Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky will be powerless to resist if US President-elect Donald Trump decides he wants Kiev to stop fighting and pursue peace with Russia, a source close to Zelensky’s office has told Ukraine’s Strana news outlet.
Trump promised throughout his campaign to bring a speedy end to the conflict, and after the defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s election, pundits in the US have begun to speculate as to how Trump will achieve this goal once he takes office in January.
Much depends on who takes up senior roles in Trump’s administration, Strana reported on Thursday, noting that “there are many in the Republican Party who support war to the bitter end, and even in a harsher form than under [President Joe] Biden.”
Should Trump fail to purge pro-war Republicans and Democrat holdovers from the US State Department, the outlet noted, “almost nothing will change except for minor details.” The appointment of a hawkish figure like former CIA Director Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State would signal that Trump intends to follow this course, it added.
However, if Trump staffs the State Department with loyalists and approves a plan to ‘freeze’ the conflict while denying Ukraine NATO membership, and if Russian President Vladimir Putin accepts this plan, then “the likelihood that Zelensky will refuse is close to zero,” a source close to Zelensky’s office told Strana.
Ukraine “is not in a position to refuse its main partner, without whose support it will be almost impossible to continue the war,” the source said.
“Moreover, the mood in society is also growing in favor of a speedy end to the war, and even nationalists have recently begun to say that a ceasefire along the front line is far from the worst option for Ukraine in the current circumstances,” the source continued. “Of course, Zelensky will try to get the best terms for a ceasefire. There will be intense bargaining, but he is unlikely to object in principle.”
Zelensky insists that Ukraine will keep fighting until it restores its 1991 borders, a task that would involve the recapture of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, Zaporozhye, and Crimea from Russia. Senior Pentagon officials have admitted since last year that this feat would be next to impossible.
Russia maintains that it is open to any negotiations starting with an acknowledgement of “territorial reality” – that the above-mentioned regions will never return to Ukrainian control. The Kremlin has also insisted that all the goals of its military operation – securing Ukraine’s neutral status, protecting the rights of ethnic Russians within its borders, and ending the influence of neo-Nazis and ultranationalists in Kiev – will be achieved.