The Ukrainian Telegram channel, Resident, claimed on Saturday that Trump had given Ukraine and Russia 10 days to jointly agree to a “temporary ceasefire” or he would “leave the peace track.”
Whether Trump actually issued a private deadline to the two sides is not yet known, but one thing everyone needs to be clear-eyed on: there is no ‘good’ peace for Trump to find. Ukraine has already lost the war.
And we in the West have no one to blame for this avoidable fiasco but ourselves.
Trump and Ukraine Meeting. Image Credit: White House.
Why Can’t We Face Reality in Ukraine?
Many in the West are still in denial, either unwilling to acknowledge the battlefield realities that virtually assure a Russian victory or unable to recognize it. I’m not sure which, but its one or the other. Trump’s many detractors – in both Europe and in the United States – are already setting the stage to blame him for the loss.
They are already accusing him of betraying Ukraine or “abandoning” them to their fate.
There are two major problems with these allegations, exposing serious deficiencies in the accusers themselves.
First, they imply that there is a good option that Trump can instead choose. They believe – as U.K. Prime Minister Kier Starmer and French President Manuel Macron surely do – that if only Trump would give Ukraine more money, put more pressure on Putin, and keep the pipeline of weapons and ammunition flowing, that eventually things will turn around for Zelensky’s troops. That has been demonstrably proven false.
For three full years of war, the United States led the way in providing thousands of military vehicles for Ukraine, hundreds of billions of dollars in support, intelligence information, training, and advising Ukrainian senior leaders. These massive efforts were effectively matched by European countries. All of this support failed to enable Ukraine to force Russia from their entrenched positions throughout all of 2023, and even with the additional $61 billion package in May of last year, they never stopped Russia from gaining ground.
Attacks into Kursk came to nothing. Attacks into Belgorod utterly failed. Western countries have severely depleted their own arsenals in the vain effort, and will need years just to replenish what was given away. Given the utter military failure of that collective total, what possible case could be made that just a little more equipment now would make a difference – especially when the manpower that Ukraine needs to operate the kit and fire the missiles, is no longer able to offset losses, and continues shrinking?
Second – and this may be the most important point to make – the situation of facing an ugly diplomatic end or a military defeat is only hanging around our necks because the abject diplomatic failure of the collective West from the outset of the war.
If the Western countries and Kyiv government had enacted the Minsk Accords from 2015, there almost certainly would never have been a war (Kyiv never enacted the single most important requirement: amend their constitution to give limited autonomy to the Ukrainian citizens in Donbas).
Had the West and Zelensky taken the diplomatic offramp offered two months into the war in Istanbul, the war could have ended with Kyiv only losing Crimea, vowing never to become a member of NATO, and the eventual withdrawal of all Russian troops.
Instead, we refused to enact Minsk and rejected the Istanbul deal, ensuring the war continued. Even after the abject failure of the 2023 Ukraine offensive, Kyiv and the West refused to acknowledge clear military reality, and fought on, claiming as late as November 2022 that Ukraine would eventually drive Russia back to the 1991 borders.
Things Will Only Get Worse
This is the cold, hard, ugly truth: Ukraine is facing either an ugly diplomatic loss or an even uglier military defeat because of the diplomatic failures and dearth of leadership in the collective West from 2015 to the inauguration of Trump in January 2025.
The best thing Trump could do now, the wisest course of action, the most moral choice would be to give Zelensky an ultimatum that either his government agrees to the best of the ugly terms he can get from Moscow, or Trump will walk and leave it to Zelensky to navigate with Europe.
That would be the forcing mechanism that would – finally – bring Zelensky face-to-face with the reality that there is no military solution to avoid defeat. There is no path through which Ukraine can even compel Putin to concede any of his main points.
Absent the fiction that the U.S. has its military back, Zelensky will finally have to do what could have saved hundreds of thousands of his countrymen’s lives at Istanbul in 2022: negotiate an end to the war.
Suppose Zelensky refuses, and the Europeans continue to fuel his delusions that he can secure better terms by continuing to fight. In that case, Russia will almost certainly continue to fight until it has defeated the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and their military will collapse as a coherent force. Russia will then merely issue terms of unconditional surrender. But that’s not how this has to end.
Hopefully, that claim of a 10-day ultimatum by Trump is true, and then faced with the unavoidable reality, Zelensky can belatedly do what is necessary to protect the rest of his population and agree to end the war on the best terms available. The alternative is unthinkable.
About the Author: Daniel L. Davis
Daniel L. Davis retired from the U.S. Army as a Lt. Col. after 21 years of active service and is now a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, writing a weekly column. 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. He is the author of The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America. Davis gained some national notoriety in 2012 when he returned from Afghanistan and published a report detailing how senior U.S. military and civilian leaders told the American public and Congress the war was going well while, in reality, it was headed to defeat. Events since confirmed his analysis was correct. Davis was also the recipient of the 2012 Ridenhour Prize for Truth-telling. Currently, you can find Lt Col. Daniel Davis on his YouTube channel, “Daniel Davis Deep Dive,” where he analyzes war, national security, politics, foreign policy, and breaking news with expert commentary.
