Una oleada de pesimismo (Google Translate)

“Keep calm. Hasty emotions are unnecessary today,” wrote yesterday Mykhailo Podolyak, one of the most belligerent members of the Ukrainian government, reacting to the wave of pessimism and, at times, hysteria that spread across the European continent throughout the day yesterday, focusing on analyzing the implications of the telephone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and the subsequent statements by the president of the United States. “The Trump-Putin conversation reduces tension, but at the expense of Ukraine,” stated the British BBC before the political spin managed to create a continental crisis from an initial conversation whose only agreement is to continue talking. Because despite the adjectives that are being used to describe the contact between the two presidents or the way in which it occurred, the result of the call was the mutual reaffirmation of the importance of peace and the implementation of the mechanisms to schedule a meeting between the two leaders, which will presumably be in Saudi Arabia, and begin a negotiation process.

According to the Kremlin, there are no specific agreements on Trump’s visit to Russia, the negotiating teams have not been formed and the conversation did not address the issue of lifting sanctions against Russia or the recognition of Crimea and Sevastopol, which have been Russian for almost eleven years, or Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye. In other words, these issues are for future negotiations and remain tools with which the United States can put pressure on Russia. The territorial issue does not seem to be a priority for Donald Trump and his team, who, on the contrary, have shown interest in using coercive measures to favour Ukraine and, above all, themselves. This is the case of the repeated statements by Mike Waltz, Keith Kellogg or Donald Trump himself on sanctions against Russian oil, a competitor of American oil in the market and one of the main sources of financing for the Russian state. Making the price of crude oil fall abruptly has been one of the ways in which the American president has wanted to undermine Russia’s ability to continue fighting. And as the Treasury Secretary confirmed in Kyiv, reaffirming what Donald Trump had already said, the United States will continue to finance Ukraine, but in exchange for a “new economic agreement” that the Ukrainian government has already received and that Zelensky has publicly promised to review quickly so that it can be signed as soon as possible.

On the one hand, the Republican administration was accused of sacrificing its best cards in advance for a negotiation, something that has been understood as a way of favouring Russia and weakening Ukraine. On Wednesday, in front of European allies and the press, Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly stated what has been evident since the war began: that Ukraine’s accession to NATO is not an outcome that can be expected from a negotiation. Denying reality has been one of the tools with which European countries, the Biden administration, the Ukrainian government and its friendly press have managed to create a discourse in which NATO was not the main reason for this war – it was all the result of Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions – but that it should be the solution. It is possible that European countries did not expect realism from the Trump administration, but it has always been clear that Russia was not going to accept Ukraine’s accession to the Alliance as part of any agreement if it was not militarily defeated. That leads to the second card that Hegseth’s speech supposedly removed from the negotiation, the territorial question.

“We are ready to increase our support for Ukraine,” said the Weimar+ statement signed by the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, as well as Kaja Kallas, the EU’s diplomat. While initially granting the US wish that European countries bear the “overwhelming” cost of financing Ukraine, the group added that it is committed to “its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s war of aggression.” The aim, it continued, is “to continue supporting Ukraine until a just, comprehensive and lasting peace is achieved” and that “our common goal must be to put Ukraine in a position of strength.” Since the Russian invasion, European countries and the US Democratic administration have based their discourse on presenting Euro-Atlantic unity as one of the main sources of Ukraine’s strength in the face of the weakness of Russian isolation. Ukraine, too, has wanted to believe that time is on its side, since the resources of the bloc that supports it, NATO, far outnumber those of Russia, a virtually decisive factor in a war of attrition. However, neither Kiev has these resources nor has time managed to put Ukraine in a position in which it is foreseeable that it will achieve a position of strength in the short, medium and even long term. The idea of continuing to support Ukraine – that is, arming its army and supporting its state – as long as necessary, until it achieves a position of strength, is the perfect recipe for eternal war.

From this point of view, a bad war is preferable to a bad peace, and any mention of negotiations, even one where the outcome is more than uncertain, is a threat, a stab in the back. “No NATO membership, no boots on the ground? It sounds like abandoning Ukraine. Delegates are flying to Munich not to negotiate, but to deliver to Zelensky the bad news. If this agreement produces a piece of paper that guarantees peace for our time, we should call it Munich 2,” wrote, for example, Gabrielius Landsbergis, who as a former minister (of foreign affairs of Lithuania) could afford to go further than his colleagues currently in office, but who reflected the bewilderment and rejection of a very significant part of the European political class and the Ukrainian establishment . “Even before President Volodymyr Zelensky arrives at the Munich Security Conference tomorrow to renew his defense of Ukraine’s independence from the US, his country’s fate seems sealed,” Bloomberg concluded , adhering to the hypothesis of Ukraine’s abandonment. “Why are we giving them everything they want even before negotiations have begun? That is the policy of appeasement. It has never worked,” said Kaja Kallas, in charge of European diplomacy, yesterday, adding that “any agreement behind our backs will fail, because it needs Europe and Ukraine to implement it.” “Without us at the table, they can agree on anything, but it will fail, simply because there will be no implementation. It will not work. It will not stop the killing,” he continued, opening the door to European and Ukrainian rejection of an agreement between the two countries with decision-making power, Russia and the United States. Unlike its opponent, Ukraine depends on third parties, especially Washington, to continue fighting, a decision it cannot make independently but taking into account the position of its suppliers. If the main enemy retreats, his chances of continuing in the battle are greatly reduced.

Despite European pessimism, the Ukrainian government is trying to put on a brave face, camouflage the blow or even deny reality. “The real success of American foreign policy (and, of course, of President Trump himself), as well as that of any other global political actor, will not be determined solely by the desire to end the war quickly. After all, it could have been done yesterday with the terms of Russia’s ultimatum, but that would have been meaningless,” wrote Miajailo Podolyak, appealing to “terms that are rational, reasonable at this stage of war, strategically sound and economically justified” on which he believes the “international reputation” of the United States depends.

Zelensky, for his part, tried to balance the tougher stance with openness to Donald Trump. “I say it very clearly,” he insisted, in the same vein as the Weimar+ statement, “any bilateral negotiations on Ukraine without us, we will not accept.” Despite the apparent rejection of the American approach, the Ukrainian president described the conversation he had with Donald Trump after the phone call between the presidents of Russia and the United States as “really good.” Zelensky insisted that his American counterpart, to whom he conveyed that he did not trust Vladimir Putin, understood his position and was able to see what Ukraine’s wishes were.

Despite the reality on the ground and the unequivocal and unambiguous statement by the United States on Ukraine’s Atlantic prospects in the coming years, part of the Ukrainian government is refusing to accept the facts. In the division of tasks between those who have called for calm and those who reject any agreement, Minister Umerov has played the most naive role. “Ukraine wants to be and will be a NATO country,” said the Minister of Defence. Maintaining the morale of the population, even if it is based on false hopes that will not be fulfilled in the coming years, has always been an important part of the Ukrainian discourse. Until now, the countries of the European Union and the United States have also joined in. Positions have changed rapidly and yesterday Mark Rutte stated in a press conference that the Alliance had never promised Ukraine membership as part of a peace agreement. Apart from Umerov, only Chrystia Freeland, a candidate to replace Justin Trudeau at the head of the Liberal Party and the Canadian government, dared yesterday to contradict the United States and present NATO as Ukraine’s destiny. “Ukraine must be a full member of NATO,” she declared, displaying a position in which she was not so alone until a few days ago. For the past eleven years, this has also been the discourse of the European Union, which is now focused solely on obtaining a seat at the negotiating table that it has tried so hard to avoid.