US president’s feckless approach to peacemaking risks a flawed deal that would clear the way for another Russian invasion
David Blair
3 February 2026
The Telegraph
There is nothing so dangerous as a peace process that ends one war only by risking another. Donald Trump seems oblivious of this reality as he dispatches his faithful envoy, Steve Witkoff, to broker a deal – any deal – between Russia and Ukraine at the next round of peace talks in Abu Dhabi, taking place on Wednesday and Thursday. These negotiations are expected to focus on what Witkoff has described as the “one issue” that remains unresolved: the future of about 2,300 sq miles of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
While the rest of Donetsk has been captured by Russia, this area remains in Ukrainian hands. Through four years of full-scale invasion and one brutal offensive after another, Russia has never managed to capture it. Ukraine’s soldiers have repulsed Vladimir Putin’s attacks and doggedly held the line at immense cost.
So Putin is trying to gain at the negotiating table what he has failed to seize on the battlefield. Ukraine has long since accepted, with weary resignation, that any peace settlement would allow Russia to retain the 20 per cent of their country which its forces have occupied. But that is still not enough for Putin. He insists not just on keeping what he currently holds but on being given still more. And Putin’s demand is not merely an injustice but profoundly inhumane. The territory in question has some 200,000 inhabitants who would be handed over to an enemy that, if experience is any guide, will murder the men, rape the women and kidnap the children. Even worse, giving this land to Russia would risk setting the stage for another war. This vital area – slightly smaller than Devon – encompasses some of Ukraine’s most formidable defences, including the fortress towns of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, which protect the rest of the country and the route to Kyiv.
If all these painstakingly constructed strongpoints are simply handed over to Russia, the way would be open for Putin to launch another invasion designed to conquer the whole of Ukraine, which has always been his real objective. And by insisting that President Volodymyr Zelensky must surrender his fortress line, Putin is strengthening Russia’s position for any such future war.
Any peace envoy worth the name would see through this ruse. But not Trump or Witkoff, who yearn for the glory of brokering a deal regardless of its consequences and who remain mysteriously willing to indulge Putin’s view of the world.
The obvious way to break the deadlock and achieve an agreement would be for the US president to tell his Russian counterpart to drop this absurd demand for territory that Moscow’s forces have not captured.
Trump could back this with real pressure, for example by supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles to destroy Russian oil refineries, or by allowing the Senate to pass a bill – which has lain dormant for a year – to suffocate the Kremlin’s oil exports by imposing US tariffs of 500 per cent on any country that buys them.
Instead, Trump sees himself as an impartial mediator between the aggressor and the victim, taking no view on the merits of any claims, and merely instructing Witkoff to devise forms of words on which the parties can pretend to agree.
In practice, that places all of America’s pressure not on Putin to abandon his dangerous fixation on Donetsk, but rather on Zelensky to accept some formula that might allow Ukraine to relinquish this territory.
The proposed solution includes security guarantees from the United States and a detailed plan for exactly how Ukraine’s European friends would police a ceasefire and react to any new Russian invasion. In themselves, these steps are necessary and sensible. But Trump’s error is to give the impression that these assurances are conditional on Zelensky signing away the rest of the Donetsk.
The alternative would be for America to join hands with Europe to exert combined pressure on Putin to clear the obstacle to peace by dropping his territorial demand. But, even now, Trump and Witkoff still appear to see Zelensky as the problem to be overcome and Putin as comparatively reasonable.
Trump’s relentless incompetence as a peace-maker – displayed in the largely bogus list of conflicts he claims to have ended – creates two dangers. The first and most likely is that Putin, under no extra pressure for his intransigence, simply maintains his claim to Donetsk and no route is found to evade this obstacle, meaning that the war continues.
Alternatively, Zelensky might be muscled into giving up the 2,300 sq miles on the basis of assurances and security guarantees that fail to compensate for handing over Ukraine’s strongest defences to the invader. If so, Putin would take the opportunity to start another war, probably after a respite to re-arm and re-equip his forces. In short, Trump’s inept diplomacy may either perpetuate today’s war or achieve a flawed peace that sows the seeds of the next.
David Blair was a foreign correspondent for nearly 20 years, reporting from 60 countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He then joined the Foreign Office and later No10, where he wrote speeches and advised three Foreign Secretaries and one Prime Minister. He returned to The Telegraph as Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator in 2025.