The Ukrainian president said this week he hopes the war will end by next June. Not this summer. Not this year. But in 12 months’ time. Sanctions, he believes, and four years of gruesome war will finally hit the Russian economy, pushing it into a deep budget deficit. The IMF’s latest forecast sort of backs this up. Russia’s GDP growth is set to slow to 0.9 per cent next year, down from over 4 per cent in 2024. Most of Russia’s workforce is already employed and its central bank’s key interest rate is at 21 per cent. Still, for many Ukrainians, Russia’s downfall feels like yet another fairy tale.
They’ve heard it all before. In the first days of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainians were told it would be over in ‘two to three weeks’. And when those weeks passed – again, ‘two to three weeks’. Russia’s stockpiles had almost run out of missiles, Ukrainians were told. It was comforting to believe, to cling to the hope that the nightmare would end soon. But when a year passed, trust in these soothing predictions began to wane. The President’s office stopped spinning fantasies. Until now. Volodymyr Zelensky is once again promising Ukrainians something he cannot deliver.
Yet few blame him. In fact, Zelensky has made clear just how much humiliation he’s willing to endure to bring peace closer. He’s agreed to everything Donald Trump demanded, including the minerals deal and an unconditional ceasefire. He’s shown up to peace talks in Istanbul while Vladimir Putin stayed home. He’s handed over Ukraine’s peace memorandum to Moscow and will send a delegation to Turkey on Monday to resume Kremlin-scripted negotiations. Zelensky knows Putin is playing with him, sending a low-level delegation for peace talks while launching a major summer offensive on the front line. Putin believes he can still win and is doing everything to ensure the peace meetings are meaningless.
Zelensky has no choice but to play along. Trump is watching. It might be naive to believe Trump can still be swayed on Ukraine’s side, but Zelensky must keep trying. With Trump back in charge, Ukrainians find themselves in something out of Orwell’s world where they must prove they didn’t invade Russia and that they aren’t the obstacle to peace. This is the absurd reality Zelensky must operate in, but the American President remains the best and probably the only chance to end the war on anything resembling fair terms for Ukraine. No one but him can pressure Putin to stop the killing, implementing crushing sanctions if Russia refuses to play the ball, even though the chances of that happening are dimming after each ‘beautiful’ phone call Trump has with Putin.
What else can Zelensky do? Accept Russia’s terms and surrender Ukraine’s sovereignty? Order a withdrawal from Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – cities Putin claims, but didn’t manage to capture? Zelensky knows doing so would be to betray the sacrifice of tens of thousands of Ukrainians who fell for their country and possibly ignite civil unrest. It would have been an easy choice if public opinion favoured such a deal with Russia, but 79% of Ukrainians, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, consider Putin’s demands for a ceasefire as categorically unacceptable.
So here he is, six years into the job, trapped by the sham talks with Russia, allies’ indecisiveness and the war that has no end in sight. Whatever deal eventually emerges, it will carry his signature, his name, become his legacy. That’s the weight Zelensky is bearing: to find a way out as soon as possible, without betraying everything his people have bled for.
This piece is taken from Svitlana’s Ukraine in Focus newsletter. Sign up here.
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