Any attempt to negotiate a lasting peace in Ukraine is doomed to failure because Vladimir Putin will only use it to prepare his forces for a renewed invasion, an international diplomacy expert has warned.
A meeting between the Russian President and the U.S. President has already been agreed “in principle”, the Kremlin revealed on Thursday, and could take place as early as next week.
Speaking from the White House on Wednesday evening, Trump was asked about setting up a face to face meeting between Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, and replied: : ”There’s a very good prospect that they will”.
But any such meeting would be fraught with diplomatic difficulties given Russia’s continuing bombardment of Ukraine. Professor Anthony Glees, security expert from the University of Buckingham, told the Express that Putin’s place in the top seat in Moscow is now dependent on his ability to conquer Ukraine.
Russia launched a full scale invasion of the country on February 24 2022, sparking an international crisis and threatening to capture Kyiv in the opening days of the war. Ukraine, with strong backing from European allies and the US eventually halted the Kremlin forces’ advance and managed to launch its own counter-offensive.
But since then the war has ground on well with front lines ebbing and flowing well past its three-year anniversary, with both sides suffering economically as well as sustaining brutal casualties.
Addressing Washington’s involvement in new peace talks, Prof Glees said: “I think we are fast approaching the make or break moment for a ceasefire in Ukraine. Trump wants to open up a window for peace and I think we should applaud him for doing so. I’ve always said that I truly believe Trump is a man of peace and that he sincerely hates war.
“There’s a mighty big ‘however’, I’m afraid.
“Even if there’s a ceasefire, and even if it leads to the start of serious negotiations and if that produces a peace settlement, I do not believe that Putin will ever give up his ambition to take over all of Ukraine over the years to come. Indeed a peace settlement would simply allow him to re-fresh and re-group and start all over again.
“Putin thinks he is substantially smarter than Trump. He’s seen Israel’s President Netanyahu play Trump, he’s played Trump himself as we all know. Even Trump knows that he’s been played because he’s told us so.
“What Putin wants, and what he’s said he wants for some considerable period, is the total defeat and capitulation of Ukraine. He cannot change that line and remain in the Kremlin.”
However, Russia does not all the cards in these negotiations. Prof Glees believes Ukraine’s constantly improving relationship with the Trump White House has piled pressure on Russia and left Kyiv in a stronger position that Putin may be willing to admit.
He went on: “I believe that unless Putin makes some major concessions to Ukraine, brave Ukraine will fight on. I do not think Ukraine can or should accept ‘peace at any price’ because the price for that peace will ultimately be the end of the one thing that Ukraine will never give up, its sovereignty.
“Trump is to be praised for wanting peace but it is also his Achilles heel because neither Putin nor Zelensky, for their own very different reasons, can accept a peace that does not work for them.
“Trump has had no success. The war he was going to end in 24 hours is still going on, six months into his presidency. The only way the war will end in a way that suits Europe, and suits Ukraine, is with a defeat for Putin.
“That being so, I fear the Ukraine war is likely to become the 100 years war of the 21st century. I pray that I am wrong.”
