-Analysis-
TURIN — In the end, the call will be Zelensky’s.
Diplomacy has begun to move again in Geneva, the traditional Cold War venue for negotiations, but political leaders will take the real decisions. And as the details of the supposed peace plan have been sifted through by the delegations from Kyiv and Washington, the issues that cannot be resolved will be handed to the two presidents.
Ukraine’s fate will ultimately be decided in a new face-to-face between Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, a meeting that many in the Ukrainian president’s inner circle fear, as one adviser admitted to the Financial Times.
There are too many sensitive matters to settle in front of the cameras, too much at stake to risk another round of insults in the Oval Office, and the weight of any decision is immense, since none of the possible outcomes will be either good or just. The only just peace for Ukraine would mean Russia withdrawing from all occupied territory, Vladimir Putin paying war damages, and appearing before the Hague tribunal.
Everything else, the debate over where to draw the line to freeze the war, the limits on military arsenals, the guarantees of international security, is a compromise, the victory of reality over ideals and the postponement of justice to an undefined future.
Everything else, above all the search for the name and legal form to give to the de facto recognition of the loss of the Donbas, is an acceptance of the impossibility, for now, of freeing the areas seized by Russia and bringing home the millions of refugees.
And now it will fall to the Ukrainian president who, from the first moments, from the selfie videos filmed under bombardment with the famous “We are all here” and the now legendary “I need ammunition, not a ride,” embodied the Ukrainian will to resist. He must now explain to Ukrainians the need for a truce that many will inevitably see as surrender.
Any agreement to reduce the army or pledge not to join NATO would mean surrendering sovereignty.
The nightmare of a zrada, a betrayal, is a constant in Ukrainian political debate, and while talks proceed in Geneva, red lines are being drawn in Kyiv. The speaker of the Rada parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, and several deputies agree that there can never be a de jure recognition of the cession of territory, only a de facto acknowledgment that these regions are under temporary Russian occupation.
Losing terms for a country still fighting
The idea of emerging from the war damaged and reduced is something Ukrainians have already accepted as inevitable, but any formal transfer of territory, as Parliament Member Dmytro Mikisha reminds people, can only be decided by a referendum, and anyone who acts otherwise risks 10 to 15 years in prison for high treason.
It is also clear that signing any agreement to reduce the army or pledge not to join NATO or cooperate militarily with other countries would mean surrendering sovereignty. And this is why European leaders, in their counterproposal, insist that Ukraine must preserve full freedom to choose its alliances and defend itself. Placing limits on its arsenal would amount to capitulating to Russia. These are terms imposed on a country that has lost, and on the battlefield Ukraine is far from defeat.
Cold and darkness
The alternative, however, as Trump has repeated with his usual bluntness, is to keep fighting. With all the courage and resilience of the past four years, but with an acute shortage of soldiers, while the military cemetery in Lviv has only 20 vacant plots left for new graves.
With the awareness that the United States cannot be relied upon, and that a possible victory by a pro-Kremlin right in Germany or France could jeopardize European solidarity as well.
With the despair of watching Ukrainian cities sink into cold and darkness, targeted with icy ruthlessness by a Russia that treats destruction as conquest, while more and more Ukrainian refugees in Europe find work, send their children to school, and put down roots elsewhere.
Realpolitik or resistance
With the knowledge that sanctions and military spending will push the Kremlin toward an inevitable economic collapse, although that could take months or even years, especially because a dictatorship is less vulnerable to public discontent than a democracy.
A peace granting Ukraine the dignity of a European future would never be accepted by the Kremlin.
“We are made of steel, but even the strongest metal can break.” Zelensky’s remark in the speech denouncing pressure from both the Kremlin and the White House could serve as a warning to himself as well, and to Ukrainians forced to choose between the dignity of resistance and the harshness of realpolitik.
In his address, the Ukrainian president spoke of a peace of dignity. But it is obvious that a peace granting Ukraine the dignity of a European future would never be accepted by the Kremlin, which in fact has resumed bombing Ukraine, as if trying to sink any agreement that Kyiv and Washington might reach.