'Trump may want to end the Ukraine war quickly – but that is bad news for Zelensky'

There's a whiff of corruption and foul dealing hanging over these US-mediated so-called peace talks between Moscow and Ukraine. They centre upon behind-the-scenes horse-trading over the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern region which borders Russia and is the industrial heartland. US President Donald Trump, who has insisted he wants to see the conflict end as quickly as possible, has consistently blamed Zelensky for not doing more to end the war, for standing in the way of peace whilst avoiding the same for Putin the actual aggressor. This is such an extreme twisting of the truth, a flip-flopping of actuality that even for a Trump it is too incredible to even make sense of. To short-sighted Trump it would be expedient for Zelensky to just give up the Donbas, drawing a line across occupied territory. But to Ukraine it would be giving up territory populated pre-war by roughly 58% ethnic Ukrainians and 38% ethnic Russians, who lived in Ukraine. Ukraine has always said it will not give up an inch of territory, not even Crimea which Russia has occupied since its illegal invasion back in 2014 - as is its right since it was invaded. Many have fled the fighting so it is hard to know exactly who is still there but we have to judge it on what was happening before Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion. Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency had spent preceding years campaigning to gradually take over the region, feeding loyalists with weaponry and propaganda. Small statelets were created by pro-Russian forces in preparation for what was to become, the full-scale invasion in 2022. Putin paints his war as one of emancipation, freeing Russians and those who want to be Russian from persecution in Ukraine. He has made unsubstantiated claims of Ukraine performing some kind of genocide against pro-Russians in the region. The Donbas is Ukraine’s historical, cultural and industrial heartland, serving it and elsewhere with a huge coal and steel enterprise. More than 80% of inhabitants, surveyed shortly after war broke out in the region, hate the Russian occupation which has been marred by murder, disappearances, kidnapping and torture. And crucially Russia is not winning this war, even though it appears Putin believes his generals, who are too scared to tell him the truth, when they say their soldiers are winning. Putin does not want to end this war and nor will he even if a settlement is reached in which part of the Donbas is given up to Russia. Witness who he sent to the recent negotiations in Abu Dhabi - hardliner historian Vladimir Medinsky who does not believe in ending the war. And amongst others, Dmitry Minaev, head of counter-intelligence in Putin’s FSB spy agency, who plotted in 2019 to kill Zelensky adviser Kyryllo Budanov, when he was an intelligence officer. Budanov was at the meeting facing the very enemy who made a bungled attempt to kill him with a car bomb. This was a clear message from Putin, that there will be no peace, that deadly force and espionage will continue against Ukraine and Ukraine should feel intimidated. US peace envoys Kushner and Witkoff may seem like hapless go-betweens but Trump must surely know what is being played out here. It is entirely possible they are carrying a message to Putin and his people and that Trump wants to make an agreement with Russia on the Donbas, possibly a US-Russia carve-up. And Zelensky knows it - you can see it in the contempt on his face when he underlines that there will be no giving up of Ukraine territory. Witkoff has made ten trips to Russia since Trump came into power again in 2025. And he has made one trip to Ukraine with Kushner in September this year - a trip that was preceded with attacks on Kyiv. However we look at it, Kushner and Wikoff are carrying with them Trump’s goodwill towards Putin and it stinks all the way to Moscow. And what messages they are carrying in Trump's personal interest we may never know.