Memo to the 47th President: A Ukraine Deal Would be Good; Russia’s Defeat Even Better

EDITOR’S NOTE — Since Donald Trump’s victory in the November 5 election, The Cipher Brief has reached out to our network for thoughts on what the priorities ought to be for the second Trump administration. Our ask was straightforward: If you were given the opportunity of a short visit with the 47th president during his first days in office, what message would you want to deliver?  

In this latest installment of our “Memos to 47” series, Brian Bonner, who is based in Ukraine and led the Kyiv Post, the country’s main English-language newspaper, from 2008-2021, offers a “Memo” to the president-elect about Ukraine, Russia, and Trump’s pledges for a fast end to the war. Bonner believes Trump will return to office with leverage to use with both sides, and he stresses the importance of providing Ukraine the security guarantees and financial and military support it will need, in exchange for territorial concessions to Russia. He goes so far as to suggest that a Nobel Peace Prize may await, should Trump find a pathway to a just peace in Ukraine.

“Time is not on the side of Ukraine or Russia,” Bonner writes in his “Memo” to the 47th president. “But with Ukraine adequately supplied and financed through 2025, time is on your side.”

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To the President-elect: 

Get that Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech ready, because if you bring Russia’s war in Ukraine to an acceptable end for the world and both sides, you’ll get the honor. 

You are off to a good start, even before your Jan. 20 inauguration. You have signaled to Ukrainians that you will not abandon them, easing their greatest fears about your return to the presidency. You have put Europe on notice that they need to stop taking America for granted and start taking care of their own security by spending 5% of GDP on defense. Bravo! And you have stoked Russian President Vladimir Putin’s already massive insecurities and paranoia by noticing his inability to keep Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria. Good job of setting the table. 

After three years of the Kremlin’s full-scale war, no leadership has emerged anywhere in the world with the strength and clout to bring this war to a close. But you just might. 

Despite your having frequently insulted the victim – Ukraine – and its leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, on the campaign trail, and despite your rarely having an unkind word, let alone blame, for the aggressor and its leader, Ukrainians are scrambling to get on your good side. They’ve been on your bad side, and they know it’s not a pleasant place to be. 

Despite the scorn, many Ukrainians – while wary of you – are relieved that the Biden administration is ending. While people here have been deeply grateful for American support, they have also been frustrated by what many view as a strategy that can be summarized as too little, too late, and one that is bleeding Ukraine to death. The cardinal sin, in this view, was not having a strategy for victory, of dribbling out weapons systems reactively, slowly and inadequately. Sure, they kept Ukraine in the noble fight, buying Europe time to gradually come around to helping more. But the Biden team missed many key moments – including the need to surge weapons in 2022 when it became clear that Ukraine has a lot of fight in it, and that Russia’s blitzkrieg had failed.  

The outgoing president, schooled in the Cold War era, was too often paralyzed by a fear of Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling.  

A new willingness to compromise 

Ukrainians are, of course, wary of what you may have in mind for them and for their country. But they have made the job easier for you by showing, in recent months, a genuine willingness to compromise. If the international community agrees to continue recognizing Ukraine’s 1991 borders, Zelensky will end his nation’s attempts to recapture its Russian-occupied lands militarily – that’s nearly 20% of the country. In doing so, Zelensky is simply acknowledging battlefield realities, given the missed opportunities and state of the Ukrainian military. 

But in exchange for this major concession, Ukraine rightly demands security guarantees – NATO membership preferably. You should reverse your opposition and support such a move. Putin will swallow it the way he ultimately accepted Finland and Sweden joining the alliance.  

But if Ukraine in NATO remains a no-go zone for you, then pursue the other options that you have already signaled – arming and financing Ukraine well into the future to achieve “peace through strength” while supporting an international peacekeeping force composed of European and Ukrainian soldiers. 

That will work until Ukraine wins membership support from all 32 NATO allies. 

American leverage  

You have even more levers of influence over Ukrainians. They have shown, as a society, that they are not willing to force fighting-age men from 18 to 24 onto the battlefield. In effect, they have put greater value on protecting younger men than older men. The current draft age makes no military sense and has left Ukraine with an army past its physical prime in fighting. No wonder it is having trouble holding territory, let alone advancing. 

This is a stubbornly clear signal from Kyiv that Ukrainian society has higher priorities than getting all its territory back, a point you can seize upon in forcing concessions. Ukrainians argue that it’s their decision who fights. It’s also our decision whether to help them, and to what extent. So, if they are not going to budge on this issue, they will have to live with the consequences. 

Ukrainians say they don’t want their young men to die in war. Nobody does. But if armed and financed properly, soldiers wouldn’t have to meet this grisly fate. Moreover, Ukraine’s stance ignores the long-term deterrence value of showing Russia that Ukrainian society is serious about its own defense. Imagine Putin’s difficulties if Ukraine doubled its fighting force and had a permanent standing armed force of 2 million or more soldiers. 

