Donald Trump has spent plenty of time boasting about his skills as a negotiator over the years.
His 2024 election campaign was no exception, only this time, he was promising to stop wars, too.
Trump claims to be such a good mediator that he is not even afraid to do deals with ruthless dictators – like Vladimir Putin.
While the rest of Ukraine’s allies have refused to consider organising a truce with the Kremlin until Kyiv initiates it, Trump has already pledged to end the three-year war within his day.
But, with his inauguration less than a month away, just how likely is it that Trump will be able to secure a deal?
And will actually stop the war – or just appease Putin, temporarily?
Will Trump actually be able to set up some kind of Ukraine-Russia peace deal?
That depends on your definition of a deal.
According to senior consulting fellow of Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme, Keir Giles, Trump will probably be able to force Moscow and Kyiv to agree to something which he can portray as a deal.
However, Giles told HuffPost UK: “Is it going to be something that is durable, sustainable and actually ensures fighting comes to an end on a more or less permanent basis? Almost certainly not.”
Giles said it all comes down to the US president-elect and the Russian president finding a “mutual point of interest that sells”.
For Trump, that most likely means living up to his own promises of ending the war – at least, for now – while, for Putin, it means weakening Ukraine and taking as much of its land as he can.
Giles also warned: “Putin has given every indication during Trump’s first presidency that he knew precisely how to play him in order to get the maximum possible benefit function.”
There is a chance the Russian president may be able to get his way in exchange just for appearing to stop the war – while possibly still hoping to take more of eastern Europe.
It is worth remembering that Trump and Putin appeared to strike up quite the friendship during the Republican’s first term in office, and the president-elect even praised Putin’s invasion in 2022, calling it “genius” and “savvy”.
Putin has also said he was “ready” to talk to Trump – but a deal depends on more than just those two.
There is, of course, a third albeit less powerful player in these negotiations, Ukraine, who previously refused to negotiate with Putin unless all Russian troops were withdrawn from Ukrainian land.
“There’s a mutual interest between Trump and Putin to do something but of course the wild card is Ukraine, which would prefer to survive,” Giles said, adding: “The likelihood of Ukraine agreeing to something that blights its future permanently is pretty slim.”
Why would Putin agree to a pause in the fighting?
Putin has made it clear that his main objective is to seize the whole of Ukraine.
But almost three years later, his army is drained of both resources and personnel – and he is having to rely on troops from North Korea.
So Putin may be more inclined to press pause on the conflict, so he can keep his troops in the occupied parts of Ukraine.
Giles also noted there would be some diplomatic benefit to freezing the war, saying: “To some extent Putin will want to make Trump look good if they’re looking for future cooperation.”
Meanwhile, Steve Forbes, of Forbes Media, claimed Putin would be rooting for the kind of deal Hitler got from Neville Chamberlain in Munich 1938 – in exchange for a chunk of Czechoslovakia – which only lasted a few months before World War 2 began.
As Forbes claimed: “Like Hitler, Putin won’t be appeased, that’s why he must be thwarted.”
Giles also seemed questioned the idea of just trying to placate the Russian president because of the impact it would have on the rest of Europe.
He said: “The problem is it also buys time for Putin to rebuild its forces without Ukraine destroying them almost as fast as they can be rebuilt.
“And precedent suggests the danger is that as soon as a ceasefire is declared, whether or not is a real and durable one, that will give western Europe the opportunity to pretend the problem has gone away and to ease off its own paltry efforts to actually rebuild its defence.”
Former adviser to the Ukrainian government, Yuliya Kazdobina claimed Putin does not have any interest at all in ending his invasion long-term.
Writing for the Atlantic Council earlier this month, she said: “Putin appears to be as committed as ever to his goal of extinguishing Ukrainian statehood entirely.”
She said: “As Donald Trump attempts to implement his campaign promise and end the war in Ukraine, he is likely to discover that his famed deal-making skills are no match for Putin’s single-minded obsession with the destruction of Ukraine.
“In words and deeds, Putin has repeatedly demonstrated his commitment to wiping Ukraine off the map.
“In such circumstances, any talk of a compromise settlement is dangerously delusional.
