Zelensky faces a dangerous choice: reject Trump’s flawed peace deal or risk Ukraine’s sovereignty.
April 29, 2025
Associate Fellow at Chatham House
I believe that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Ukrainian negotiating team have already concluded that the peace deal that U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to force through simply cannot be sold to the Ukrainian public.
The Trump proposal appears to require Ukraine to accept the loss of Crimea and other Russian-occupied territories, without receiving any security assurances in return. It even demands that Ukraine abandon its bid to join NATO. Given that Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are enshrined in its constitution, it’s hard to imagine Zelensky being able to secure legislative approval for such a deal — and he knows that.
For Zelensky, it must already be clear that Trump is pulling out all the stops to deliver on Putin’s agenda. Trump wants a reset in U.S.-Russia relations and appears willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that — including making concessions at Ukraine’s expense.
Trump sees Ukraine as the weaker partner in all this — a country to be bullied into accepting a deal that suits him and Putin, but not Ukraine. He seems unconcerned with whether the deal is acceptable to the Ukrainian people, or whether it would destabilize Ukraine politically, economically, and socially. That’s not his problem. Trump appears focused solely on signing any deal — no matter how bad for Ukraine — as quickly as possible, securing headlines for delivering “peace,” and perhaps even chasing the Nobel Peace Prize he so desires.
So what is Zelensky’s strategy now?
I believe Zelensky knows that Trump will try to strike a deal with Putin regardless of what happens in Ukraine, as long as it results in normalized U.S.-Russia relations. He also knows Trump and Putin will try to pin the blame on him — and Ukraine — for any breakdown in peace talks. We saw signs of that last week, when Trump attacked Zelensky for stating the obvious: Ukraine cannot legally accept the loss of Crimea. Politically, that would be suicide for Zelensky and could spark a revolution at home.
It seems Zelensky is playing for time. He likely understands that Trump will eventually walk away from the negotiations, taking Putin with him. In the meantime, Ukraine still has access to a significant portion of the $61 billion U.S. military aid package approved under former U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration. Zelensky likely wants to draw down as much of that support as possible — and secure additional European financial and military assistance — before rejecting any Trump-brokered deal.
Ideally, Zelensky wants to force Putin to walk away from the talks. But given Trump’s admiration for Putin, that seems unlikely. In the meantime, Zelensky is trying to buy time for Ukraine’s military and defense industry to strengthen its position and fill the gaps left by a potential U.S. pullback — gaps that are significant in areas like Patriot missiles, HIMARS, and ATACMS. The goal is to build enough resilience to sustain a long war, hoping that time will yield strategic advantages — whether through shifts in U.S. politics, such as the midterms, or mounting challenges for Putin inside Russia, as we saw with the Wagner Group uprising.
Whatever Trump and Putin agree to, without Ukraine’s participation, Russia simply lacks the military capacity to capitalize on it through a renewed offensive. In the end, this could be a poisoned chalice for Putin: gifted a “win” in Ukraine by Trump, but unable to follow through because of his own — and Russia’s — shortcomings.
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in the op-ed section are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Kyiv Independent.
Timothy Ash is an associate fellow at the Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme. Ash is also a senior emerging market (EM) sovereign strategist at BlueBay Asset Management.
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Why Crimea matters so much to Putin – and now Trump
All the US president cares about is this war being over, writes world affairs editor Sam Kiley, no matter the cost to Ukraine’s history and future
Wednesday 30 April 2025
Crimea is footnoted in British history for the Earl of Cardigan and his disastrous leading of the Charge of the Light Brigade. To Vladimir Putinit’s where history itself must turn.
Donald Trump, taking an 18th-century might-is-right approach, has said that the peninsula was captured without a fight by Russia from Ukraine in 2014 and therefore should stay in Putin’s fist.
Of all the 20 per cent of Ukraine’s territory taken after Russia invaded Crimea 11 years ago and launched its wider Anschluss in 2022, Crimea is the greatest Russian prize.
Whoever controls Sevastopol is likely to dominate the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Outside of Tartus, in Syria, which Russia lost recently, it is – or was – Russia’s only warm-weather port.
