Despite a scheduled meeting for Trump and Putin to address Ukraine, there is virtually no expectation that the war can be resolved quickly. The war started in February 2022 and has left both combatants with over 500,000 casualties and massive destruction in its wake. Russian troops continue to make a grinding advance into Eastern Ukraine while Kyiv has conducted over 1,500 separate drone strikes against Russian oil refineries and infrastructure for January 2025 alone.
In June, Moscow proposed that Ukraine recognizes Russia’s claims of control over 20% of the territory of Ukraine – Crimean, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, along with demilitarisation and neutrality. These terms are viewed by Kyiv as tantamount to a demand for a rapid surrender which brought real progress in negotiations backed by Trump to a halt.
Trump’s statements denouncing Zelensky as a “dictator” and unwillingness to reject any acts of aggression on the part of Putin raise questions in Kyiv. Some Ukrainian MPs are warning that if Ukraine is excluded from any talks that will sanction the demands of Russia, those demands will be considered legal. A proposed trilateral talk format would include Ukraine but so far Putin has rejected this possibility. Meanwhile, the global diplomatic impasse continues.
