The meeting between top U.S. and Ukrainian officials Tuesday on ending the Russian war against Ukraine was an important demonstration of U.S. solidarity with Ukraine and also made clear that the onus lies on Moscow to end the war, as it has from the beginning.
The talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, repaired U.S.-Ukrainian ties ruptured by the Feb. 28 Oval Office meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Vice President JD Vance: The American side said it would restore U.S. military aid and intelligence sharing, both vital for Ukraine to defend itself and strategically strike Russian targets. Ukraine also made clear that Moscow bears responsibility for ending the war by announcing its willingness to respect a 30-day ceasefire, if Russia also agrees.
President Zelenskyy said in his statement after the Jeddah meeting that “nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio reaffirmed this during a press conference in Jeddah, stating, “The ball is in [Russia’s] court…. Ukraine is ready to stop shooting and start talking.”
It is important for Russian President Vladimir Putin to understand that he cannot outlast U.S. support for Ukraine and that he now is the one who needs to bend to stop this senseless war that he started. That has been true, of course, since 2014, with the illegal annexation of Crimea and Russian invasion of Ukraine’s Donbas region. It remains true to this day, more than three years after Putin launched his full-scale invasion.
Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is scheduled to travel to Moscow to meet with Putin to discuss next steps. A phone call between Trump and Putin is likely to follow. The question now is whether Putin will agree. And even if he says he does, Russia has an abysmal record on abiding by agreements.
While Putin may indicate a readiness to stop the fighting temporarily, he and other top Russian officials have shown no readiness to budge from their initial goals: removal of the Zelenskyy government; permanent neutrality for Ukraine (i.e., no NATO membership); demilitarization of Ukraine (massive cuts to Ukraine’s armed forces); and recognition of Russian occupied territory seized from Ukraine, including some land that Russia doesn’t even currently occupy.
These positions are nonstarters for Ukraine in any negotiations that would ensue and should be treated by such by American interlocutors.
While our European allies are stepping up their help for Ukraine, nothing can replace certain American weapons systems and intelligence gathering. More recently, as talk of a European force to police a ceasefire has emerged, Moscow has rejected that, too.
For now, U.S.-Ukrainian relations are back to where they were pre-Feb. 28. It’s important that they stay there. Ukraine, after all, is our friend and ally. Over the past two decades, Ukraine joined U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan and operations in Iraq. It is a nascent democracy seeking closer ties with the European Union and NATO. Its people turned out in massive numbers onto the streets twice in a decade – 2004 and 2013-14 – to demand free elections, an end to corruption, and the right to determine their own future.
For the past 11 years, Ukraine’s tragic fight against the Russian military, in which Ukrainians have performed heroically and impressively against a much larger force, has given them experience that no other NATO member state possesses. If allowed to join the Alliance, Ukraine would be a major net contributor to security on the European continent with a military to be reckoned with.
But as one Russian analyst close to the Kremlin, Fyodor Lukyanov, who heads the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, commented after the Jeddah meeting, “We have said many times that there will be no truces until conditions for a lasting peace are agreed upon. No conditions are specified here, everything will have to be agreed upon later.”
If that reflects Putin’s thinking, then the prospects of a lasting and just settlement to the war do not look promising. It will be vital for the United States to apply and maintain pressure on Putin, for it is he who started this terrible conflict in the first place.
