The Jeddah Deal: An Offer Ukraine Couldn’t Refuse

Ukraine’s assent to a 30-day ceasefire in the war brought by Russia could turn out to be the first step on the road to an enduring peace. Yet a much higher hurdle awaits as the offer now gets presented to the Kremlin. Russia, after all, is the party that invaded its neighbor in 2022. After three years of fighting, is President Putin now willing to accept a peace plan that falls short of his initial goals in launching the invasion? So far, signs of that prospect are scant. It’s also hard to avoid the sense that the terms presented by President Trump and his envoys to Ukraine amounted to an offer that Kyiv could hardly refuse. After all, Mr. Trump had suspended American military assistance to Kyiv, and stopped sharing intelligence with the beleaguered nation, due to his stated concern that President Zelensky was “not ready for Peace.” Those pressure tactics seem to have worked, and the restrictions are now lifted.While Ukraine’s European allies signaled eagerness to help, and are weighing a defense buildup to counter the Russian threat, that assistance could prove to be years away. With Ukraine facing a clear and present danger, it is understandable that Mr. Zelensky would be eager to find common ground with Mr. Trump. The agreement hammered out at Jeddah now puts the ball in Moscow’s court, and Mr. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, is heading there later this week.Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, framed the agreement reached today as a sign that Ukraine’s negotiators “share President Trump’s vision for peace.” Mr. Waltz averred that the discussions covered “substantive details on how this war is going to permanently end,” including the prospect of security guarantees for Ukraine. After the West’s failure to enforce earlier guarantees made to Kyiv, though, such pledges are likely to prove an unpersuasive prospect.In Mr. Trump’s eagerness for “reciprocity,” he has demanded that Americans could mine Ukraine’s mineral regions near the Russian border, and today Mr. Zelensky signaled agreement. White House aides claim that the presence of Americans there could provide the necessary “tripwire” to European peacekeepers protecting Ukraine from future Russian aggression. As long as Mr. Putin is intent on swallowing a country, though, no guarantees are fool-proof. Feature, say, the Budapest Memorandum, agreed to in 1994, under which Kyiv surrendered its nuclear arsenal to Moscow in exchange for promises by America, Britain, and Russia to respect Ukraine’s borders. Then, too, the Minsk ceasefire agreements signed some 10 years ago as a means to end Russia’s incursions in eastern Ukraine proved not to be worth the paper they were written on. In both cases, Russia has proven a perfidious partner in seeking peace.With that past as prologue, it is at least clarifying that Ukraine is stepping up to say that it will not be a hindrance in the road toward a peace agreement — bolstered by the overnight drone attack on Moscow that showed that Kyiv is hardly eager to roll over to the Russians. As Secretary Rubio put it today, the message from Jeddah to Moscow is that “this is what’s on the table. Ukraine is ready to stop shooting and start talking.”The former senator, whose tenure on the foreign relations committee has given him a clear-eyed appraisal of the Russians and the worth of their promises, explained that the coming days would be a chance for Mr. Putin and his camarilla to show their true colors. “And now it’ll be up to them to say yes or no,” Mr. Rubio said. “If they say no, then we’ll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here.”

The Jeddah Deal: An Offer Ukraine Couldn’t Refuse

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