Can The U.S. And Russia Strike Their Own Deal Without Ukraine?

A whirlwind week that has seen two emergency summits in Europe and worried comments from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy underlines the gnawing fear in capitals from Kyiv to London.

Namely, that Washington and Moscow could try to make their own deal on the future of Ukraine without Kyiv and U.S. allies in Europe.

U.S. President Donald Trump has added to the angst with his post on Truth Social, accusing Zelenskyy of being a dictator and saying “we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia.”

U.S. officials have denied they wish to exclude anyone from the process. But U.S. suggestions that Europe would not be at the negotiating table has caused widespread alarm, and the positive vibes from U.S.-Russia meeting in Riyadh on February 18 also set nerves on edge.

At this stage, there are two key questions: would Washington and Moscow even be able to agree on a mutually acceptable settlement to end the war in Ukraine, and if they did, what could anyone else do about it?

The White House clearly wants peace. It’s not clear that Moscow does. Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, arrived in Kyiv on February 19 just hours after overnight Russian strikes pounded Ukraine. Some 250,000 people were left without power in subzero temperatures in the port city of Odesa.

In Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the State Duma that “the crisis should not be resolved with a cease-fire.”

If the Kremlin is ready for a deal, it looks ready to push for a hard bargain. The nightmare scenario for Ukraine and its European allies is that Washington will agree to one.

U.S. officials have said that both sides in the conflict will need to make concessions but have not provided detail of what Russia’s might be.

Asked about this at the Munich Security Conference on February 15, Kellogg said: “There’s going to have to be territorial concessions,” and “it could be the renouncement of the use of force.”

Skeptics have warned that the United States is giving away too much, too early, in search of a quick and easy diplomatic win. But if there is a deal that Ukraine and Europe do not accept, what then?

There has been a string of strong statements.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha was asked at Munich what Kyiv’s “non-acceptance” of a bad deal would look like? “We know how to resist. We proved this, on the battlefield,” he said.

But without ongoing U.S. support, Ukrainian defiance is going to be difficult. So far, Europe has provided more aid to Kyiv than the United States, according to figures from the Kiel Institute of the World Economy. The figures cover military, financial, and humanitarian aid.

But Washington is the largest provider of military support, underlining the scale of the challenge Ukraine would face without U.S. backing. To make up the shortfall, Europe would have to nearly double its overall support to Kyiv.

European leaders have repeated a mantra that they will provide assistance to Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” But this does not address the question of whether they would massively increase this assistance to fill the gap.

Even talk of a European peace-keeping force, which would be deployed in Ukraine after a potential cease-fire or peace deal, has been with the caveat that it would require U.S. involvement and support.

Given fiscal limitations and political divisions, it’s unclear whether Europe would step up. So far, every step of the way, it has needed America to hold its hand.