Trump presidency may mean endgame is near for Ukraine war

For on the face of it, currently there would appear to be a voracious appetite – on both sides – to escalate the conflict with each increasingly eating away at what were once deemed “red lines” in terms of military engagement.

These past weeks have proved especially volatile and precarious. Seen from the perspective of Moscow’s moves, there was the stepping up by Russia of its bombardment of Kyiv’s energy infrastructure. Then came the lowering of the threshold for Russia’s use of its nuclear weapons arsenal.

This new doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power.

Then, early last Thursday, several Russian warheads dropped from the sky into the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in the country’s eastern side.

Although initial reports described one of the warheads as an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), Western security officials later said that although based on an ICBM model, it was in fact an experimental “intermediate-range” missile, based on Russia’s RS-26 Rubezh type and codenamed Oreshnik.

Significant as the distinction between the two weapons is, it did little to quell unease that a dramatic escalation of the conflict was under way.

Much of Russia’s latest moves, of course, came only after Washington itself first upped the ante with the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden greenlighting Ukraine’s use of US-made ATACMS missiles to strike further inside Russia.

At the same time, Washington also announced a massive delivery of anti-personnel mines to help bolster Ukraine’s flagging defences.

Put all of these developments together and they raise two interconnected questions.

The first is do they point to an increased and reckless appetite for all-round escalation?

The second question is could both sides simply be maximising strategic leverage ahead of what some observers believe could be imminent moves to try to end the war that has raged in Ukraine now for over 1,000 days?

The first thing to recognise in any attempt to answer such questions is that for over a year now, all parties to the war having been looking on warily, waiting to see the outcome of the recent US election.

Now that Donald Trump has secured a comprehensive victory, along with this has come a new reality.

It’s one that both Ukraine and its US and European allies, and likewise Russia and its own supporters, have been quickly trying to recalibrate their response to.

Servicemen of the 24th Mechanised Brigade fire 2s5 self-propelled 152mm howitzer towards Russian positions near Chasiv Yar, Donetsk region, Ukraine

Hung out to dry?

While many in Ukraine and among its allies have been concerned that Kyiv might be hung out to dry by any Trump brokered peace deal, their fears could yet prove unfounded. In considering such factors, however, it’s worth bearing in mind that nothing is a given here, and that Trump’s next moves on Ukraine are as unpredictable as many of his other strategies.

His election campaign promise to end the war in 24 hours remains more a slogan than a policy. Pushed on what that policy might turn out to be, Trump’s answer was equally vague. “I can’t give you those plans because if I give you those plans, I’m not going to be able to use them,” he said during the election campaign.

That said, anyone looking for clues as to what might be expected from his presidency over Ukraine could perhaps start by drawing on vice-president-elect JD Vance’s own remarks during the campaign, when he alluded to Ukraine ceding territory to Russia and dropping its pleas to join Nato in exchange for peace. But here again campaign remarks are one thing and reality another.

That said, though, earlier this month the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing policy advisers close to Trump, reported that they were considering offering a deal whereby the current fighting lines would be frozen – cementing Russia’s seizure of roughly 20% of Ukraine – and forcing Ukraine to temporarily suspend its quest to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato).

According to the WSJ, one idea proposed by Trump’s transition team and up until then not previously reported would involve Kyiv promising not to join Nato for at least 20 years. The US, meantime, would continue to provide weapons supplies to deter a future Russian attack and the frontline would essentially lock in place – and both sides agree to an 800-mile demilitarised zone.

Highlighting the tricky question of who would police such a zone, the WSJ cited a Trump adviser insisting that whoever did it, they would certainly not be American military or part of a US-funded international body, such as the United Nations.

“We can do training and other support but the barrel of the gun is going to be European,” a member of Trump’s team said. “We are not sending American men and women to uphold peace in Ukraine. And we are not paying for it. Get the Poles, Germans, British and French to do it,” the newspaper quoted the adviser as saying bluntly.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures as he speaks during a meeting with the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense, representatives of the military-industrial complex and developers of missile systems at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia

Trump agreement

Such a blueprint, not surprisingly, has given many among Ukraine’s European allies considerable food for thought. But rather than simply baulk at it, say some observers, Europe needs to realise the potential it has to help shape any Trump-US-brokered agreement.

Being actively involved from the get-go, they argue, is far better than sitting passively by and watching it imposed on Ukraine and its allies on this side of the Atlantic.

Speaking to the Financial Times (FT) last week, Margus Tsahkna, Estonia’s foreign minister, was the first European leader to step up to the plate on this sensitive and tricky issue.

Tsahkna’s view was that Europe should be prepared to send forces to Ukraine to underpin a peace deal. Rather than his suggestion being shot down instantly, it seems instead to have caught the eye of his fellow Europeans and gained traction.

