Let Arithmetic Negotiate

The Economics of Surrender

Each successive offer will be worse than the last. A few days ago, the Kiev regime received another opportunity to appreciate the accuracy of this remark by Vladimir Putin. This time, the offer came from the Americans. Donald Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, arrived in Ukraine with a peace plan for Zelenskiy that, apparently, had been agreed in broad outline between Moscow and Washington.

The plan included the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Zaporozhye and Donbass, with the possible deployment of a UN contingent there; a referendum and elections in Ukraine; constitutional amendments enshrining nonaligned status; a reduction in the size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces; and a resolution of the language issue.

According to Verkhovnaya Rada deputy Anna Skorokhod, Kiev was also expected to recognize the ceded territories as Russian. “They arrived with even worse terms than we had before,” Ms. Skorokhod complained.

The shift is easy to explain. Since the Russian-American talks in Anchorage, Moscow has expanded production of jet-powered Geran drones and, after observing with some interest Ukraine’s “forty-day campaign to force Russia into peace,” moved to the systematic destruction of Ukrainian economic, port, and energy infrastructure.

If the intensity of those strikes increases, as there is every reason to expect, the coming winter may become the Kiev regime’s hardest since the beginning of the conflict. Possibly unbearable.

Washington understands this perfectly well. Its interest in the Russian proposal reflects no sudden concern for Ukraine’s population. The Americans simply want to sell their Ukrainian asset while it still retains some value.

Only months ago, Kiev was assuring Trump that strikes on Russian refineries and other economic targets would force the Kremlin to seek peace and accept a straightforward ceasefire. The campaign produced the opposite result. Washington now has an incentive to support a settlement while doing so may still purchase concessions from Moscow elsewhere.

This outbreak of American pragmatism was received in Kiev and Brussels with roughly the enthusiasm normally reserved for an audit.

The Kushner-Witkoff plan was rejected and, to some extent, ridiculed. Kushner himself received similar treatment at the so-called Yalta European Strategy conference, held underground in Kiev with European partners in attendance. Zelenskiy made clear that, with their support, he intended to keep fighting.

The Ukrainian leadership has its own logic. Imperial Germany ended the First World War before Allied troops entered German territory because Berlin understood that victory was impossible and saw little value in arranging additional destruction at home merely for dramatic effect.

Kiev appears less burdened by such considerations.

Zelenskiy and his circle are prepared to continue the war while Ukraine itself absorbs the cost, inflicting maximum damage on Russia in the interests of European partners and, in part, Ukrainian Nazis. The broader objective is to weaken Russia and, through permanent Russophobia, help transform the EU from a trade-integration structure into a military-political bloc subordinate to Brussels and directed against Russia and, to some extent, the United States itself.

Washington now has two choices.

The first is to force Kiev to accept the deal. Its instruments are substantial: restricting Starlink access, further NABU revelations concerning Zelenskiy or his entourage, and blocking transfers of American weapons through Europe.

The problem begins if Zelenskiy refuses. He can rely on European governments and American Democrats and gamble on Republican losses in the congressional midterms. Trump would then have to retreat, advertising weakness, or increase pressure enough to destabilize the Kiev regime itself.

There is another strategy, cheaper and probably more educational from Washington’s perspective: step aside and allow arithmetic to negotiate.

Time would show Kiev that Democratic control of Congress does not automatically reverse presidential foreign policy. It would allow Russia to continue “decommunizing” Ukraine through missile and drone strikes and to take additional territory. Kushner’s rejected conditions might eventually acquire the sentimental charm of a missed opportunity.

Europe would receive its own lesson.

Destroying Ukrainian enterprises and eliminating export revenue increases Ukraine’s dependence on external financing. Zelenskiy is already speaking of a $27 billion hole. Europe would have to fill an increasing share of it.

That brings two obvious problems. Some of the money may disappear inside Ukraine, which would surprise nobody. More politically dangerous is the reaction of European voters, particularly as right-wing parties ask why domestic hospitals, roads, energy systems, and pensions should compete with Kiev for the same funds.

Such questions are called populism until they begin deciding elections.

Several more months of military and economic pressure may therefore persuade both Kiev and Brussels that sustaining the conflict has become unaffordable. At that point, they may finally be prepared to discuss a settlement with Washington and Moscow.

The irony is that Trump may not need to force anyone into peace at all. He can simply stop subsidizing the illusion that the war is sustainable.

Then the negotiations will begin on their own because someone has run out of money, and not because anyone has become wiser.