No one said that the peace process was going to be easy for Ukraine, but it shouldn’t become a mortal trap either, untainted by its confessed enemy, Russia, with the invaluable help from the United States. After almost three years of invasion, tens of thousands of deaths, and a country crippled in about a fifth of its territory, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy faces the difficult situation of managing two simultaneous peace processes.
One of them, which was voluntarily put on the table by seven European leaders, NATO, and the EU on Monday, is not for now more than a declaration of intentions with nothing to support it, beyond the predisposition to send peacekeeping troops to Ukrainian territory promoted by London. However, this initiative from old Europe may have arrived late and in bad form.
The other peace process is the one officially initiated by the US and Russia in Saudi Arabia, without the presence of the invaded country. Under normal conditions, this initiative would be doomed to fail, but US President Donald Trump has managed to turn the game around.
The problem for Kyiv is that the strategy of Presidents Trump and Putin is full of traps. These would be the four most important ones, which can help understand what is happening:
1. A diplomatic gift
Apart from what comes out of the meeting in Riyadh, Moscow has already achieved an unexpected gift by getting both countries to lift “artificial barriers” in their diplomatic relations and name ambassadors. This, together with Washington’s request that Russia be readmitted to the G-7, means Moscow’s return to the world diplomatic game. Putin will cease to be, at that time, the “pariah of the Earth” that Joe Biden promised he would become.
2. A United States colony
The second trap has also been revealed this Tuesday, and has been exposed by the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, which has accessed the document that the United States delivered to Ukraine with the conditions of the agreement. These conditions include the exploitation of its ports and infrastructure by the US, as well as access to its oil, gas, and other natural resources reserves. The agreement supposes, in practice, to turn Ukraine into a colony of the United States and goes far beyond what was known so far, which involved the privileged access of US companies to the so-called rare earths, a series of essential minerals for the technological industry.
3. The stone guest
The diplomatic play of the Russian and US representatives, Sergey Lavrov and Marco Rubio, respectively, meeting in Riyadh, is a slap in the face for Kyiv, which even made a desperate attempt to send a representative to the meeting in the hope of being able to enter the negotiations through the back door. The image that is projected is just the opposite: the terms of the peace agreement will be cooked between the two great powers of the Cold War, and only when the process is initiated will they invite Ukraine. But instead of being a guest of the meeting, as it would correspond, Ukraine will become a mere stone guest.
4. A consolation prize
One of the concessions that Moscow has made to the invaded country has been to “allow” the right to enter the European Union, as if the decision depended on something from the Kremlin. The reverse, of course, is that Vladimir Putin officially confirms that Kyiv’s entry into NATO will be vetoed, the great strategic threat to former Soviet republics like this. With this, in the fight to get something out of three years of war in Ukraine, the country would get something like a chocolate medal, a triumph that would hide the great failure, and for Moscow, it would be the lesser evil. We will now have to see the interesting pulse within the Atlantic Alliance between the United States and the rest of its partners. Unless things change a lot, there will surely be a winner and a loser.