Moscow’s claim to Crimea has been undermined by the fact that it was ceded to Ukraine under the Soviet Union in 1954.
Putin’s claim, now enshrined in an illegal annexation of Crimea into the Russian Federation, is further underpinned by waves of Russian settlement and forced removal of local people over at least two centuries that have left it with a Tartar heritage but a Russian ethnic and linguistic majority.
After 2014, it was common in Moscow’s bars and restaurants for people to remark how happy they were about its “return” amid rose-tinted memories of sunny beach holidays in a former colony.
They’ve forgotten the Holodomor, when decisions from Moscow led to millions of Ukrainians starving. They’ve ignored the uprisings against efforts to eradicate every trace of Ukraine’s language, its history, and its culture under Russian rule from the Tsars to Stalin and Putin. The mass deportations of Cossacks from their homeland to Siberia? Not even a nod.
Trump won’t know any of this either. Despite his plea to Putin for an end to airstrikes against Ukraine in the wake of a deadly attack on Kyiv on Wednesday night into Thursday – he wrote “Vladimir, STOP!” on social media – all Trump cares about is this war being over, no matter the cost to Ukraine’s history and future.
The latest chapter of Russian aggression was unleashed when “little green men” – Russian spetsnaz special forces commandos – used the Russian navy presence in Sevastopol as a bridgehead to seize the peninsula in 2014.
It was launched following a well-tested programme which Putin had pioneered in Georgia. Russian-speaking residents of Georgia and Ukraine (including Crimea), were encouraged to complain about discrimination on the basis of their heritage. In post-Soviet nations many missed the certainty that being Russian brought. They resented finding themselves in junior new states, and in a minority.
In Crimea, their complaints served as an excuse for a rescue mission. Simultaneously, Moscow-backed “separatists” in Ukraine’s east also rose and demanded autonomy from Kyiv. Putin sent in Cossacks from Rostov, Slav nationalists from Serbia, and reinforced the “uprising” with regular Russian forces.
In Kramatorsk, in the Donetsk region, neighbours turned on each other and the police split into rival loyal or pro-Putin factions. I picked my way through the provincial legislative building on floors slippery with spent machine gun rounds not long after Crimea fell.
The town, 90 per cent Russian-speaking, drove out Russian sympathisers and remains a battered and bloodied provisional capital of a province now illegally annexed by Putin. Donetsk, the original seat of government, is now ruled by Moscow’s proxies on the other side of the front line after intense and bloody fighting.
Putin’s expansion of territory in 2014 could not have been achieved without the bridgehead of operations being established in Crimea. It was even more crucial to his full-scale invasion of 2022.
He used the peninsula as a logistics hub, building a bridge to the Russian mainland to supply the forces he has crammed into the arid region.
Moscow, following conventional doctrine, destroyed most of Ukraine’s navy there and used Sevastopol as its main base.
The Kremlin’s admirals didn’t reckon on Ukraine’s innovation. Its navy now reduced to a handful of small craft, it switched to missiles and drones. First it sank the pride of the Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva, and then it used drones to batter Russia’s navy out of Ukrainian-occupied areas and into its home ports.
If Moscow is allowed back into Sevastopol, as Trump would want, Russia’s naval reconstruction and regeneration will continue apace, and in time assume total domination again.
Meanwhile, Crimea remains in Russian hands and is the main origin of rockets and missiles fired at Ukraine, Russia’s main base for air defences, and its command and control hub for the whole Ukrainian campaign.
That’s why it matters to Putin. And now Trump.
Comment from :
Chrisw 27
I think Zelenskyy’s idea is smart – Ukraine accepts that Russia has Crimea for now but does not relinquish its claim on it. During negotiations he would probably agree to something similar with the other territory that Russia has taken because there it looks very unlikely that Ukraine can take it back.
But then we come to security guarantees. Russia does not want a Ukraine that desires to win back “lost” territory and is buying F35s and cruise missiles from the west (imagine if Ukraine voted in an Ultra-nationalist government committed winning back the Donbas). So they would want restrictions on types and quantities of weapons Ukraine could have. But Ukraine sees any restrictions on their armed forces as deliberately weakening them to allow Russia to dominate them or even invade again – and they are absolutely right to fear this.
