Ukraine continues to suffer the swings and roundabouts of outrageous fortune at the hands of American negotiators but is learning how to survive the whirligig of the White House.
Donald Trump and his envoys are neither honest brokers nor even allies of Kyiv’s fight to defend itself against Russian invaders. But, for a little while, it seems that Ukraine has managed to swing them away from being outright enemies.
American officials have reportedly told US media that some kind of a deal has been struck in Abu Dhabi – after last weekend’s talks in Geneva – and that the prospects for peace in Ukraine are looking good.
The nature of that deal is key. And there is no clarity on what version of a plan that is, or even whether it’s a blueprint for peace or for just a ceasefire.
Kyiv rejected last week’s Trump administration plan for total capitulation by Ukraine. There have been red faces in the White House since it was published, after some linguistic analysis suggested that it may have originally been written in Russian.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, apparently had no idea the proposal was in the works. European leaders condemned it, Ukraine rejected it, and Moscow loved it.
Ukraine took the opening brouhaha as an opportunity to whisper its way through to Trump’s people.
Over the weekend, Kyiv and European leaders took the US proposal that the Russians liked so much and turned it inside out.
Out went Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine give Russia land it hasn’t even captured yet, give America preferential profit deals on projects the US had not even funded, and out went the cap on Ukraine’s forces at 600,000. Out went a ban on Ukraine’s Nato membership and in came a demand for Russian reparations.
Above all, Ukraine would get “chapter five type” security guarantees from the US and all other allies, which would trigger a military conflict with Moscow if Russia tried a new invasion.
Now, according to Ukraine’s head of the national security council, Rustem Umerov, America has signed up to some of what was agreed with Europe and Ukraine at the weekend.
“Our delegations reached a common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva. We now count on the support of our European partners in our further steps,” he said.
In Kyiv, a Ukrainian official deeply involved with ceasefire negotiations said that the US appeared to have agreed to adopt Ukraine’s positions.
The official in president Volodymyr Zelensky’s office said that if the deal was “the framework from Geneva, we’re okay. It’s not a bad framework to work further”.
