It is wise not to fool oneself: Vladimir Putin’s Russia will not accept the truce Kyiv proposes, even though it has the active backing of the European Union.
The Kremlin still vividly remembers the failed Minsk agreements, negotiated by Russians and Ukrainians with the support of Germany and France, and it fears becoming the target of a similar ruse now.
These accords, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande later acknowledged, were only a deft Western ploy to allow Kyiv to arm itself more effectively against Russian aggression.
The United States president, Donald Trump, who before taking office promised to shake up the Ukrainian conflict in twenty-four hours, has run into a reality very different from what he imagined.
There are many politicians on both sides of the Atlantic — the neocons of both parties, the European Commission, and the vast majority of EU governments — who refuse to concede defeat and want to keep wearing Russia down to serve as a warning to China.
The resistances are strongest in Europe, where Washington is urged to set a deadline for Moscow to say whether it accepts the proposed truce, and this was conveyed in Brussels to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
But Moscow did not launch the so‑called “military operation” in vain; now, as it nears the objectives it set in the Russian‑speaking regions of the neighboring country, it aims to give Ukraine time to reassemble and continue arming itself with European help.
The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy — whose term ended more than a year ago without new elections being called — has already stated that he will not concede defeat in the regions illegally occupied by Russia.
But Moscow does not want a provisional ceasefire; it seeks a definitive settlement that recognizes the new reality on the ground and also accounts for its security interests.
This is well understood by governments, which nonetheless use the truce proposal to show that Russia does not truly want peace and to justify the continent’s accelerated rearmament.
Europeans also believe that by resisting, they can persuade the American neocons surrounding Trump that negotiating with Putin makes no sense and that the only option is to continue the war.
Meanwhile, the French and British keep talking about forming a volunteer coalition for a hypothetical peace, even as Moscow warns that it will not accept NATO troops in non‑occupied Ukraine, which it regards as enemies.
The Trump administration has said, though Paris and London may not seem to hear it, that Europeans should not count on U.S. air cover should they decide to send those so‑called “peacekeeping troops” to Ukraine.
It sounds like a dialogue of the deaf.