28-02-2025
What will deter Russia is an open question, says Ukraine's former official
On Feb. 23, on the eve of the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russia unleashed 267 drones across multiple Ukrainian regions in one of the largest drone assaults since the war began. That week alone, Russia released a total of 1,150 attack drones, 1,400 aerial bombs and 35 missiles against Ukraine.
This escalation came amid President Donald Trump's attempts to broker a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine — by holding peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ukraine was not a part of the conversation between the two world leaders.
'I would be happy to be the first one to applaud his peace effort if I saw at least the slightest decrease of Russia's aggression,' said Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine's former foreign affairs minister at the JFK Jr. Forum at Harvard University as part of the annual Lamont Lecture. 'But it doesn't happen.'
Earlier on Monday, Feb. 24, the United States was among the countries, alongside Russia, North Korea and Belarus, that voted against the United Nations General Assembly's resolution that called for the end of the war and condemned Russia's aggression against Ukraine. 'This posture is a dramatic shift from American ideals of freedom and democracy,' Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, wrote on X. 'We all want an end to the war, but it must be achieved on terms that ensure Ukraine's sovereignty and security and that deter Putin from pursuing further territorial ambitions.'
Kuleba noted the disconnect between peace efforts and the situation on the ground. 'If there is a strategy of stopping the war, we have a very different understanding of what strategy is, because nothing of what has been done so far — in the last month, in the last three weeks, or the last week of particularly heated debate — made Russia slow down its aggression against Ukraine,' said Kuleba.
In recent weeks, Trump ramped up efforts to end the war in Ukraine by negotiating the terms of a peace agreement with Putin. As part of these negotiations, Trump has proposed an economic agreement, according to which Ukraine would turn over some of the revenue from the country's rare earth minerals as a way of paying the United States back for its military and financial aid throughout the war. U.S. Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent called it an 'economic cooperation agreement' earlier this month. 'And in exchange for this agreement, the U.S. will continue to provide material support for the Ukraine, for the people,' Bessent said in a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv.
On Tuesday, after several drafts of the agreement, U.S. and Ukraine agreed to a deal, in which Ukraine will pay the United States some of the revenue from the rare minerals sources. While the initial terms of the deal required Ukraine to deposit $500 billion in revenue from natural resources to a U.S. fund and 'pay back twice the amount of any future American aid,' the latest agreement did not include these conditions. 'You can not turn a grant into a loan after it was delivered,' Kuleba said in his remarks at Harvard.
Zelenskyy told journalists that the agreement was 'well appreciated by our government officials,' but it does not include specific security guarantees for Ukraine that Zelenskyy had been asking for. The copy of the agreement obtained by Ukrainian outlet The Kyiv Independent stated that the U.S. 'supports Ukraine's effort to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace.'
On Wednesday, in his first cabinet meeting, Trump stated that he was 'not going to provide security guarantees beyond very much,' he said. 'We're going to have Europe do that.' Zelenskyy is expected to travel to Washington to sign the agreement.
The agreement follows Trump's remarks earlier this month, where he called Zelenskyy a 'dictator without elections' in a post on Truth Social, after Zelenskyy said the U.S. president was 'living in a disinformation space' governed by Moscow.
Trump's remarks have drawn criticism from international allies, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and sparked a series of diplomatic visits to Washington. French President Emmanuel Macron met with Trump on Monday in Washington.
'This peace must not mean a surrender of Ukraine,' Macron said during a press conference at the White House. 'It must not mean a cease-fire without guarantees. This peace must allow for Ukrainian sovereignty.' During Starmer's visit to the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump accepted an invitation for a state visit from King Charles III. 'It can't be peace that awards the aggressor,' Starmer said, CBS News reported, 'we agree history must be on the side of the peacemaker, not the invader.'
'Europe must strengthen its own leverage with Putin and Trump alike. That means taking the lead as the guarantors of Ukraine's security in the future and standing up a credible offer — including with European forces in Ukraine — to enforce a durable solution in Ukraine,' wrote James Batchik, associate director of the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.
Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, thinks that the war will turn into a frozen conflict rather than a formal, finalized peace agreement, he said on a recent podcast. 'And that's because I think the minimum that Ukraine can live with and that Europeans can accept is not going to be acceptable to Putin. He's going to ask for Ukrainian neutrality, caps on the size of Ukraine's forces, recognition of Eastern Ukraine as part of Russia, drop the sanctions,' said Kupchan. 'These are things that I don't think he'll get, and that's why my prediction would be yet another frozen conflict.'
EU leaders will meet at a summit on March 6 to discuss support for Ukraine and strengthening Europe's defense.
Russia's recent escalation in Ukraine is a calculated move, said Kuleba in his remarks at Harvard earlier this week. By overwhelming Ukraine's air defenses and depleting its air interception systems, Russia aims to leave Ukraine even more vulnerable to further destruction through a mix of Russian missiles, Iranian drones, and North Korean weaponry. Meanwhile, Europe is becoming increasingly uneasy, not just due to the waning U.S. security support but also because of potential future confrontations with the U.S., particularly in economic matters, as rising trade tensions mark a shifting global dynamic.