Millions of fighting-age men are sitting out this war. Some of them will be needed as essential components of an international peacekeeping force that will likely be required for decades. The fact that Ukraine, after 11 years of war, has not militarized its society to the extent that Russia has is a worrying sign. But it is also another point of leverage for you. 

Money matters 

Now to the financing. Ukraine clearly needs to tax more and give more than it has done. Since Russia’s invasion violated all international laws, seizing all the Kremlin’s frozen assets and getting allies to apply heavier sanctions and tariffs on trade with Russia should be an easy sell for you. As noted above, you’ve made a big splash by telling Europe to spend 5% of GDP on defense – that’s long overdue. You have ways to get them to comply. They have had their own reality check these past three years and found they cannot replace the United States security umbrella yet, if ever. They are also lacking leadership among the big three countries of the UK, Germany and France. 

Ukraine is dangling the prospect of commercial concessions to pay for its security. The government touts $26 trillion in untapped oil, gas, and mineral resource wealth that could be developed and leveraged by U.S. or Western investors. That begs the question: Why is Ukraine such a poor country, if the estimate is accurate? Besides the war, one answer involves corruption – which still bedevils Ukraine and provides a subtext for why more than seven million Ukrainians fled the nation as refugees in the last three years and haven’t returned. Most may never come back. Besides escaping war, they were seizing a chance for a better life.  

Corruption is an area where you will have tremendous leverage if you choose to use it. The Ukrainians will help you. They know where it occurs, who is behind it, and how to stop it. They need Western help to combat the vice. Paramount, of course, is the need to put a stop to Russia stealing more of Ukraine’s wealth and forcing Moscow to pay damages for the vast resources they’ve already taken. 

A friend to the U.S. 

Finally, you should understand that Ukraine is a very useful ally, and not just a burden. The nation holds the keys to innovation in warfare. You need to sync up our defense industries as much as possible. What Ukrainians have done with drones, all on the fly, is something that could help America prevent or win future wars at lower costs – financially and in terms of the human cost. Maybe some expensive Cold War-era weapons systems can be jettisoned for leaner, more lethal weapons. Russia’s far superior Navy ships did no good against Ukraine’s missiles and drones. Ukraine is the current global epicenter of defense innovation, but it’s starved for finance, and this is where American can swoop in. 

Getting a weakened Russia to the negotiating table will take some time, but it can and will happen.

Economically, you’ve already signaled the strategy: Drive energy prices down to the point that the war becomes unaffordable for the Kremlin. Russia’s economy is in bad shape and so are the economies of their allies – China, to a lesser extent, but also Iran and North Korea. Now is the time to break this “Axis of Authoritarians” by turning up the heat. 

Despite the squandered opportunities, Ukraine can still emerge with a deal that secures its interests – or even an outright victory. But you would need to quietly surge weapons and relax restraints to such an extent that Putin sees no benefit in continuing the war. He is also afraid to get on your bad side. But don’t announce anything about ramping up assistance to Ukraine. Don’t have press releases detailing each aid package. And don’t, for heaven’s sakes, repeat the Biden and European mistakes of telling Putin about your fears and what you won’t do.  

At least let the Ukrainians try to make things right in 2025. Maybe Russia will collapse under the pressure, but that is a long shot. Just make sure, at a minimum, that the war ends in such a way that other autocrats, notably China’s Xi Jinping, will be deterred from starting new wars. Russia’s clear defeat will be even better. It will make the world safer and reduce the chances of future wars. 

Russia is stretched so thin by the Ukraine war, as you know, that it abandoned Assad without a fight and is losing confidence elsewhere around the globe, especially in Africa, India, and among once-loyal former Soviet republics. In Syria, the Kremlin went from calling Assad’s opponents terrorists one day to recognizing the new realities the next.  

Barring a catastrophic collapse of Russian defenses, which seems unlikely, a Kremlin defeat is far less likely. Putin may instead gradually dial back the hot war as he did during much of the eight years before the full-scale invasion. He and his propagandists will find a way to repackage the biggest loss – his inability to destroy Ukraine as an independent nation – as victory. When Putin withdrew his forces from Kyiv and Kharkiv in 2022, he portrayed it as a magnanimous gesture of good will. If Ukraine stops Russian advances decisively, Putin will redefine the mission, declare victory, and stop fighting – for now at least. 

But there will be no durable peace if Putin continues to view Ukraine as part of the Russian Empire and keeps his troops on Ukrainian territory. Given Putin’s history of violating accords and the fact that there is no global military force to enforce treaties, there is no lasting agreement to be had with him. Peace through strength is the only way. Might still makes right.  

Time is not on the side of Ukraine or Russia. But, with Ukraine adequately supplied and financed through 2025, time is on your side. If you play your cards right, you’ll have time to find a place of honor for that Nobel Peace Prize coming your way. 

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.  Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

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