Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 2 May 2025. © Richard Kemp

President Trump hoped to achieve a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine by almost reversing the Biden position in this war. That is, by being tough on Ukraine while taking a more conciliatory tone with Russia. He aspired also to achieve improved long-term relations with Moscow in America’s interests.

The US put forward a ceasefire proposal which Kyiv accepted, despite indications of serious disadvantages to itself in potential negotiations. Russia rejected it. In recent days Trump has become increasingly frustrated with Putin’s position, apparently understanding that he has been strung along. Now he has pulled out of a formal mediation role in the conflict. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US is changing ‘the methodology of how we contribute’, no longer playing the role of intermediary. This is a major policy change for the US and it remains to be seen exactly what role it will take up.

One indication of the future ‘methodology’ is the economic cooperation deal just signed between America and Ukraine, involving significant US investment in minerals. That includes provision of military aid in exchange for access to natural resources. Accompanying this, Trump has approved his administration’s first fifty million dollars of arms exports to Ukraine. This is exactly what Putin did not want. It has been his priority to prevent the continuing Western supply of munitions to Ukraine which has been one of his main conditions in considering what was proposed as an unconditional ceasefire.

It does seem probable that Putin actually wants a negotiated end to the war given his country’s desperate economic situation – which can only get worse while the fighting continues. His apparent intransigence in responding to Trump’s ceasefire proposals is likely to represent a push for acceptance of his maximalist terms which involve much more than just freezing the conflict on current lines. Putin wants greater territorial gains as well as demilitarisation and regime change in Ukraine. By angering Trump in the way he has, Putin may have miscalculated. Not only has the new minerals deal given the US an increased economic interest in the future of Ukraine, but Trump has also said if Putin doesn’t accede to his peace proposal, he will flood Ukraine with arms.

Whether that actually happens we shall have to see. It would represent a major volte-face from the line Trump has taken on this war since the beginning. Nothing new there! The extent of arms supply would have to be enormous to have a significant effect on the ground, and accompanied also by a step-change in intelligence sharing as well as much more open-ended authority to use US-supplied weaponry against targets on Russian territory. Failure by the Biden administration to get close to the actual need in these areas led us to the current situation where Russia retains the upper hand on the battleground. A substantial boost to Ukraine’s hardware capabilities, no matter how great, is unlikely to be enough at this stage, given the country’s dire shortage of fighting troops. But if Trump’s threat begins to be operationalised it might push Putin further towards accepting a ceasefire.

A complementary, and probably even more effective tactic would be to turn the screws on the Russian economy in a way Biden did not do over three years of war. Republican Senator Lindsay Graham has put forward legislation to apply 500 percent sanctions on any country that buys Russian oil, gas and aluminium as well as imposing much more extensive sanctions. His proposal has so far gathered substantial bipartisan support in the US legislature.

There is no doubt about Trump’s determination to end the war. His use of the carrot so far has led only to frustration. How hard he is prepared to wield the stick – both in military support and economic action – is going to determine how quickly some kind of peace can be achieved.

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 9 April 2025. © Richard Kemp

As the IDF intensify their campaign in Gaza while 59 hostages remain in Hamas captivity it is time for some fresh thinking. Eight thousand Palestinian prisoners held by Israel should be committed into deradicalisation programmes outside the country. Their families can go with them. In return – release all the hostages. On its face that might sound crazy, but such programmes have worked elsewhere and, if successful, large-scale deradicalisation of prisoners could also pave the way for wider stability, beyond the failed Western ‘solutions’ which have been no such thing.

The Israel-Palestinian conflict is not a war over land, sovereignty or civil rights. That would be a lot simpler to deal with. Throughout history, societies and nations at war have adapted and reconciled, learning to live in peace with neighbours with whom they have fought vicious, long term conflicts. The root of today’s problem in the Middle East is a radicalised Palestinian population that for decades has been indoctrinated to hate Jews and taught that they have a religious duty to exterminate them and destroy their state.

This has come from within Palestinian society and across the Middle East, often wittingly or unwittingly encouraged by the Western world. In truth the Palestinian Arabs have been used and abused as a weapon against the Jewish state and that remains the case today. Consequently, the Palestinians are now one of the most radicalised societies on earth.

How often have we heard the lazy aphorism that you can’t defeat an ideology? Tell that to the Nazi Party and Imperial Japan. As they were, Hamas and its fellow jihadists in Gaza are in the process of being militarily defeated, and when that is complete their ideology will no longer have the direct capability to inflict harm on their enemies. But the ideology itself will remain and what is left of its leadership will do their utmost to rearm and rebuild what they have lost. The same is true in the West Bank.

So rather than wringing our hands and repeating decades-old and demonstrably unachievable peace formulas, the civilised world should now unite in a concerted effort to deradicalise the Palestinians. Arab states have a particular interest in doing so, as the festering hatred is destabilising in their own countries. Yes, of course it would be a monumental undertaking: significantly more challenging than the successful denazification of Germany, given the deep religious motivations, the much longer term indoctrination and a Middle Eastern culture resistant to authority and order. But what is the alternative? Even more decades of pointless peace processing with its innate appeasement of radical thinking, leading only to ever more violence and death.

