Stop the Russia/Ukraine War at the current BATTLE LINES? /Lt Col Daniel Davis

Daniel Davis Deep Dive Merch: Etsy store

American President Donald Trump wants to freeze the front lines as they exist. It is a proposition that is quite clearly not acceptable to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But do you think this is something that would be acceptable to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, who in the Alaska summit had indicated that he wants all the territories that Russia now controls—along with that, he wants Donbas, the highly industrialized region which is also rich in important natural resources? Do you think Russia will drop a demand such as that for peace?

There’s zero chance. And I think you characterize it quite well that both Zelensky and Putin are adamantly opposed to this, and they have long stated that. The only thing that’s partially close is that Zelensky has multiple times said that he thinks negotiations can start on the current line of contact, but with the expressed intent of getting back in negotiations some of the other territories—not just surrendering the rest of them. He keeps saying over and over, “Our constitution forbids it, we can’t do it, our people won’t allow it,” etc.

And on the other side, the Russians have said they won’t even contemplate such a thing. They wouldn’t even have an unconditional ceasefire on the current line, saying they will keep fighting until all of the root causes—which means the hard work of end-of-war negotiations—have been done. Even then, as Putin said just last month in Beijing, “We will accomplish all of our goals either on the military battlefield or at the negotiating table.” They have not changed one iota of what they’ve been saying since April 2022, reiterated in June 2024. So no, there’s no prospect that Russia, from a position of strength, is going to willingly cede territory that they’ve already written into their Russian Federation constitution and just say, “All right, we’ll end the war there.” This has no prospect at all.

Now, also in the meeting that Zelensky had with Donald Trump, it is being reported that he presented certain maps and a plan of where Ukraine can strike Russia so that it hurts Russia financially. To do this, he expressed that he needs American Tomahawk missiles. Donald Trump has shot down the idea, saying that Tomahawk missiles are needed by the Americans as well.

In your assessment, do you think Donald Trump could get drawn into this war a bit more by giving additional military aid to Ukraine?

Well, we have to look at this in context and why this is so puzzling—why there is so little optimism even for these high-level delegations that are apparently going to happen between Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State Rubio, etc. You have to back up to about the 24th of September, when Trump said, “My assessment now is that Ukraine can go on and win the war and go all the way back to the 1991 borders,” which gave Zelensky a great deal of hope and optimism. He thought, “Great, then you’re going to support me in doing this.”

There were some military packages that Trump had offered. Then just a week ago, Zelensky told Vice President Vance that he wants the Tomahawk missiles. Vice President Vance said, “Yeah, I’m considering that.” Then, either Sunday or Monday, President Trump emphatically said from Air Force One, “If Putin doesn’t agree to the terms I’m looking for here, I may let them have them. I may use those Tomahawks.” And then all of a sudden, he completely reversed course on Friday when he said, “Oh no, we actually have to have those.”

Obviously, the conditions didn’t change between Sunday and Friday, and yet the message dramatically changed—as it did before. And now, instead of the 1991 borders just a month ago, he’s saying that we’re going to stop it where it’s at right now. So, I don’t think anybody really knows where President Trump’s lines are. And when you’re talking about all these different constituencies trying to come to some kind of an agreement, they’ve got to ask the question: which Trump are we going to get—the one from September or the one from today?