Europe’s ceasefire ultimatum to Vladimir Putin falters at first test
THE VISIT of four European leaders to Kyiv on May 10th was billed as a turning point. Britain’s prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, described Ukraine’s offer of an unconditional 30-day ceasefire—and the challenge to Russia to reciprocate—as bringing peace closer than at any point in the last three years. The aim was to highlight that Russia is the party that still wants war, and to encourage President Donald Trump to exert greater pressure on the Kremlin. By the time Vladimir Putin spoke in a televised address in the early hours of May 11th—bluntly ignoring the ultimatum while offering direct negotiations laden with multiple strings—the moment had lost all clarity. Mr Trump’s social-media response, hailing a “potentially great day”, undercut the Europeans’ insistence that he had been on board from the start.
Ukraine’s offer of an unconditional total ceasefire was a significant compromise. Mr Putin’s counter—proposing peace negotiations in Istanbul on May 15th—is much less so. His foreign-policy adviser, Yury Ushakov, later laid out weighty conditions for the talks. Any negotiation would pick up from negotiations in spring 2022, he said, and “would take account of the real situation” on the battlefield. This is a danger for Ukraine. The Istanbul talks never resulted in a final deal, but they touched on red lines for Kyiv, including drastic reductions to its armed forces. Going back to the point at which they were broken off might suggest that Mr Zelensky had pointlessly wasted lives.
It is uncertain whether Mr Zelensky can enter negotiations with a Russian gun pressed to his temple. Ukraine’s parliament would need to override an order prohibiting negotiations with Mr Putin, introduced in late 2022 after the Russian autocrat had annexed four Ukrainian provinces following sham referendums. For such talks to start without a ceasefire in place would be interpreted as a show of weakness; of Ukraine and its partners blinking first. President Emmanuel Macron of France has insisted there can be “no negotiations while weapons are speaking”. At the same time, it is difficult to see how Ukraine can resist a call for serious talks without losing favour with Mr Trump that it has patiently built up over recent weeks. Things may well depend on the intensity of Russian attacks in the coming days.
A Ukrainian security official suggested that Mr Zelensky would first try to enforce a complete ceasefire—on land, sea and air—from May 12th, as promised. It would then be down to Russia to observe it, or risk Mr Trump’s displeasure by ignoring it. In remarks on May 11th, Mr Zelensky struck a careful tone: it was encouraging that Russia was finally contemplating peace, he said, but “the very first step in truly ending any war is a ceasefire.” General Keith Kellogg, Mr Trump’s special representative to Ukraine, appeared to downplay his boss’s ambiguous remarks, posting on social media that a ceasefire must precede any negotiations—“not the other way around”. This may, however, be wishful thinking.
The intensity of the public diplomacy suggests that serious back-channel bargaining is under way—and that the days ahead may indeed prove decisive. Mr Trump clearly remains the centre of gravity around which all sides orbit, each tailoring its rhetoric to echo his language and his social-media posts. The trouble for Mr Trump is that Mr Putin is also playing his own game, an equally hard and unyielding one. The challenge the four European leaders made to Mr Trump in Kyiv was for him to take a tougher stance on Mr Putin. Mr Trump has so far declined to do so, instead choosing to dance around the Russian leader. ■