Hence the idea of outside security guarantees. Something that protects Ukraine without making Russia feel threatened. NATO membership is a non-starter because Putin would see it as a big geostrategic defeat for Russia and Trump sees it and an unacceptable responsibility on the US to defend Ukraine that could draw them into a war with Russia. But Ukraine has had ad hoc security guarantees in the past and they have proved worthless.
But continuing with the war by default is possibly the worst option of all. Huge death toll on both sides, huge damage to Russian economy and no end remotely in sight. And from the Western perspective it’s not good that Russia is turning itself into a country organised around the principle of perpetual war or that the longer the war goes on the greater the chance of us being sucked into it leading to WW3, which of course could go nuclear. We have to find some way of ending this.
Real European
In 1999 Russia and 56 other European countries (incl Ukraine) signed the Charter for European Security of the OCSE that says: “Each participating State has an equal right to security. We reaffirm the inherent right of each and every participating State to be free to choose or change its security arrangements, including treaties of alliance, as they evolve”
When in 2002 Putin was asked for his views on the Ukraine’s NATO membership in future, he replied: ” I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day, the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners.” (Press Statement and Answers to Questions at Joint News Conference, President of Russia, 17 May 2002)
O, and remind us, why did Finland and Sweden join NATO?
hayneman
‘All the US president cares about is this war being over’
No Sam. All Trump cares about is making money and building a tower block with his name on it in Moscow. Having failed to stop the war ‘on day one’, he’s also desperate to escape the world’s ridicule and anger at his treatment of brave Zelensky and the Ukrainian people. Meanwhile, whatever Putin promises today, we know he’ll break it tomorrow…
gofel
“Outside of Tartus, in Syria, which Russia lost recently, it is – or was – Russia’s only warm-weather port.”
That’s obviously incorrect…Novorossiysk, further along the Black Sea coast, is a huge Russian naval base…they issued a decree in 2002 to move their HQ there from Sebastopol. The Black Sea Fleet is currently docked there…>80 warships including submarines.
And to the best of my knowledge, Russia hasn’t lost Tartus. Still there as of this morning.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, lol.
Kremtroll scum :
Navarra
Balance and impartiality are not Sam Kiley’s thing. Russophobia and western narratives clearly are his thing.
Either Sam Kiley doesn’t know or chooses not to explain the powder keg, near 50/50 electoral demographic split between east and west. Therefore nearly half of Ukraine were horrified and opposed to the undeniable western fomented and backed violent Maidan coup.
Kiley doesn’t mention the tanks smashing through into Mariupol to quash a rebellion, then forming the NZ Azov battalion to persecute and disappear many Russian speakers.
Nor does Kiley mention the rebellion being quashed in Odessa where Russian speakers were herded into the Union Building and burned alive, all while police looked on and did nothing.
Crimea. To think that Russia would sit idly by and let a hostile coup government overrun its Naval base and potentially hand it to NATO, is madness. Kiley and many others fail to consider the democratic vote of 94% to cede to Russia. Kiley also doesn’t mention that Ukraine turned off all the water supplies to Crimea.
Just another abuse against anyone who opposed the coup government crackdown on who they labelled as “terrorists”. These “terrorists”, ethnic Russians of Ukrainian nationality, Ukraine’s own people who were shelled, bombed and murdered by their own.
Kiley doesn’t mention the many Western media articles highlighting massive concerns about Ukraine’s far right ultranationalists, Svoboda, Right Sektor, Bandarites and the OUN cultists. Media that is now largely erased from the public eye because it goes against the new Western anti Russian narrative.
Two sides to every story. Lying by omission should not be tolerated. How’s that for balance Sam Kiley?
Crikey, I could write an essay.
Excellent rebuttal from Real European:
1. Ukraine is a sovereign country. It isn’t up to the Kremlin to decide which alliances or unions Ukraine can or cannot join to begin with.