As the FT’s foreign editor Alec Russell observed, unlike back in the days of the Cold War, when the fate of Europe lay at the behest of Washington and Moscow, current European diplomats believe they can have a say at the table given they can argue that they will only deploy troops under specific conditions.

“Without such a guarantee, the risk of Putin seeking to test the mettle of a force by infringing the terms of the agreement would be too high for most heads of government to agree to dispatching troops,” noted Russell.

While fears still linger that Trump could yet cut a deal with Putin of a kind that would spell disaster for Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, many analysts believe the next US leader would not be that malleable.

If nothing else, they say, Trump’s ego might kick in as he would not like to be remembered as the US president who sold Ukraine out to the Russians.

But, once again, so much of this remains conjecture and Trump’s unpredictability still makes many uneasy. Then there remains the thorny question of getting Ukraine and Russia around the negotiating table in the first place.

Earlier this year, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, two key security advisers who both served in Trump’s first White House, presented him with a plan to end the war that involves telling Ukraine it will only get more US weapons if it enters peace talks.

The flip side in the plan is that the US would, at the same time, warn Moscow that any refusal to negotiate would result in increased US support for Ukraine, Kellogg confirmed in an interview in June.

Under the plan drawn up by Kellogg and Fleitz, there would be a ceasefire based on prevailing battle lines during peace talks, Fleitz commented at the time, saying that Trump, then the Republican presidential candidate, responded favourably.

“I’m not claiming he agreed with it or agreed with every word of it, but we were pleased to get the feedback we did,” Fleitz said.

Difficulties ahead

Ukraine’s less than warm response to the plan, however, underscored the difficulties that lie ahead. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said that freezing hostilities at the prevailing frontlines would be “strange”, given Russia had violated international law by invading Ukraine.

“Ukraine has an absolutely clear understanding and it is spelled out in the peace formula proposed by President Zelenskyy, it is clearly stated there – peace can only be fair and peace can only be based on international law,” he told Reuters news agency.

But since then another stark reality has set in with Ukraine losing territory on the battlefield. Data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) shows that Russia has gained almost six times as much territory in 2024 as it did in 2023, and is advancing towards key Ukrainian logistical hubs in the eastern Donbas region.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is faltering as Russian troops have pushed Kyiv’s offensive backwards with the help of North Korean troops.

With every day that passes, Zelenskyy’s hoped-for idea that Ukraine’s defenders would be able to force Russian troops back beyond the borders as established at the end of the Cold War in 1991– a notion in which he was wholeheartedly supported by his Western allies – is now little more than pie-in-the-sky thinking.

The Ukrainian leader potentially could now face immense pressure to negotiate terms that might permanently alter Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Internally, that could also mean that Zelenskyy would have to contend with a public that views ceding territory as capitulation to Moscow with all the domestic political friction that would bring with it.

For some considerable time now, both in Washington and Europe, political and military officials and analysts have been sketching out possible resolutions to the war.

In September, Newsweek magazine, using templates drawn up by two international analysts, outlined three emerging models that offer insights into how the conflict might end, each carrying its own set of risks and opportunities for Ukraine’s future.

The first, sometimes referred to as the “Korean Model”, would make for an unresolved “frozen” conflict like that which followed the 1953 ceasefire that left North and South Korea locked in a military standoff. In this scenario, Ukraine and Russia could reach a similar standoff, where neither achieves a clear military victory, but a ceasefire holds the fragile peace in place. Trump’s pick as national security adviser, Michael Waltz, has already mentioned such a template.

The second other possible resolution draws from Finland’s experience in the 1940 Winter War with the Soviet Union.

After a brief but brutal conflict, Finland ceded territory to the USSR to maintain its independence but was forced to be neutral in subsequent global conflicts. This, say analysts, would be the most likely Trump vision, even if it would sit heavily with the Ukrainians.

A third model detailed by Newsweek based on research would be a post-war scenario akin to Cold War Germany, where Ukraine is split into two separate entities, each aligned with opposing global powers.

Western Ukraine would integrate with Nato and the European Union, but part of eastern Ukraine, including Crimea and much of Donetsk and Luhansk, would remain under Russian control. This would formalise the current de facto division, creating a new geopolitical reality on Europe’s eastern flank.

China’s role

Which of these strategies Trump will pursue in whole, in part, or at all is unclear. So many variable components are at play here. For example what role might China play?

What about the significance of sanctions? Does Putin really want to start talks at all when he currently sits with the upper hand militarily?

Just starting peace talks, let alone bringing them to an agreement, faces a mountain of challenges and pitfalls.

This weekend, tensions are higher than ever as Vladimir Putin insists a stock of Russia’s new Oreshnik missiles are “ready to be used” and Zelenskyy urges a “serious response” from its allies.

The appetite for escalation then continues – for now.

But tentative as it might yet still be, there is a growing sense that the start of the endgame at least – whatever shape

it takes – might just be around the corner.