How we got here can be traced to 1994.
The Budapest Memorandum, a diplomatic agreement that required Ukraine — at the time the world's third-largest nuclear power — to give up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances and financial compensation from Russia, was initially viewed as a diplomatic triumph. However, it ultimately left Ukraine exposed to future aggression. While the West saw the memorandum as a milestone in denuclearization, 'Russia saw it entirely as an act of disarmament of Ukraine,' Kuleba explained.
Disarming Ukraine was a key strategy in weakening the country's defenses, Kuleba noted. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, its first demand was for the Ukrainian military to surrender its weaponry. 'You do that when you want to make sure that once you come after this nation, it will have no means to defend itself,' he said. Russia's next steps included fracturing the nation's unity, Kuleba added, followed by undermining Ukraine's ties with its international partners.
Since 1994, and even before, Western nations, particularly the United States, have prioritized their relationship with Russia, often overlooking Ukraine's independence and sovereignty on its own terms, Kuleba stated. 'For 30 years, the United States and the rest of the West viewed Ukraine through the lens of Russia,' he said. Ukraine's independence was seen more as a convenience, something to be kept within Russia's 'zone of influence,' Kuleba added. 'As bitter as it is to say, we are paying for this today.'
A key question today is whether de-escalation efforts can succeed when one side is determined to destroy the other. 'Sometimes, a country makes a decision to destroy another country, and no matter what we do, trying to engage them or encourage them, they will not reciprocate,' Kuleba explained. 'What's happening now is that the United States is twisting Ukraine's arm while extending a handshake to Russia. This is the new reality we must come to terms with.'
The country set to benefit most from this shifting reality, according to Kuleba, will be China. The U.S. may find itself making concessions to Russia while offering little to Ukraine, with China poised to take advantage of the West's uncertainty and indecision, presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin patiently waiting for time to work in their favor, Kuleba said.
'I would like to say that the strongest intellectual ability is not to stick to what you believe in and to what you've been preaching for years,' Kuleba said. 'It is to change the belief in the face of facts and for the sake of humanity.'
As the Trump administration pushes for a ceasefire in Ukraine, viewing it as a potential landmark diplomatic victory, Kuleba is skeptical. Any ceasefire would be short-lived, he believes, since Russia remains focused on 'destroying Ukrainian statehood.' Any temporary pause in fighting would only serve as a strategic reset for Moscow, Kuleba said, allowing the country to regroup and continue its aggression against Ukraine.
The vast 3,000-kilometer front line and the sheer scale of the conflict would make violations inevitable — as one side might seek 'to improve its tactical standing' or 'avenge the death of a comrade.' Any renewed fighting will likely be blamed on Ukraine by Russia, leading to further demands for concessions. Kuleba described the war as not a 'localized conflict,' but rather 'the second world war.'
Kuleba highlighted the ongoing debate between 'security assurances' versus 'security guarantees' for Ukraine, with the latter implying military intervention. 'The truth is that all the assurances that have been given so far — they failed to prevent or to deter Russia,' he said.
This has led to intensified focus on Ukraine's membership in NATO, seen as the only untried option for true security. However, even NATO's future feels uncertain, he said. Kuleba argues that successful diplomacy requires leadership, creativity, and favorable circumstances — an 'alignment of stars.' And while creativity and leadership are vital, 'what will actually stop Putin and deprive him of the wish to continue on his mission of destroying Ukraine is an open question.'
Ukraine's diplomat also dismissed the idea that NATO's proximity was the reason behind Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Russia did not react militarily when Finland joined NATO, despite their shared border and historical ties. 'NATO is the excuse — it's not the reason,' Kuleba said. Instead, the core issue is that freedom and Russian imperialism are fundamentally incompatible. 'The reason why Putin attacked Ukraine is because freedom and oppression are irreconcilable. Independent Ukraine and Russian imperialism are irreconcilable,' Kuleba said.
Although the Biden administration was genuinely supportive of Ukraine, by the end of 2024, Ukraine appeared 'on the trajectory of slow death.' Now, Ukraine finds itself on a 'trajectory of fast death,' according to Kuleba. Still, Trump is capable of changing his mind, Kuleba said, suggesting that through skilled diplomacy, it might be possible to shift Ukraine toward a more positive path.
" I care for the country, I want my parents, I want my kids to live there, I want to die in that country. I want to write my memoir in Ukraine to defy this vicious circle of our history where everyone who stood up against Russia had eventually lost,' he said. In the meantime, he said: 'You just know you have to carry on.'
Kuleba believes that eventual reconciliation between Russians and Ukrainians is possible, similar to how France and Germany reconciled after World War II. But for this to happen, a crucial step must be taken. 'The president of Russia, whoever his name will be … has to come to Ukraine, kneel in front of the monument to the victims of the Russian invasion and deliver an apology to the people of Ukraine on behalf of the people of Russia,' said Kuleba. 'But for that to happen … Russia kind of has to change.'
