Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 11 March 2025. © Richard Kemp
Polling in Ukraine shows that most people now want the war to end with a peace deal, rather than fighting on to retrieve the land seized by Russia. Recent developments have proved to those who did not already know it, that there can be no victory without dramatically increased support from the US, which did not happen under Biden and is certainly not going to happen under Trump.
They know therefore that Ukraine will have to cede territory, a reality underscored yesterday by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Obviously not trusting Putin, whatever deal he might agree to, Ukrainians want a back-stop from the West. Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, said today that ‘Ukraine must be given security guarantees that lend credibility to a future ceasefire agreement.’ According to Trump, such guarantees will have to come from the Europeans. The Europeans are not in a position to give any guarantees whatsoever; and Starmer’s proposed peacekeeping force, if it were to happen, would certainly not supply them.
Yarmak also said that Europe must apply economic pressure to prevent Putin returning to the attack by sanctions and seizing frozen Russian assets. European sanctions would count for little without US support and it seems unlikely that governments would be bold enough to take control of frozen assets given the legal difficulties. In any case, despite the voluble rhetoric, they are desperate to get back to business as usual with the Kremlin. After all, since the war began, Europeans have collectively been paying more to Russia in oil and gas revenues than they have provided in financial aid to Ukraine.
Most Ukrainians may simply resign themselves to their fate: loss of 20 per cent of their territory and nothing to stop Putin surging back to the offensive after regrouping his armed forces and rebuilding his economy. But many will not. At the front line I have met several hardened Ukrainian commanders who told me they would never give up the fight against Russia, no matter what the politicians decide. In other circumstances this talk could be dismissed as mere braggadocio.
But such men and their followers in Ukraine today may have far greater power than their predecessors in global resistance movements ever dreamt of. For one thing Ukraine is awash with vastamounts of weaponry of all sorts, much unaccounted for. Some is no doubt already stashed across the sweeping territories of Ukraine in arms dumps unknown to the military or civil authorities, against the day.
As we saw demonstrated last night in the largest ever drone attack on Moscow, Ukraine has become one of the largest producers of tactical and strategic drones in the world. Zelensky says his country produced 2.2 million UAVs last year alone. Used for surveillance and attack, those drones that have been liberated from the military supply chain could provide significant combat power to the men who decided to fight on. Likewise, unrestrained cyber attacks could cause havoc against strategically important installations in both occupied territory and on Russian land.
All this could add up to making a peace deal extremely hard to manage, whatever the Ukrainian government’s determination to adhere to it. Aside from guerrilla warfare against Russia, who knows what turmoil might unfold more widely inside Ukraine itself. After a peace deal hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened soldiers will return home – to what? A country ravaged by war, depopulated and economically broken. There will be no money and for many, no employment or any prospect of it. Violent crime is likely to run rampant. And those who believe their government has capitulated to Russia, selling them out after their years of sacrifices, may seek revenge on Kyiv.
No doubt Putin will already have planned to exploit such discontent following the war. He is likely to do whatever he needs to encourage Ukrainian breaches of the peace agreement in order to ‘legitimately’ retaliate. And he will understand that helping foment instability and insurrection may be another way of achieving his original war aim of bringing down the government in Kyiv.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
