Trump’s hawkish new team suggests all is not lost for Ukraine

The election result was not welcome news for Ukraine. But a potential deal may turn out better than expected

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When Donald Trump was elected, there was almost as much jubilation in Moscow as there was in Mar-a-Lago. ‘‘Kamala is finished,” said Dmitry Medvedev, now a senior Kremlin official. “Let her keep cackling infectiously. The objectives of the Special Military Operation remain unchanged and will be achieved.” 
Leonid Slutsky, a senior Duma parliamentarian, predicted that Volodymyr Zelensky’s downfall will “happen in a matter of months, if not days”. They thought that Trump’s election meant an exhausted West will now abandon Ukraine.
Now, this is looking far less clear. Among his flurry of nominations this week we see Elise Stefanik for the United Nations, Marco Rubio for Secretary of State and Mike Waltz for National Security Adviser. All are believers in America’s role in shaping the world. All are derided as hawks by their critics. And while none have opposed Trump’s strategy of brokering a deal in Ukraine, they are unlikely to do so on terms that the Kremlin now seems to expect.
It’s not hard to see why there is so much bullishness in Moscow. Rather than being crippled by sanctions, Russia’s economy has become one of the fastest-growing in the world. A war economy has pushed unemployment to historic lows and sent salaries skyrocketing. Workers are spending, which in turn stokes growth even more. The World Bank ended up having to reclassify Russia as a “high income” country: one which has now overtaken Germany and Japan to rank as the world’s fourth-largest economy.
This helps its war machine: Putin is spending an estimated $170 in Ukraine for every $100 spent by Zelensky and his allies. The Kremlin hasn’t even needed to resort to conscription: it can afford to offer new recruits golden handshakes of up to £24,000, more than twice the average annual salary. Russian casualties are high – estimates range from 1,200 to 1,900 killed or injured every day – but the Kremlin has shown that its autocratic model and repression of critics allows it to withstand such losses.
Ukraine’s lines have been thinned by casualties and, lately, desertion. In the summer, parliament passed a law forgiving first-time deserters – with calamitous effect, as soldiers fled positions they regarded as untenable. Russia is closing in on Kurakhove in Donetsk, having blown up a nearby dam earlier this week so the resulting flood would clear away defenders. Ukraine’s own conquests in the Kursk region of Russia, captured for leverage in any negotiation, are under attack.
This explains the hubristic tone of public debate in Russia: the television talk shows, Telegram social media and the various online commentators. All propaganda, of one kind or another, but not so far from popular opinion. “The West has realised that it is small. Europe puffed out its chest for so long, now its rear is exposed,” said Vladimir Solovyov, one of Russia’s more hawkish television commentators, recently. 
“No plan works. Where is the global dominance? They lost everything in Afghanistan. In Ukraine, nothing is working out.”“Why do we, as Russians, need negotiations right now?,” asks Alexander Sladkov, Russia’s most popular military blogger. Freezing the conflict now may be a bad deal, he says: a better settlement could be there with more fighting. “If we’re going to divide Ukraine, it should be along the Dnieper River, so that Kyiv returns to Russia.”
A poll by Levada, the closest Russia has to an independent polling company, found the war is still backed by 75 per cent of Russians. 
“Are we ready to negotiate?” asked Putin two months ago. “We have never refused to do so. But not based on some ephemeral demands: instead on documents agreed in Istanbul.” This means his demands that Ukraine gives up four of its partly-occupied regions, declares neutrality, shrinks its army strength to a desultory 50,000 and lets Moscow veto its purchase of any Western arms. This would, in effect, reduce Ukraine to a Belarus-style puppet state. For good measure, Putin wants an end to sanctions.
Trump has not said much about Ukraine, other than to denounce Zelensky as a hustler who specialises in relieving American taxpayers of their money. He says he’d do a deal to end the war “on day one”, but hasn’t said how. The people he has just appointed, however, have said more.
Rubio says he wants a deal that’s “favourable to Ukraine,” which he defines as retaining sovereignty and being in no way a puppet state. This would suggest being free, for example, to choose its own defence alliances. Like J D Vance, Rubio voted against the last US aid package to Ukraine, saying that Europe should bear more of the cost for its own defence. But he’s also no isolationist – and is against a settlement that can be seen as an American defeat.
Waltz is a former US special forces officer who was appalled at Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the message it sent about American resolve. He’ll be mindful that a bad Ukraine deal could be Trump’s equivalent of the retreat from Kabul. Before the election, Waltz was discussing another idea: giving Ukraine permission to use American missiles to strike certain targets (oil refineries, airfields, troop clusters) deep inside Russia.
This would be quite a break from Joe Biden, who banned Ukraine from such strikes. Trump may say he won’t send more aid, but will let Zelensky do whatever he likes if Putin won’t come to the negotiating table. Kyiv is unlikely to need much encouragement to take him up on such an offer.
So the contours of a Trump deal start to become visible. It would be a frozen conflict, where Russia’s conquests aren’t accepted by Ukraine but both sides agree to a ceasefire. Kyiv would agree if left free to make its own defence treaties with allies. Not Nato membership (which was always a bit of a stretch) but something that does not leave Ukraine exposed if Russia rearms then comes back to finish the job. 
Such a deal is far from what Zelensky wants – and from what Ukraine deserves. But it’s also far from the worst-case scenario where an isolationist president walks away and leaves Ukraine to suffer what it must.
As ever with Trump, it’s hard to discern what method – if any – lies in his madness. But the rise of Rubio and Waltz – combined with a Senate with a pro-Kyiv majority – suggest that there may be hope for Ukraine yet.
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