A US-brokered peace deal in Ukraine demands a sacrificial lamb

Ukraine is shaping up as the elephant in its own room when US President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska at week’s end, ostensibly to broker a peace deal to end the three and a half year conflict.

Trump has agreed to meet the Russian president even if he refuses to meet Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, adding to concerns Ukraine and its leader could be sidelined in negotiations. The US leader has added further to Ukraine’s fears by suggesting an end to the war must involve “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both [countries].”

Understandably, Zelensky has reacted angrily, saying Ukrainians would not cede their land to occupiers. “Any decisions that are without Ukraine are at the same time decisions against peace. They will not bring anything. These are dead decisions. They will never work,” he said.

The European Alliance agrees. Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland and Finland, and the president of the EU Commission, released a joint statement at the weekend declaring the path to peace could not be decided without Ukraine: “We are convinced that only an approach that combines active diplomacy, support to Ukraine and pressure on the Russian Federation to end their illegal war, can succeed.”

Trump’s unpredictability is disturbing Europe. He sells himself as a transactional president, but his second term is a kind of Sun King reload, with the world worried much the same way Versailles fretted if Louis XIV caught a cold or was in a bad mood.

On Ukraine, Trump’s February clash with Zelensky in the Oval Office sent shock waves through the European Alliance and other allies, including Australia, whose close and long links with the US have been predicated on the belief that America stands up for liberal democracies and condemns authoritarian threats.

Trump’s ability to put himself at the centre of attention has prompted at least five lesser world leaders to line up to nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize. His assurances about the Middle East war solution with the US occupying and redeveloping Gaza into a glittering “Riviera of the Middle East”, plus his promise to end the Ukraine-Russia war on the first day of his second term, coupled with his inaugural speech declaration that his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier”, still await fulfilment.

The Trump the world has come to know needs to be coaxed and flattered to counter his petulant nature, and his unsympathetic brinkmanship on Ukraine and White House trashing of Zelensky only encouraged Putin to cast the former Russian satellite as a rogue province that needs to be bombed into submission.

Russia, like the US, is a country geared to perpetual war, but with hundreds of thousands of young Russians reportedly killed in the Ukraine invasion, Putin has to emerge with some sort of victory to justify the occupation. If it is not to be territory, Trump seems to be manoeuvring Zelensky as his fall guy.

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