Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, needs a way to lose the war with Russia. American voters may have just given it to him.
In his victory speech early in the morning of November 6, President-elect Donald Trump said, “I will govern by a simple motto: Promises made, promises kept. We’re going to keep our promises.”
He promised fixing our borders. He promised the greatest economic comeback. But there is only one thing he promised to do even before he took office and that is end the war in Ukraine. That will be the first test of his governing motto.
Trump has been vague about how exactly he would end the war in a day. But there have been indications from those around him.
Vice President-elect J.D. Vance has argued that it is absurd not to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has argued that “accepting brute reality” is in the best interest of both the United States and Ukraine. And that means accepting that “Ukraine is going to have to cede some territory to the Russians.”
So, a starting point is an American willingness to negotiate with Russia and a Ukrainian willingness to cede some of the territory it has lost. What those negotiations could look like has been hinted at by two key Trump advisers, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg and former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz. The two coauthored a plan that they submitted to Trump.
According to Kellogg, “We tell the Ukrainians, ‘You’ve got to come to the table, and if you don’t come to the table, support from the United States will dry up.’ And you tell Putin, ‘He’s got to come to the table and if you don’t come to the table, then we’ll give Ukrainians everything they need to kill you in the field.’” In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump says that he once told Putin that “if you go after Ukraine, I am going to hit you so hard, you’re not even going to believe it. I’m going to hit you right in the middle of fricking Moscow.”
The plan conditions continued American support for Ukraine on that country’s commitment to negotiating a diplomatic end to the war. That would include a promise not to offer Ukraine NATO membership for an extended period of time. It would further include a ceasefire along the current battle lines. Ukraine would not have to formally cede the lost territory to Russia but would have to pursue its recovery diplomatically.
Putin has also suggested that Ukraine could withdraw form the territories annexed by Russia without legally recognizing the annexation. Zelensky has recently hinted at that possibility when he said, “No one will legally recognize the occupied territories as belonging to other states.”
Ukraine is on a seemingly unstoppable trajectory to losing the war. Defeat will be very difficult for Zelensky. Ukraine was in a position to attain its goals in the first weeks of the war before the loss of land and the loss of much life when it initialed the draft treaty in Istanbul. At Western urging, Zelensky left that diplomatic path. Instead, he promised the people of Ukraine that the sacrifices of war would pay off in the maximalist achievement of the reclamation of all its land—including the Donbas and Crimea—and membership in NATO. Nearly three years later, the people of Ukraine have suffered the loss of, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of lives and limbs and instead of reclaiming territory, they have lost more. There has been no offer of NATO membership.
Zelensky needs a way out of the war that avoids the responsibility weighing down on him for a decision that cost so much loss of life to win a peace that is worse than the one than was on the table at the start. Zelensky needs a plan for how to lose the war.
Trump’s election could offer him that plan. It has been suggested that Zelensky’s Ukrainian Victory Plan, with its unrealistic maximalists requests for the West, was really conceived as a “Ukrainian Defeat Plan.” Zelensky would present security and military demands the West could not accept, the West would not offer them, and Zelensky would return home in the role of the betrayed wartime leader, betrayed and abandoned at the climactic moment.
Zelensky can then tell the people of Ukraine that it is impossible for Ukraine to continue the war against Russia without sufficient American support and transfer the blame for Ukraine’s defeat to the United States. He could then default to the necessity of peace talks.
But that could mean time and more accelerating loss of life and land as the Ukrainian armed forces limped on with some, but not sufficient, Western aid.
Trump’s election offers a better version of the Ukrainian Defeat Plan and a way out of the war for Zelensky. The only argument more convincing for Zelensky than insufficient military aid is no military aid.
Without the United States providing weapons for Ukrainian soldiers, Ukraine is left only with unarmed soldiers. And they are fatally running out of those. Zelensky was quick to congratulate Trump on his victory. He recalled his “great meeting with President Trump back in September, when we discussed in detail the Ukraine-U.S. strategic partnership, the Victory Plan.” But he then fatefully added that Ukraine “rel[ies] on continued strong bipartisan support for Ukraine in the United States.”
Trump promised to govern by the motto “Promises made, promises kept.” The promise to condition continued U.S. support for Ukraine on Ukraine’s commitment to negotiate a diplomatic end to the war offers Zelensky the defeat plan he is looking for. Better than telling the people of Ukraine that diplomacy is necessitated by some, but not enough, American support is telling the people of Ukraine that diplomacy is urgently necessitated because, without it, there will be no American support.
Trump’s election may be bad for Zelensky if Ukraine could still win the war. But the war has been lost. And Trump’s election could offer Zelensky a way to lose it.
