While Ukrainian and Russian troops are fighting to the death for every inch of land in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, their leaders are locked in another titanic if less murderous struggle: the battle for Donald Trump’s mind.
President Trump said at his Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago on Sunday that his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian leader Vladimir Putin wanted to “make a deal” to end the war. Trump said the two sides were in the “final stages of talking”. In reality, of course, the talking between them has not even begun. Each side is talking to Trump and his officials to ensure it is not seen as the obstacle to peace and then punished for being so.
Putin has shown no sign of settling for anything other than his maximalist objectives, including the surrender of the remaining territory Ukraine holds in Donbas. In Kyiv and other European capitals there is zero faith that Putin wants to end the war on terms other than Ukraine’s capitulation and permanent destabilisation if not subjugation. Since Putin has been unable to achieve his aims through military means after more than a decade of war, doing so through negotiations with an amenable Trump seems like a good bet.