The Price of Peace: Ukraine's Sovereignty Hangs in Balance
Editor’s note: This article was submitted on February 15, 2025.
In February of 2022, Russia launched a military incursion into Ukraine that many at the time, including the US government, thought would make quick work of the Ukrainian military and seize Kyiv within days. But while a solid chunk of territory is now occupied by Russian forces, the invasion has largely been a failure for Putin. By some miracle, Kyiv is still standing three years later.
This “miracle” is thanks to a variety of contributing factors, including strong political and military leadership from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, home field advantage for the Ukrainian military, shockingly incompetent and under-provisioned Russian soldiers, and valuable strategical assistance from NATO. But the most crucial factor of Ukraine’s defense? The financial, military, intelligence, and humanitarian assistance from the US. Now, with Donald Trump once again at the wheel of US foreign policy, this all may come crashing down.
In a “lengthy and highly productive” phone call with Putin, Trump and the Russian President came to the agreement that negotiations to end the war will take place “immediately”, without mentioning Ukraine or Europe at all. Zelenskyy was informed of the call soon after, but it still played right into European fears that they would be left out of negotiations. Pete Hegseth, for his part, isn’t doing much to reassure the Europeans either. The newly confirmed Defense Secretary stated during a defense conference in Brussels that it was “unrealistic” to expect Ukraine to recoup its pre-invasion borders, and that Europe, not the US, should provide the “overwhelming” share of funding for Ukraine’s protection. No public concessions of sovereignty have been made by Zelenskyy, but he has recently said that Ukraine would be ready to negotiate on the condition that it do so from a position of strength.
So what does this mean? For one, the Kremlin is surely rejoicing. The US has the capacity to keep Ukraine in the war, but Europe would struggle mightily without US support. “Spend more on defense” has been the constant refrain from the American right, but the problem is that most NATO countries don’t even spend enough to protect themselves, let alone Ukraine. If they were to increase spending, it would probably go towards their own defense first. Because of this, the US cutting aid to Ukraine would be a massive Russian victory.
There’s also the issue of the power imbalance facing Ukraine should they take a seat at the negotiating table now, while Russia controls nearly ⅕ of Ukrainian territory. If Trump truly does not care about Ukrainian sovereignty, then it makes sense why he wouldn’t want them in NATO – Ukraine would just be one more country that the US is obligated, not just allowed, to defend and protect. Trump surely knows that Russia would not simply just agree to give back their occupied territory, so it begs the question: what does Russia lose from negotiating now, and what does Ukraine gain? The answer is nothing and not much, respectively. Yes, the war would be over and the bloodshed would stop, but that’s no guarantee of an end to Russian aggression.
The signaling from the US is extremely pro-Russian, which is not only just a change of pace for our European allies, but also a warning to Ukraine: the American appetite for war is waning. The way the war stands now, Ukrainian security won’t be guaranteed through peace talks, especially without NATO membership or the participation of other European countries in the negotiations. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the current US administration has any issue with this, which may end up putting all of Europe at risk, if it wasn’t already.