“Until Putin is forced to recognise Ukraine’s right to exist, any peace deals will be temporary and the threat of further Russian aggression will remain.”
Similarly, a Western military source told HuffPost UK: “If negotiation means capitulation on his terms, I think he’s ready to do that. But he is not ready for a genuine negotiation about Ukraine’s future sovereignty.”
Is a Trump peace deal the best option for Ukraine?
The best outcome for Ukraine would be if Trump were to reject any request from Putin, throw his weight fully behind Ukraine and lift any restrictions on US weaponry to Kyiv – but that’s pretty unlikely to happen considering the recent promises from his incoming administration.
The details of the president-elect’s potential agreement are still unclear, but it’s believed he wants to take Ukraine’s potential Nato membership off the table and propose Zelenskyy concedes some land to Moscow – even though that was a red line for Kyiv in the past.
According to Forbes, Trump can still get a “great deal” for Kyiv without asking all the Russian forces in Crimea and the eastern part of the country.
He said: “Indeed a settlement will realistically involve the Kremlin getting formal control of a few pieces of territory in the east, where it can claim the population is predominantly Russian.
“But either way the people there should have the right to emigrate elsewhere.”
He claimed that Ukrainians might have to pull out of Kursk, the Russian region which Kyiv seized in August.
“But the final deal must unmistakably leave Ukraine an independent nation with strong security arrangements,” he said.
He also suggested Ukraine could avoid Nato membership – one of Putin’s red lines – by having permanent military bases in the country, funded by frozen Russian assets.
However, others believe Ukraine should not be forced into any kind of negotiation.
The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas told the FT: “There’s no point pushing Zelenskyy to talk when Putin doesn’t want to talk.
“We can’t talk about peacekeepers when there’s no peace. And why is there no peace? Because Russia does not want peace.”
Labour MP David Taylor told HuffPost UK: “Talks of any form of deal are for the Ukrainian people and their president.
“They are the ones who have been engaged in a bloody war, fighting tooth and nail for freedom against Russian tyranny.”
What happens if Ukraine rejects any peace deal?
In the unlikely scenario that Ukraine rejects any deal with Russia, Giles suggested the White House might utilise the authority it has over Kyiv as the country’s most powerful ally.
He said: “Trump can use leverage against Kyiv far more effectively than he can on Putin for example, by freezing aide to Ukraine.”
Without the US, Kyiv would be less restrained in terms of how it fights Moscow.
For instance, Washington famously dragged its feet when it came to authorising Kyiv’s use of its long-range missiles against Russia, and only gave its permission in November after months of pleading from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But Giles said: “Ukraine will be able to continue fighting with or without support [from the US].
“Let’s not forget that in the run up to the full scale invasion when all the predictions that were coming from the US in particular – not from the UK – was that Ukraine would be overrun swiftly, all of the planning and support for Ukraine was for after it was overrun.
“The last time that happened, 1944-45, resistance actually continued for more than a decade afterwards.”
Yet, Giles was wary that Ukraine can only succeed if it still has the backing from its other allies.
He added: “If Europe is unable to or unwilling to step up to fill the gap [from the US], then the prospects for Ukraine are dire.”
However, Kyiv may well choose to discard its own red lines rather than lose the US as an ally.
Zelenskyy has been presenting Trump with his “victory plan” for months, and appears to softening his language around negotiations.
While making it clear he does not want any other country to negotiate with Putin without Ukraine’s backing, he pointed out that Kyiv is not exactly in a strong position right now.
“Are we in NATO? We don’t know. Will we be part of the EU? Yes, in the future, but when?” he said.
“Under these circumstances, sitting down at the negotiating table with Putin means giving him the right to dictate terms in our part of the world.
“First, we need to develop a model, an action plan, or a peace plan - call it what you will. Then we can present it to Putin or, more broadly, to the Russians.”
He said in December that his troops can only count on “diplomatic pressures” to oust Russia from Ukraine’s occupied territories, as his troops “do not have the strength” to remove them by force.
As Giles explained: “Ukraine might at some point reach the calculus that it is better to freeze the conflict for the sake of national survival.
“But that certainly won’t be an end of the long-term war.”
