Last Friday it was supposed to take place a nuclear meeting for the future of war in ukraine. However, what happened in the White House ended up being less a diplomatic exercise than a scene of head-on collision: a president demanding territorial capitulation from an invaded country, a president refusing to give up what he still defends under fire, and a third absent actor marking the remote script of what Trump repeated with a literality that blurred any pretense of mediation.
Concessions and threats. He had exclusive the financial times that Trump discarded the maps of the front, repeated that the war was not such but a “special operation” in Putin’s words, and urged Zelensky to accept the loss of Donetsk and the entire Donbas as the price of peace, warning that “If Putin wants, he will destroy you.”
The conversation degeneratedapparently in shouts and ultimatum language, with the Ukrainian delegation attempting achieve Tomahawks (denied) while listening to arguments identical to those from Moscow put forward one day before to Trump himself. The American president even verbalized in public, already on Air Force One, the solution of freezing the war “where the lines are,” leaving negotiations on territory “for later.”
The Russian proposal. Putin, in his previous call, demanded total surrender of Donetsk (a military objective that Moscow has failed to achieve in eleven years of combined war) offering as a counterpart only parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia that it currently controls precariously.
For Ukraine, surrender the eastern bastion without combat (key to containing a penetration towards the Dnieper and kyiv) it is unacceptable because it would be equivalent to dynamiting the strategic defense of the entire country and, in psychological and political terms, to legitimizing a violent annexation project active since 2014.
Trump and the European reading. trump had hinted Weeks ago that Ukraine could recover “everything and more,” and that Russia was a “paper tiger,” he now maintains that Moscow “has gained property” and should be given some credit.
The literal echo of Putin’s points in Trump’s words dissipated among allies the hope of reopening the arms route and revealed that the matrix of the negotiation that Washington is pushing is no longer symmetrical but asymmetrical: downward pressure on the invaded and assumption of the invader’s premise.
Russian internal calculation. For Ukrainian analysts, Donetsk’s demand does not so much seek to maximize territorial gain as to induce a sociopolitical fracture within Ukraine: forcing the leadership to consider what society will not tolerate to open an axis of internal delegitimization.
Putin, in fact, already knows the social impossibility of barter, and that is why he insists: the desired cost is the erosion of cohesion rather than the line on the map.
The Ukrainian position. Zelenskiy confirmed after the meeting that I would agree to freeze the front in its current location as a condition for entering talks, but stressed that there will not be additional delivery of territory. Considers that any negotiation must start with an immediate cessation on the line of contact, not with prior territorial modifications in favor of the aggressor.
Trump’s public statements and the prospect of a Trump-Putin meeting in Budapest They do not alter that principle: without prior freezing and without forced concession, there is no viable dialogue.
Tactical horizon. Ukraine enters winter under massive attacks on your energy infrastructure while responding by hitting Russian refineries. The lack of long range missiles from Washington after the call with Putin limits its capacity for deep counter-escalation just when Moscow is looking for time, social fatigue and diplomatic fracture.
kyiv, in the absence of immediate alternatives, indicates that a ceasefire on current lines would be acceptable as a table key, but not the surrender of Donetsk as an entry passport.
Peace on demand. If you will, the scheme that has emerged from this sequence (Putin-Trump call, Trump-Zelensky meeting, territorial barter proposal and appeal to the “agreement” freezing positions) places Ukraine before a conditional peace that recognizes the violence of annexation as a fait accompli and requires the invaded to formalize it.
The ukrainian reaction (freeze, negotiate, but not give in) is the last dam between an end to the fire and an end to the State in the political-strategic sense. The meeting did not bring closer an equitable end to the war: it clarified the type of end that certain architecture is willing to accept, even if it does not say it out loud.
Image | Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, NARA
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