2. In 1999 Russia and 56 other European countries (incl Ukraine) signed the Charter for European Security of the OCSE that says: “Each participating State has an equal right to security. We reaffirm the inherent right of each and every participating State to be free to choose or change its security arrangements, including treaties of alliance, as they evolve”
3. In that same year, in 1999, with a 95% majority the Ukrainian parliament changed the constitution committing Ukraine to join NATO and the EU.
4. When in 2002 Putin was asked for his views on the Ukraine’s NATO membership in future, he replied: ” I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day, the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners.” (Press Statement and Answers to Questions at Joint News Conference, President of Russia, 17 May 2002)
5. At the NATO summit in Vilnius, 2023, NATO members unanimously reaffirmed that Ukraine WILL join NATO after the war when it is ready for it and meets all conditions.
The following anonymous piece was written by a russian inside russia and appeared on FB page Fear and Loathing : Closer to the Edge
Here’s the full (imperfect) English translation:
THE CURSE OF VLADIMIR PUTIN: HISTORY WILL PISS AND SHIT ON HIS GRAVE
Fuck you, Vladimir Putin. Forever, you piece of shit.
There will be nothing left of you. No monuments, no anthems, not even a stinking wreath. Only the sound of a chair being dragged to your rotten grave so the world can piss and shit on it.
Putin didn’t raise Russia. He dragged it into a fucking pit — a stinking tomb of ruined cities, shattered families, and stolen future generations.
He could have been a builder. He could have been someone. But he chose to be a rotting worm, feeding on the remains of his own country to stuff his stinking, moldy gut.
Fuck you for every dream you poisoned. For every truth you buried in shit. For every fucking bomb you dropped on a sleeping city. For every child left fatherless, every mother screaming, every old man dying alone in the ruins.
Fuck you for Alexei Navalny. For thinking that killing a Man would somehow stop you from being a worthless coward. But, motherfucker, no. Navalny is eternal. You’re just a forgotten flea.
You ruled your people through fear because you were too piss-weak to earn their respect. You flooded the world with lies because you were too small to survive the truth. You surrounded yourself with bootlickers because no free person would ever listen to you.
Your legacy isn’t strength. Your legacy is rotting stench.
The stench of strangled freedom. The stench of collapsed cities. The stench of thousands of young soldiers — Russia’s own sons — thrown into the meat grinder like shit for your imperial fantasies.
You’re no strategist, no leader. You’re a piss-soaked little jackal, clawing in terror at your own worthlessness.
And when you’re finally silenced forever — when the last dumb bastard drops your greasy photo face-down in the dirt — there won’t be mourning. Only spit and cursing laughter.
There will be only one voice rising from every free soul:
Fuck you, Vladimir Putin.
Fuck you for the children under the rubble. Fuck you for the political prisoners who died screaming. Fuck you for the stolen dreams, the murdered journalists, the frozen villages, the burned-down homes of our grandmothers.
Fuck you for thinking cruelty would outlast courage. Fuck you for believing fear could drown out hope. Fuck you for your stupid confidence that death would kill the dream of freedom.
No fucking way.
Even when your rotted body dissolves in worms, even when the Kremlin scrubs your stench off the marble, even when your last lie sinks into blood — the world will remember.
Remember you not as a leader, but as a trembling, terrified piece of shit — a botoxed ghost scurrying through a palace that stank of death.
And when you’re finally lowered into the pit, no bell will toll. Only laughter. And spitting on your grave.
And the voice of millions of former slaves will cry out one last time:
Fuck you, Vladimir Putin.
One thing is for sure, Zelensky cannot and should not officially relinquish Crimea. Although mafia land never honors an agreement, the West won’t allow Ukraine to break one. They just don’t have the courage and foresight to let Ukraine do that. When you are dealing with a trashy, criminal entity that never adheres to any rules, why should we? It’s high time to put on the gauntlets.
So, if Zelensky says yes to the blackmail, Crimea is pretty much gone, and this, for a long time, maybe even forever.
Zelensky, as a last resort, could point out international laws that make Crimea a Ukrainian territory, and Ukrainian law, that forbids handing over territory.
But, neither putin nor the felon care much about laws.