Faroles políticos (English)

“I just want to know what happens at the meeting,” Donald Trump stated in an interview with Fox News , adding that “they are in the process of preparing it and we will see what happens.” The US President was referring to the most discussed issue this week, the possible meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky. If it takes place, it would be the second time the two leaders met, only after the Normandy Format summit in December 2019. At that time, the joint press conference of the four participants—Macron, Merkel, Putin, and Zelensky—reaffirmed the same thing as the final communiqué: their commitment to the Minsk agreements as the only possible solution to the war in Donbass. As Ukraine publicly admitted after the Russian invasion in 2022, when non-compliance with the Minsk agreements no longer mattered, Volodymyr Zelensky privately notified his Western allies that the agreements were unworkable, a subtle way of signaling that Kyiv had no intention of implementing them.

Now that Western media and analysts are once again insisting on the argument that Russia is breaking agreements and its word cannot be trusted—something they also repeated when Ukraine flagrantly violated the only peace agreements signed in this conflict—the memory of Minsk is one of the reasons why Moscow insists on delaying the meeting with Zelensky until preparatory work has been done to make the meeting productive. Despite Donald Trump’s words, assuming the meeting will happen soon and his hopes for progress, the two countries have been expressing reluctance for several days. Sergey Lavrov’s remarks on Tuesday, refuting the idea that Russia had already agreed to a meeting with Zelensky and specifying that the commitment is merely to raise the profile of the negotiating delegation, must be added to Zelensky’s own. “Security guarantees first, then the summit with Putin, says Zelensky,” was the headline on France 24 yesterday . Despite demanding that Russia unconditionally agree to meet with its president, Ukraine reserves the right to set its own conditions. “We want to have an idea of the architecture of security guarantees within seven to ten days,” the demanding president stated.

Zelensky’s comment harks back to the fall of 2024, when Kyiv believed itself strong after the Kursk incursion, the front remained static, and the final months of the Biden administration were preparing for the verge of obtaining permission to use long-range weapons on Russian territory. At that time, Volodymyr Zelensky presented his “Victory Plan,” a list of demands to his allies so that Ukraine could achieve what he had specified in the “Peace Formula” he had presented, only to allies and explicitly excluding Russia, at the peace summit organized by Andriy Yermak in Switzerland. The sum of those two documents—a list of impossible objectives and demands for complete capitulation to Russia that did not correspond to the balance of forces on the front, and a series of demands on its allies to achieve that desired victory—indicated Kyiv’s negotiating strategy. When it was already clear that Donald Trump was the leading candidate to become president and that, if he took office, he would do so with a very different tactic regarding Ukraine, Zelensky opted to preempt this and present a speech whose narrative was centered on peace, achieved, of course, through force. In that strategy, the only negotiation Bankova was interested in was the one in which she would talk with her allies to find out what each would do in defense of Ukraine (and in attacking Russia), something that is being repeated now. “We have to know what each country will be willing to do at any given moment,” Volodymyr Zelensky declared yesterday in his crusade to achieve security guarantees that imply a commitment from his allies to send troops to Ukraine in the event of another Russian attack. “NATO’s Article V is not enough,” declared Andriy Yermak, advisor to the President’s Office, in an interview with La Repubblica. Ukraine’s main objective is not to prepare an agenda of issues to discuss with Vladimir Putin, as the Russian Federation demands, but rather to ensure that Kyiv arrives at that meeting having previously negotiated a security structure that will likely make an agreement with Russia unviable.

In recent hours, Sergey Lavrov has insisted on Russian demands, very similar to those Moscow and Kyiv negotiated in the summer of 2022, far from the spotlight, when the Istanbul pre-agreement of April seemed a distant memory. Yesterday, the Russian Foreign Minister reiterated Russian demands, also in line with what was proposed at that time, when Moscow also demanded all of Donbass, but adding to the reality of the current front. Russia is no longer willing to abandon the territories of Zaporozhye and Kherson under its control, as it proposed at the time. The increased territorial demands are a form of punishment for Ukraine for choosing to continue the war rather than accept the agreement and are also intended to act as a warning, emphasizing that conditions will become harsher as time goes on.

