be worked out, but ultimately this is about deterrence, so their effectiveness will depend on trust in a mercurial White House. Can Ukraine trust Trump to follow through on any commitment to come to its aid? More importantly, can Putin?

What the Kremlin believes is critical, because whether the guarantees consist of a “NATO-like” collective defense commitment, or the deployment of a European “coalition of the willing” force, or indeed both, Putin has to accept they would ruin any attempt to renew his invasion.

Creating a mechanism to inspire that kind of credibility will be hard to achieve. At root, it means Putin has to think that if he were to attack, there would be at least a significant risk of Ukraine’s Western allies entering the war directly. But why should he believe that, when Trump keeps saying this isn’t America’s war and has stopped paying for any US military sent to Kyiv? When he’s happy to blame Ukraine or the US for starting the war, but never Russia, which invaded a sovereign neighbour?

Perhaps most striking of all was a comment picked up by a hot mic, when Trump was speaking with French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House on Monday: “I think he wants to make a deal for me,” Trump said. “Do you understand? As crazy as it sounds.” That doesn’t just sound crazy — it is crazy.

Putin is engaged in what he sees as the restoration of Russia to its rightful place in history, a sacred duty that will secure his place in the pantheon of venerated Russian leaders, from Peter the Great to Josef Stalin. Reasserting Moscow’s control over Ukraine is essential to that project. He will not abandon the attempt as a favor to anybody. He will drop it only if it becomes evident he can’t succeed.

Ukrainians, Balts and Poles have understood this since the former Soviet Union collapsed. That’s why they banged down the door to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — not to join in a future attack on Russia, but to protect against being recolonised. Western European leaders took longer to understand, and Trump still hasn’t. He seems to still believe this is all about Trump — that with him as president, the war would never have started; that if only he were back in the White House, he would end it in 24 hours. And now that he’s there, if only he could sit down alone with Putin, he would get a deal. This is fantasy. It also makes the US president an easy mark for a former KGB handler.

This was so transparent in Alaska that even Fox News hosts grilled Trump’s team as to how they could be declaring victory when the president aimed to secure a ceasefire and returned without one. I’ve said before that Trump shouldn’t be criticized for engaging with Putin, or for doing everything possible to find a way to end this extraordinarily bloody and dangerous war. But nothing that happened in Alaska or in Washington changes the fundamentals of the conflict.

These are that Russia intends to annex as much of Southern and Eastern Ukraine as it can, and to ensure its control over the rest. Putin believes he will eventually succeed. That’s in part because Ukraine is running short on manpower. It’s also, in part, because he doesn’t care how many Russians are killed to restore Moscow as the center of a great power, after what he has called the “tragedy” of Soviet collapse. But most importantly, it’s because he has profound contempt for Europe’s capacity to resist without US support, and Trump has made it abundantly clear that he wants out of the war.