Should Ukraine sue for peace?

Quietly and despite the appeasement concern, many advise compromise before a Trump return emboldens Putin further

Elena Mozhvilo via Unsplash

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's term ran out this week, on May 20. While the war with Russia has enabled a quiet extension, it is a fitting moment to take stock of a catastrophe that has been overshadowed by the Gaza war but whose associated risks are far higher.

Support for Ukraine has become a divisive political issue in the United States, as it seems almost anything important will—and so many people are emotional about it. But a sober analysis suggests Ukraine may soon have to seek a deal with Russia.

At a London conference I attended this past weekend on geopolitics, quite senior U.S. and European officials and analysts divided along two clear narratives.

The first is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a dictator, a Soviet nostalgist and an imperialist with a potentially Hitlerian bent which, if appeased, would whet an appetite that would soon turn to Moldova, the Baltics and perhaps even Poland.

In this narrative Putin must be repelled at almost any cost, meaning that Ukraine must be armed to the hilt and treated as akin to a NATO member. President Joe Biden in public subscribes to this view, and the Republicans mostly hate it.

The opposite narrative says that West erred disastrously in extending delusions of NATO membership to a country whose borders reach within a few hundred miles of Moscow, and that Russia—not just Putin—was left with little choice but to draw a line in the steppe.