On board Air Force One on Sunday, U.S. President Donald J. Trump confirmed that he’s spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the Russia-Ukraine War and wants to “end this damn thing.”
Trump has thus far remained coy about the contents of those conversations and has yet to reveal how he plans to end the war. A sober analysis of the battlefield in Ukraine, the diplomatic landscape, and financial conditions affecting all sides reveals Trump’s options for producing a “good” outcome are quite limited.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not waiting to find out what Trump plans, and is trying to make his own case for war termination conditions. Last Friday he announced he was ready to “do a deal” with Trump on essentially paying the United States to press Putin for an outcome desirable to Kyiv, by offering to let the United States mine reportedly trillions of dollars of rare earth minerals.
Zelensky has floated everything from “temporary” surrender of sovereignty of the eastern part of Ukraine, immediate NATO membership for the rump Ukraine, and – most eye-opening last week – a request to be given nuclear weapons. He’s also requested 200,000 “peacekeepers” to patrol the border between Ukraine and Russia after a deal is struck.
Trump’s envoy to solve the Russia-Ukraine War, retired Gen. Kieth Kellogg, will be at the Munich Security Conference later this week, and is expected to directly talk with Zelensky on what Trump is willing to do to end the war. In public, Kellogg has suggested a ceasefire along the current line of contact, a Korea-style demilitarized zone separating the two sides, and a version of armed neutrality for Ukraine – but, as other Trump officials have indicated, no NATO membership, now or later.
But regardless of what Trump, Zelensky, or Kellogg want, the real question is this: what will Putin agree to?
To answer that, it is first necessary to conduct a sober assessment of the national balance of power between the two sides, because no player in this drama will make any concessions unless it is forced to do so by realities on the ground – and it is here that we discover it is Putin who has the lion’s share of negotiating leverage.
Russia has millions more men than Ukraine from which to draw troops to supply an attritional war. Russia has converted to a wartime economy, and its industry has retooled over the past three years to produce massive quantities of every requirement for war: artillery shells, bullets, drones, missiles, and armored vehicle factories and repair shops. Russia has irreversible advantages in air power, air defense, and electronic warfare capacity.
Ukraine is deficient in all these categories, but most acutely, Ukrainian General Oleksander Syrsky admitted last month that Ukraine is losing more men per month than it can mobilize to replace them. Their army is shrinking by the day. Zelensky revealed on Sunday that Russia’s army, in contrast, has grown by an additional 100,000 recently. In other words, it is a near mathematical certainty that on the battlefield, Ukraine’s military will eventually be destroyed by the Russian armed forces if a negotiated settlement is not found.
That gives Putin an advantage that even Trump’s reputation for deal-making can’t overcome.
It is presently unknown what Putin has been telling Trump behind the scenes on those phone calls, but it is certain Putin is not leading with concessions. The last known standard Putin articulated came in June of last year when he said the war could end if Ukraine withdrew its forces beyond the administrative borders of the four provinces Russia annexed in 2022: Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.
In an interview just two months ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated that Putin’s June 14 lines represent “the bare minimum” that the Russian side would consider as war termination conditions. On Monday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov reiterated that all of Putin’s June 14 demands must be met before there can be any peace. Russia has expressly rejected any possible truce or ceasefire, only an end-of-war settlement.
Many in the West will dismiss such maximalist rhetoric from Russia, concluding the tough talk is merely bluster to improve their negotiation positions.
That may be a dangerous and erroneous assumption.
As noted above, Russia has decisive advantages heading into talks that makes it quite plausible that they can press for full submission to their conditions – or they’ll simply continue fighting until they eventually defeat the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) and win the war.
Few in the West believe that is even possible, calculating that since Russia hasn’t conquered Ukraine after three years of fighting, they can’t do so in the future. Yet as long as Russia maintains the political will to keep fighting, they do have the capacity to militarily defeat the UAF. That fact is crucial to understand because if the Trump team believes they can compel Putin to settle for less than maximal demands, they will run the risk of losing what leverage does exist to get anything approximating a beneficial outcome for Ukraine.
And to be clear, “beneficial” in this context means avoiding an outright military defeat and being issued terms of surrender by Moscow. In my estimation, taking emotion out of the conversation, the best that Trump can get for Ukraine at this point are Putin’s June 14 lines, a declaration of no NATO, and a militarily neutral rump Ukraine.
Suppose Kellogg and his negotiating team fail to agree to those terms. In that case, Putin will likely continue fighting, without pause, and may go well beyond the four provinces, potentially all the way to the Dniper River, gobbling up many more provinces on the way.
Ukrainian service members fire with a self-propelled howitzer 2S1 Gvozdika, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in unknown location in Kharkiv region, Ukraine May 7, 2022. REUTERS/Serhii Nuzhnenko
Most in the West and everyone in Ukraine would no doubt find it abhorrent for Trump to agree to “all” of Putin’s June 14 demands. But if Trump doesn’t go there, the chances would be high that Putin will eventually militarily defeat the UAF and issue terms of surrender – potentially issued from the gates of Kyiv later this year.
About the Author: Daniel L. Davis
Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow & Military Expert from Defense Priorities and host of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive show on YouTube. Davis retired from the U.S. Army as a Lt. Col. after 21 years of active service. He was deployed into combat zones four times in his career: Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Iraq in 2009, and Afghanistan twice (2005, 2011). Davis was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for Valor at the Battle of 73 Easting in 1991 and awarded a Bronze Star Medal in Afghanistan in 2011. Davis is a Contributing Editor to 19FortyFive.
