The visit by White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Moscow and Kyiv has left more questions than answers. Details of what was discussed in both meetings are scant, but all participants seem to describe them as “positive”. It is indeed a positive development that US President Donald Trump is trying to jump start negotiations at this point.
The biggest problem he faces is that Russia’s position has only hardened. Russia wants Ukraine to be genuinely neutral, with no Western military presence, open or clandestine. It wants to keep previously occupied territories and it insists that Ukraine withdraw from the small part of Donbas that remains in its hands.
Moscow demands a cap on the size of the Ukrainian army and on the types of weapons it may possess. It also wants far-right units and paramilitary groups disbanded and outlawed, the legislation limiting the use of the Russian language cancelled and elections to be held in which Russia-friendly parties could compete freely with the pro-Western ones. For Ukraine and its European backers, this would be a hard pill to swallow, all the more so after spending the summer trying to convince the European public and Trump that the “tide is turning” in the war.
As evidence, Ukrainian and Western officials have repeatedly pointed to the Russian offensive slowing down and Ukraine intensifying strikes deep within Russian territory, targeting oil facilities and causing fuel shortages across the country. The campaign against Russian energy infrastructure was meant to coerce Russian President Vladimir Putin into accepting peace on conditions more favourable to Ukraine. But the opposite has happened.
Russia’s negotiating position is now even less open to compromise. The land swap, once eyed as a way to compensate Ukraine for its withdrawal from the Donbas region, is now out of the question. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has launched its own devastating campaign of strikes aimed at collapsing Ukraine’s economy.
In addition to shutting down exports of Ukraine’s main commodities, grain and ore, through Odesa ports, Russia is also methodically destroying logistical hubs and warehouses owned by large retailers as well as large-scale industry, from metallurgical plants to beverage factories. This is the point when Trump’s peacemaking duo resurfaced on the Russo-Ukrainian front after a protracted absence. The very fact that Kushner and Witkoff embarked on this trip and were received by Putin personally signals a change of tack in Washington.
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