No deal in Alaska. It was always the most likely and, in the absence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, perhaps the most desirable outcome.But US President Donald Trump’s pivot away from the need for an immediate ceasefire, which he said beforehand he wanted, will have caused profound dismay in Kyiv and around Europe.Russia’s position has long been that a ceasefire can only come in the context of a comprehensive settlement taking account of Russia’s interests – and inevitably implies Ukraine’s capitulation.That’s the position that Trump, once again, appears to have endorsed.Not only that, but it’s been widely reported that Russia’s demands include the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from areas of the eastern Donbas not currently held by Russia, in exchange for a willingness to freeze the lines further south, in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.”It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine,” he wrote on Truth Social, “is to go directly to a peace agreement.”Ceasefires, he noted, “often times do not hold up”.This appears to fly in the face of Ukraine’s main demand, endorsed by all its European backers: that an unconditional ceasefire has to come first.Crucially, it also buys Russia’s Vladimir Putin time on the battlefield, where he is convinced he’s winning.”If Putin’s military objective was to avoid immediate constraints on Russian operations in Ukraine then he appears to have succeeded,” says Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute.Ian Bond, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform and a former British diplomat, said Moscow’s territorial demand was a non-starter.”If Trump thinks that Zelensky is going to agree to give up the fortress cities of the Donetsk oblast, just to get Putin to stop making war on him, he’s out of his mind,” he said.”It shows how little he still understands …
