We are gratified that President Donald Trump held what he described as a “terrific” meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday. The two leaders say that about 90% of the work toward reaching an agreement to end the war in Ukraine is now completed.
This is welcome news. This war is the largest and worst in Europe since 1945. It has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and destabilized Europe. It should be brought to a just end.
Still, as he moves to complete what would be a Nobel Peace Prize-worthy accomplishment, Trump must be wary of evolving machinations by Russian President Vladimir Putin. A former secret police officer trained at the Soviet Union’s elite Red Banner Institute, Putin is steeped in deception and misdirection. He can be expected to undermine any peace arrangement that guarantees Ukraine’s sovereignty and long-term security.
Apparently unsettled by the positive meeting Trump held with Zelensky on Sunday, Putin tossed a new wrench into the diplomatic machinery. On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed Ukraine had launched a drone attack on Putin’s residence in the Moscow suburbs, warning that Moscow would need to reconsider its negotiating posture as a result. Another senior Kremlin official went further, suggesting that Trump had been outraged upon hearing of the alleged attack. Ukraine flatly denies the accusation, and the available evidence strongly suggests that Russia is lying.
The timing of the purported attack, coming so soon after a successful meeting between Trump and Zelensky, reeks of Russian disinformation. It is also highly improbable that Zelensky would have ordered such an attack on Putin in the first place. Zelensky may be arrogant, but he is not an idiot. He knows Trump is desperate for a deal, that America’s continued support is extraordinarily valuable, and he could not appear to sabotage it. This helps explain why Zelensky has been willing to contemplate even deeply unpalatable concessions, including proposals to designate parts of southeastern Ukraine, territory Russia has failed to seize, as a free economic zone.
Moscow’s maneuvering points to the broader problem that Russia doesn’t want peace.
The foundation of an agreement is in place. Ukraine has made clear that it will accept painful territorial concessions and suspend efforts to join NATO in return for Western security guarantees. Securing these guarantees is Ukraine’s critical objective because without them, Russia is almost certain to use a deal to buy time to prepare a future invasion. Relying on Russia’s commitment not to reinvade is as reliable as building a house on quicksand.
Under the 1991 Budapest Memorandum, Russia committed not to invade Ukraine if the country gave up its nuclear weapons. Ukraine did so, and Russia still invaded in 2014. Then, under the 2015 Minsk II accords, Russia again committed not to invade Ukraine. It nevertheless invaded again with the full-scale February 2022 attack that persists to this day. Only a fool would accept a peace agreement in which there were no security guarantees to prevent a future Russian invasion.
Of course, Putin doesn’t want those security guarantees. He knows they would limit his ability to blackmail or reinvade Ukraine. If he is to be persuaded to accept security guarantees for Ukraine as part of any deal, Trump will have to pressure him to do so.
Trump should warn Putin that refusal to accept a peace agreement over security guarantees will lead to full-spectrum sanctions, including those against Russia’s trading partners, all of its banking institutions, and all of the Kremlin’s external sources of foreign capital — such as his oligarchs and their foreign financial holdings. While many of these targets have already been hit by sanctions, a significant number of others remain unscathed. But were Trump to truly pressure Moscow, he could break the Russian economy and isolate Russian arms manufacturers from the imports they need to keep Putin’s war machine running. Trump has great untapped negotiating leverage.
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He can secure peace in Ukraine or at least maximize his chances of doing so, but only if he is willing to apply the same measure of pressure on Putin as he has already applied to the victims of this war.
He must not allow the KGB officer-turned-Russian president to play him into a corner.