Editor’s note: This piece was originally published on 13 March. It has been updated in light of Donald Trump’s comments on 16 March ahead of his expected call with Vladimir Putin on 18 March.
As he returned to Washington on board Air Force One on 16 March, Donald Trump told reporters he would discuss Ukraine’s land and power plants in a call with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday (18 March). Discussions were already underway about “dividing up certain assets,” Trump said, and he was cautiously optimistic that Russia would agree to the United States’ 30-day ceasefire proposal. “We want to see if we can bring that war to an end,” Trump explained. “Maybe we can. Maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance.”
The Kremlin has been less forthcoming, merely confirming that the call is expected to take place. In his own remarks in recent days, Putin has indicated that he intends to negotiate over the terms of any short-term ceasefire – which Ukraine has agreed in principle – stressing that any longer term agreement to end the war must “remove the root causes of this crisis” and signaling that he has not backed down from his initial demands.
On a tactical basis, Putin has considerable reason to fight on. The Russian military, backed by North Korean troops, has made significant progress in dislodging Ukrainian forces from the southern Russian region of Kursk, where they had established a bridgehead in an audacious cross-border raid last August. By 17 March, Russian troops appeared to have regained control of the town of Sudzha, along with several other villages close to the Ukrainian border. Where Ukrainian troops had previously controlled approximately 500 square miles of Russian territory, they currently hold a thin strip of land that amounts to just 30 square miles. At the same time, Russian forces are grinding towards their goal of seizing the entirety of the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, although progress on that front has slowed, with Ukrainian troops mounting periodic counteroffensives.
While Russia is taking heavy casualties, Ukraine’s manpower shortages have been well documented, as has Donald Trump’s apparent antipathy towards Volodymyr Zelensky and the fracturing of western unity. So, if the latest ceasefire proposal had come solely from Kyiv then Putin would surely have been inclined to brush it off. But now there is the Trump factor to navigate.
Rejecting the deal risks alienating the US president and strengthening Zelensky’s argument that it is Russian aggression and Putin’s imperialistic ambitions that are responsible for the continuing war. “The ball is now in their court,” said Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, of Russia after negotiations with Ukrainian officials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on 11 March. “If they say no then we’ll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here.”
Beyond giving his own forces the chance to regroup and reconsolidate, a ceasefire also offers other potential benefits for Putin in the medium and longer term. For a start, he might think an immediate halt to the fighting would take the momentum out of European efforts to rush arms to Ukraine and put together their own “reassurance force”, which would monitor any eventual peace deal. Russian officials have made it clear on multiple occasions that the presence of European troops in Ukraine is a red line for them. If the fighting has already stopped, Moscow could make it a condition of extending any ceasefire that no foreign forces are permitted to enter Ukraine, and perhaps even the introduction of a moratorium on Western military aid. The war currently raging in Ukraine and the Trump administration’s bullying posture to Kyiv has focused minds among European leaders and prompted declarations of resolve, but Putin understands all too well that, absent a pressing crisis, Europe is inclined to revert to its more accustomed position of hesitancy and intra-EU bickering.
Then there is the possibility of instigating political change in Ukraine itself if a ceasefire arrangement can be prolonged for long enough to pressure Zelensky to lift the status of martial law that has been in place since the Russian invasion in February 2022. This would enable Ukraine to hold elections, which Putin might hope would bring down Zelensky’s administration – a key Russian objective since the start of the war – and bring a more pliant Ukrainian leader to power. The latest opinion surveys, which showed Zelensky’s approval rating rising to 67 per cent in early March, cast doubt on that theory. But at a minimum, an end to martial law would enable men of fighting age to leave Ukraine – which has been forbidden since the start of the war – to join the approximately 6.9 million Ukrainians who have already fled. Some of those citizens would undoubtedly return, but a renewed exodus could further weaken the Ukrainian economy and make it significantly harder to mobilise the forces to repel another Russian assault if, as seems all but inevitable if his aggression is rewarded, Putin decides to attack again.
Putin might also be interested in the prospect of sanctions relief from the US under an administration that seems determined to normalise relations with Moscow. Beyond Trump’s repeated praise for Putin, Rubio has stressed the “incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians”. With his own economy stagnating and the central bank’s interest rate hitting 21 per cent, the Russian leader could well be enticed by the possibility of economic respite and a welcome opportunity to rearm. Putin has broken every past peace deal he has agreed with Ukraine. Unless Zelensky succeeds in winning firm security guarantees, there will be little to stop Putin from signing another ceasefire agreement, extracting the advantages available, then starting up the war again in the months or years to come.
Then again, with Washington already offering so many concessions up front – in recent weeks American officials have indicated that Ukraine will not be allowed to join Nato, that it will have to concede territory to Russia, and that the US has no intention of providing security guarantees – perhaps Putin will decide to hold out for more. Dressed in camouflage fatigues, Putin visited a Russian command post in Kursk on 12 March ahead of a meeting with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow. The Russian president declared that “all the combat tasks facing our units will be fulfilled, and the territory of the Kursk region will soon be completely liberated from the enemy”. Whatever is the outcome of Putin’s call with Trump, and whether he decides to accept the temporary ceasefire deal or not, he does not sound like a leader who is preparing for peace.
[See also: Donald Trump has already delivered a win for Russia]
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