The Battle for Ukraine Before Trump’s “Peace”

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assesses that Russia seems less interested in improving its negotiating position than in Ukraine’s total capitulation. Russian troops and the Russian economy are under pressure, but, with arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, Vladimir Putin may be closer to getting the thing he always sought: an end to U.S. military aid to Ukraine and a fracturing of Western support – or even more tantalizing, a NATO alliance turning in on itself. 

Outside of a campaign trail promise to stop the war in 24 hours, Trump’s actual approach to Ukraine is entirely unclear, and his national security team spans traditional GOP hawks to Putin apologists. Last week, Trump named Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general and former national security advisor to Mike Pence, as his envoy to Ukraine and Russia. Kellogg has been critical of the Biden administration’s policy and has suggested Trump could remove all weapons restrictions for Ukraine if Putin refuses to come to the table. But the goal is a deal: a ceasefire and negotiated settlement. It’s still unclear if this will actually be Trump policy, but with momentum on Russia’s side, a peace deal might sound pretty unattractive to Putin right now. Unlike Kyiv, whose ability to wage war depends on U.S. and Western aid, Putin has some space to wait and see how the chaos unfolds, as Russia expands the front line in Ukraine in the meantime. 

That may change, although it’s hard to see how right now, especially in the narrow window before Trump’s return to office. The Biden administration’s major reversal allowing Ukraine’s long-range missile strikes won’t solve Ukraine’s underlying personnel and organizational issues that have plagued its military all year – and which still don’t have an obvious future fix, even if Ukraine takes the U.S.’s latest advice to lower the draft age to 18 from 25.

And this last-minute flurry to unleash Ukraine has not gone unnoticed in Moscow. After the U.S.’s decision, Putin made official a tweak to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, slightly lowering the threshold to allow Moscow to respond with nukes to conventional or nuclear attacks that threatened the territories of Russia and Belarus. The doctrine also clarified that any aggression from one member of a military coalition against Russia would be seen as aggression by the entire coalition – a not-so-subtle reference to NATO. Nuclear experts like Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute have said this is likely not a huge nuclear policy change in practice, but it is notable that Putin decided to make it public. Shortly after that, Russia launched a hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. The “Oreshnik” missile is capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and though it did not, it very much served as a warning to the West about further testing its red lines. On November 20, the U.S. warned of a significant air attack and closed its embassy in Kyiv, as a precaution.

The West has taken the Russian nuclear threat seriously throughout its invasion of Ukraine, which has contributed to cautious and somewhat contradictory policies. The U.S. said no to F-16s, then said okay to F-16s. The US said no tanks, then said okay to tanks.  The U.S. said no long-range weapons, then said okay to long-range weapons, as long as no strikes were made within Russia. Now, it’s okay to hit targets inside Russia. For Ukraine and its backers, this is the “too little, too late strategy;” they argue that Russia’s red lines are malleable, and by the time the West eventually agrees, Ukraine is playing catch up, hoping to hold on or to defend, rather than seize the initiative. 

There is certainly a case for careful consideration when dropping weapons into a warzone (might even be nice if the U.S. more consistently applied this restraint), especially when in a de facto proxy war with a nuclear power. But the debate over individual weapons systems obscures the larger policy failure in the U.S. and within Europe: it has never articulated a real policy objective in Ukraine. As I wrote back in April, the American line on Ukraine has been some version of the U.S. is “going to be with you for as long as it takes.” But as long as what takes? The U.S. has never really been clear. Or as a drone-maker in Lviv told me this spring: “We have this constant feeling, and most of the people in Ukraine share it, that the West doesn’t want us to win this war, and they don’t want us to lose this war.”

That failure is even more evident now, ahead of Trump’s return. No one really knows what Trump will do, and Ukraine may not even be a priority – but it was always clear that his victory might lead to a dramatic shift in U.S. policy. Ukraine did present a “victory” plan, which included difficult requests, like Ukraine getting an invitation to join NATO. But the U.S. and its allies met it with a kind of shrug, and instead seemed to embrace a strategy of hoping that Trump wouldn’t win. The U.S. and its allies have tried as much as possible to Trump-proof assistance, including by shifting aid coordination directly within NATO and by striking a deal to use the interest from Russia’s frozen assets to give Ukraine loans. These are welcome lifelines to Ukraine, but they’re not decisive moves. They’re insurance policies, if the policies stay mostly the same, which they may not. 

This is true of Biden’s efforts to shore up Ukraine right now. The U.S. is rushing out billions in remaining Ukraine aid ahead of Trump’s inauguration, though it will likely be impossible to deliver it all before Trump takes office – and the new president will have the power to halt shipments. But this is just the U.S. throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and hoping that something might stick. It comes with risks, as Russia’s nuclear threats show. In the best-case scenario, it bolsters Ukraine’s position, allowing it to hold on through winter. But it will not remake this war.

The Biden administration is trying to help Ukraine, while also trying to buttress its legacy here and more deeply entrench its own policies. It’s not yet apparent what the costs of these moves might be, but Ukraine’s future is ultimately tied to Trump now. It’s unclear how deeply he’s engaging on the issue – maybe he talked to Putin, maybe he did not – but he does have the right to set his own foreign policy when he becomes president. Ukraine is probably right to feel quite nervous, but they are also not despairing. Ukraine has been frustrated with Biden’s slow approach, and some Ukrainian officials see a potential opportunity with a more transactional Trump.

Ukraine has no choice but to deal. After nearly three years of war, a new poll shows a little more than half of Ukrainians would prefer a negotiated peace, even if it means territorial concessions. Ukraine’s economy is in shambles. Russian bombing has destroyed the country’s energy infrastructure. Thousands have died or been wounded, both soldiers and civilians. The exhaustion of war – the air raid alerts, the blackouts – take a toll. Millions have fled and more may do so if Russia continues to advance, or if the heat doesn’t work this winter.

The question is whether the escalation happening now will get Ukraine closer to a sustainable and secure peace. Another one of the lines the U.S. and its allies have used is “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” But it never really engaged with Ukraine as an equal partner; it left Kyiv dependent on a weapons spigot that shaped the battlefield as much as Ukraine’s own fighting did. It punted on things like security guarantees or NATO membership for Ukraine. These remain extraordinarily difficult and complex questions, which is why they were shunted aside in the hopes that something would change in the war, but it never did, and now Ukraine is left with less clarity on its future, and or how to ever protect itself from Russia again. 

All of this is easier said now, after a brutally challenging year for Ukraine. None of it absolves Russia, the aggressor and owner of this war, who is responsible for the suffering and devastation in Ukraine. But it is far more uncertain now exactly how this devastation and suffering stops – and what that might look like for Ukraine and its people.