What better place to start than with the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails? Over the years Israel has released thousands of terrorists early in exchange for Israeli hostages or at the end of their criminal sentences. Many have returned to terror, often forming the backbone of jihadist groups. Perhaps most notably, Hamas leader Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 13 March 2025. © Richard Kemp

Terrible though it is, Ukraine’s forced withdrawal from Kursk makes peace negotiations with Russia more likely. Indeed had Putin not been able to drive the Ukrainian army out, he is unlikely to have even contemplated peace talks. He would have demanded that Kyiv pull out of his territory first. That would have been a huge political challenge for Zelensky, on top of all the others he faces: the idea of voluntarily withdrawing from conquered Russian land while at the same time ceding large areas of his own country to the enemy.

Putin has the whip hand, and one of the strategic objectives of the Kursk offensive – gaining a bargaining chip for future peace negotiations – could never realistically have paid off. General Oleksandr Syrsky, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian army, now knows that, which is why in recent days he has been talking about preserving as many of his soldiers’ lives as possible rather than fighting to hold his ground.

Kyiv had also hoped that driving its troops into Russian territory would force Putin to deploy substantial forces to recover it, thus easing pressure on the front lines in Donbas. It didn’t work out that way either. Instead Russia contained and assaulted the Kursk salient with limited forces and called up North Korean troops to make up the numbers. Meanwhile, of course, Ukraine had to find the forces to attack into Kursk and, with overall manpower shortages, they had to come from the battlefront. We can’t calculate the net military effect of that. Since the initial offensive in Kursk began last August Russia has continued to advance in the Donbas, albeit slowly, but it is possible that Ukraine might have lost even more of its territory there if it weren’t for Kursk.

Although battles and wars are sometimes won by high stakes gambles, the strategic wisdom of the Kursk offensive was always questionable. It may be that in Kyiv’s high command, political rather than military considerations dominated the decision making. When the operation began, the US election was looming very close and there was the need to strengthen support in both the Republican and Democratic camps as well as in Europe.

Since the failed counter offensive in 2023, Western hopes that Ukraine might prevail had sharply fallen away, and after that, much political bandwidth was diverted to the Middle East. At Kursk, Kyiv hoped to galvanise international support through replicating the optimism created by successful counter attacks around Kharkiv and Kherson in 2022. With this bold new offensive Zelensky wanted to again show the world that Ukraine was still in the fight and could win, if only provided the tools to do so.

But by then it was too late. Governments in the US and Europe had given up on Ukraine being able to push the Russians out and were focused only on some kind of negotiated settlement. That sorry state of affairs had come to pass due to their own timorousness since the war began. Following Putin’s invasion in February 2022, Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 7 March 2025. © Richard Kemp

Back in 2021, then Defence Secretary Ben Wallace says he attempted to convince like-minded Nato countries to stay behind in Afghanistan after Joe Biden decided to withdraw all US forces. There were no takers. Some of his counterparts said they were keen but their parliaments weren’t.

‘Like-minded’ for Afghanistan has now transitioned into ‘coalition of the willing’ for Ukraine. Is this going to become deja vu? It may be early days but so far only Britain and France have made a firm(ish) commitment. A few others have shown interest but will they follow Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘boots on the ground and planes in the air’ or might some prefer to show willing by providing other forms of support at a safe distance from Ukraine?

European political elites have spent decades refusing to stand up for their own national defence and security, preferring to spoon butter into their electorates’ mouths than put guns into the field. Few are likely to do a swerving U-turn now, despite the shock of no longer being able to freeload off the United States. Instead they will have been busily calculating the political costs versus the benefits of joining Starmer’s coalition.

The first cost they will have considered is potential military casualties, perhaps the hottest political potato. Although the proposed force is by no means intended to fight the Russian army, peacekeeping is never without danger, even when deployed with the consent of both sides. My own company in the UN force in Bosnia in the 1990s was frequently shelled and directly attacked by Serbian heavy machine gun fire. Land mines were an ever-present danger. One of our officers was killed when his Land Rover ran over an anti-tank mine and some of my soldiers were wounded when their armoured vehicle detonated another.

Then there is the very real risk of national humiliation. The Netherlands will never recover from the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian men and boys by the Serbs in 1995 at Srebrenica. Dutch UN troops failed to protect them, leading to the resignation of the government in The Hague.

Last year it was revealed that Hezbollah terrorists had for years been building infrastructure to carry out a October 7 2023 style attack against Israel from Lebanon under the nose of the 10,000-strong UN peacekeeping force (UNIFIL) that was there to prevent exactly that. UNIFIL includes troops from France, Spain, Italy and Ireland.

Another as yet unknown form of national embarrassment might also be lurking in the shadows. Putin has rejected the idea of Nato forces deploying near his borders whatever flag they might fly. He is only likely to allow it if he foresees an opportunity to humiliate the peacekeepers, or worse.

The financial cost of a potentially indefinite deployment of a substantial force, if one can be cobbled together, will not be small. Continue reading →