The prospect of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and his nomination of JD Vance, a hardline isolationist, as his running mate have raised the difficult question of what price is it worth paying to bring peace to Ukraine. Trump has boasted, ludicrously, that he could end Vladimir Putin’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine overnight, without explaining how. Former Trump advisers have sketched out flimsy plans for a ceasefire in return for territorial concessions. Hungarian premier Viktor Orbán, Europe’s appeaser in chief, went on a self-appointed “peace mission” to Kyiv, the Kremlin and Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida redoubt.
Ukraine too has stepped up its efforts to try to set the terms of a just peace. On present levels of military support from its allies — and denied permission to use long-range weaponry to degrade Putin’s war machine in Russia itself — Kyiv has no realistic military path to liberating all its lands. Fatigue is growing. Millions of Ukrainians face a cold, dark winter after Russian missiles pulverised half of the country’s power supply. Recent polling suggests a large minority of Ukrainians now favour peace negotiations, with growing numbers even willing to contemplate territorial concessions to buy peace.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has proposed holding another multilateral peace conference before the US election to which Russia would be invited. His foreign minister has just visited China, Russia’s most important backer in diplomatic and material terms. Ultimately, it has to be for Kyiv to decide when to negotiate an end to the war. For the moment, though, the chances of a successful peace process look slim. Ukraine wants restoration of its territorial integrity and sovereignty; Moscow wants Ukraine’s subjugation as well as full control of four of its provinces. These positions are irreconcilable and neither side has the military upper hand to compel the other to concede.