In addition to territorial demands—possible only if Donald Trump imposes his desire for peace for territories with security guarantees involving NATO troops on the ground and in large numbers, the only scenario in which Kiev could consider such a loss of territory—Russia continues to demand the same thing it did three years ago: rights for the Russian-speaking population, culture, or religion, and security guarantees for Ukraine in which it is taken into account. Underscoring the continuity of its demands, Sergey Lavrov specifically mentioned that the Russian proposal is based on the postulates presented in 2022, not by Moscow, but by Kiev, terms that Ukraine ultimately renounced, opting for war as the only possible solution.

“EU High Representative Kaja Kallas stated that the EU would distrust the agreements reached with Russia. Therefore, it intends to continue supporting the Ukrainian armed forces and promoting new sanctions against Russia, regardless of the agreements reached, as it does not believe in them,” Sergey Lavrov also insisted, implying that European countries are opting to continue their strategy as it has been presented until now. In addition to the desire to continue arming Ukraine and sanctioning Russia, there is also the apparent willingness of Western countries to offer Kyiv the security guarantees that only Moscow offered in 2022. This is the only aspect in which Zelensky can claim to be negotiating more forcefully now than before, although it will be necessary to read the fine print to analyze the type of guarantees that Western countries, unwilling to risk a direct confrontation with Russia, intend to offer.

“Ukraine proposed—and our delegation agreed—to design security guarantees with all permanent members of the UN Security Council: Russia, China, the United States, France, Great Britain, and others like Germany and Turkey,” Lavrov recalled yesterday. However, kyiv’s demands have increased compared to three years ago, and it no longer only rejects Russia’s participation—which is understood as Moscow’s way of reserving the right to veto Ukraine’s defense by other countries—but also that of other states like China. If just a few months ago Zelensky still hoped to attract Beijing to the Ukrainian position, now that he has become Donald Trump’s designated opponent, Ukraine rejects any Chinese participation in future security guarantees. Only NATO countries seem acceptable, something that will evidently make the possibility of an agreement with Russia even more difficult.

Mutual distrust between Russia and Western European countries continues to grow and is being fully exploited at this time, as both parties try to show their strength in the face of potential bilateral negotiations in which each wants to achieve the most and give up the least. In the case of European countries, this stance is summed up by Macron’s attitude, who called Russia an “ogre at the gates” and expressed pessimism. “When I look at the situation and the facts, I don’t see President Putin with much desire to make peace right now,” he told Meet the Press during his recent visit to Washington. However, the need to see peace within reach, a prerequisite for maintaining a good relationship with Donald Trump, requires them not to close the door on anything. “Your president’s optimism is something to be taken seriously. So if he believes he can get a deal, that’s great news, and we have to do what we can to have a great deal,” he added. As co-leader of the Franco-British Coalition of the Willing initiative, a proposal to send NATO troops camouflaged in their national flags to Ukraine, the French president continues to make proposals that he is perfectly aware Russia cannot accept.

The smiles with which they always refer to the war and the gloomy faces on Monday at the White House upon hearing Trump’s proposals to seek direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine without going through the continental demand for a prior ceasefire betray the representatives of the European countries and their community institutions. The European Union, which resisted including in its narrative the references to peace that Kyiv had already begun to use so as not to alienate Donald Trump, has continued to propose unworkable ideas with which to guarantee the maintenance of the status quo. Even the two-day ultimatum for Russia to accept the ceasefire they demanded could be considered a bluff with which to try to blame Russia for the lack of progress towards peace and thus get the United States to apply the coercive part of its strategy of incentives and threats against Russia. The tactic is now so clear that even a pro-Ukrainian and pro-European outlet like Politico reported this week that “Europe believes Trump’s peace talks will fail. Even so, it wants them, to expose Putin. The plan is to play along with Trump’s efforts for peace until he realizes that Putin has no intention of ending the war.” In this game that has been going on for more than a decade, the game played by European countries and their Ukrainian proxy has always been clear: to delay and obstruct any attempt to achieve a final and binding resolution in favor of a tactic of rejecting their commitments and demanding concessions from the enemy, always with the intention of making it seem that it is the opponent who is preventing peace.