Vladimir Zelensky has thrown a wrench into the Trump administration’s effort to gear up peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. Just after Putin, in a major departure from Russia’s policy, announced he was willing to talk to Zelensky, Zelensky himself rejected the deal US negotiators put on the table.
The Trump team acted with the cooperation of the Europeans (aside from the EU where Kaja Kallas, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, announced the EU would never recognize Crimea as Russian).
While the plan’s details remain secret, the basic outline has been widely reported. The two main territorial elements are the de jure recognition of Crimea as Russian, and the de facto acceptance of Russian territorial gains in the Donbas and elsewhere.
Recognition of a territory as de jure means it is recognized as a rightful entitlement. De Facto does not confer any entitlement, but is simply agreed provisionally and might be changed later.
Russia has annexed the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. An oblast is an administrative division or region and the borders of the oblasts were fixed originally under Soviet administration. At the present time, Russia controls roughly 70% of the oblasts it has annexed.
It isn’t clear that Russia would accept a de facto settlement of the four oblasts that leaves parts of them under Ukrainian control. Nor is it clear how a de facto arrangement won’t prevent renewal of the war in future.
Other features of the Trump administration proposal are not known. Among the issues are how any settlement of the war, even a temporary one, can be secured; whether Ukraine could use the deal as a means of rebuilding its military and growing its arms stockpiles; the role of outside parties (such as the armed forces of European countries on Ukrainian soil); disposition of key assets (minerals, power plants) and, of course, keeping Ukraine out of NATO.
One of the carrots the US is waving in front of Russia is ending sanctions (and probably includes returning seized Russian assets). This the US cannot do unilaterally because the sanctions reach into the international banking system, delivery of energy to Russia’s former clients, and how commerce will be regulated on the Black Sea.
None of this may matter much if Zelensky won’t cooperate, which is the case at the moment. The background question is whether Zelensky simply wants to scuttle any deal and walk away, or whether he is using his blocking maneuver to try and extract more concessions from the United States. Probably he is hoping to do both.
Zelensky’s refusal over Crimea has touched off a firestorm in the US administration and among the Europeans who were hoping for a deal in which they would be partners. That was the reason a high level meeting of foreign ministers was supposed to take place in London. It now has been severely downgraded, and probably will be a fraught, and meaningless exercise. Instead of Secretary of State Rubio, or even Steve Witkoff, the US is sending General Keith Kellogg, who is arriving without any special mandate. Meanwhile Witcoff will be traveling to Moscow later this week for another meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The agenda for Witkoff and Putin is not known, especially in light of Zelensky’s scuttling action. A reasonable speculation is that the Trump administration wants to buy time and not see the Russians step up their military operations in Ukraine. President Trump is especially sensitive about the human costs of the war, and continually makes that point to both parties, and to others.
Buying time may include announcements on reducing some sanctions or concluding some commercial deals to placate the Russians. Doing such deals would also put Zelensky on notice that the US plans to move ahead with Russia.
One hint of what kind of deals could take place include greater cooperation in space and especially between SpaceX and Roscosmos. Roscosmos is a Russian state agency responsible for space flights, cosmonautics programs, and aerospace research.
The Russian press has lauded Musk’s SpaceX accomplishments and would certainly welcome technology cooperation, particularly Starlink. Starlink has been a problem for Russia because it is deployed in Ukraine and gives the Ukrainians superb communication connectivity in the midst of the war. Any cooperation on Starlink would be a big victory for Putin. Whether Trump or Witcoff are prepared to go in that direction is unknown.
Some experts, especially former NATO commander General Wesley Clark, think that Russia’s aim is to take Odessa. Clarke says this would signal Russia’s victory in the Ukraine war. One presumes that the Trump administration wants to head this off if it can.
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