Until Trump’s election in November 2024, Russia’s official position with regard to the war in Ukraine was that it was open for talks with Ukraine and the West, while the West was “refusing all diplomacy”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had famously signed a presidential decree forbidding talks with his Russian counterpart.
After Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, diplomacy between the US and Russia resumed. Now Ukraine’s supporters, in the US and in Europe alike, began to protest that Trump was betraying Ukraine and that the US had begun to favour Russia in the conflict. The evidence for this assessment appears flimsy: the US mostly continued supporting Ukraine with intelligence on targets within Russia and allowed Europe to buy American weapons for Ukraine through the PURL (Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List) scheme.
The renewed diplomatic contacts between the Trump administration and Russia may have brought little results in terms of progress towards a peaceful solution to the Ukraine war. They brought about a shift in European diplomacy, however. For the first time since the beginning of the latest phase of the Ukraine War in February 2022, now a large number of prominent politicians in Europe began to talk about the necessity of “peace negotiations with Russia” at some point. The US evidently has some clout over Europe.
Why no ceasefire?
Until March last year, Ukraine had firmly rejected any ceasefire with Russia. In the space of a few weeks, however, Zelensky went from being sure of the Biden administration military support to being told by the American President that he did not “have the cards” to win the war in a famous altercation right in the White House. After that disastrous meeting the US stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine for a few weeks, while Europe became concerned that it would have to carry the burden of the war alone.
Then in Jeddah, for the first time Ukraine announced that it would agree to negotiations, on the condition of a ceasefire. Direct talks between Russia and Ukraine resumed in Istanbul. This became the position of the EU too: ceasefire first, then peace negotiations.
However, Russia has rejected a ceasefire, arguing that it demands a solution to the issues that led to the conflict, not a temporary cessation of hostilities. Russia also fears that a ceasefire would simply be used as a respite “to prepare Ukraine for a wider war”, as Sergey Markov, a famous Russian political scientist, put it in an interview with the Swiss outlet Global Bridge.
According to Markov “the West wants to continue waging war on Russia”. A ceasefire that would lead to stationing of NATO personnel and weapons in Ukraine “would be unacceptable to Russia” and “would lead to a major confrontation between Russia and Europe”, says Markov.
“The West has fooled Russia three times, first with the agreements on the Maidan that were broken the very same day and then with the two Minsk agreements. The West did not want peace in the Donbass.”
It’s a gloomy picture that is in tune with the rhetoric that has come from Russia in recent weeks: “increasing the pressure” on Russia would not bring Russia to the negotiating table, quite the opposite. But Markov is a cheerful man and in his analysis there is a space for a bit of hope too.
“If the West were to commit not to deploy weapons and soldiers in Ukraine, an agreement would be possible. There should also be a regime change in Ukraine. Ukraine needs free democratic elections. If Yanukovich — the former Ukrainian president that was removed after the Maidan Revolution in 2014 — were to return to Ukraine, with all his partners and his money, if he could reopen his now forbidden party and his media be able to take part in the next elections, then there could an agreement and a ceasefire”, says Markov. “But I don’t think that the West would ever allow that.”
To talk or not to talk?
For years the head of EU diplomacy Kaja Kallas vehemently rejected talks with the Russian President Vladimir Putin. One year and half since diplomacy between the US and Russia resumed, the EU still cannot agree if it should talk to Russia at all and who should do the job. While some speak of “peace negotiations”, others still argue that “it is early to talk to Russia”.
Within the EU itself, while the official rhetoric of continuous support for Ukraine has not changed, there appears to be significant differences. Two weeks ago the news agency Bloomberg and then Politico revealed that Pedro Lourtie, the chief of staff of European Council President António Costa, had reached out to the Kremlin two times in five weeks. In other times this would barely register as news, but with this channel of communication for the first time in four and a half years the EU broke with its policy of not engaging in direct talks with Russia.
The initiative of the President of the European Council, however, sparked the protest of French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who argued that it is not yet to talk to Putin. They also argued that France, Germany and the UK should lead these talks, not the European Council. Many leaders from other European countries took Costa’s side. Nordic and Baltic representatives, however, aligned with Macron and Merz, expressing concerns over talks with Russia. Little wonder that Russia feels it cannot put a lot of trust in the EU.
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