Roving Periscope: In war-as-business, Russia and Ukraine hope to Trump one another!
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: As Europe’s deadliest conflict since the Second World War entered the fourth year on Monday, US President Donald Trump, smoking the peace pipe with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, wants elections in war-ravaged Ukraine which its President Volodomyr Zelenskyy has almost rejected.
Ever since he took office in January, President Trump is putting pressure on Ukraine to agree to end the zero-sum war. But Ukraine is not ready to exchange Russian-speaking areas of its territory to buy peace, even though it is unsure if it can rely any longer on its staunchest ally, the United States, for financial and military commitment.
The three-year-long, all-out war has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides, displaced millions of people, and badly affected their economies. In particular, Ukraine’s economy is now showing signs of slump and its exhausted troops are fighting to hold their ground against unrelenting enemy advances. The Russian economy is also showing the first signs of cooling due to the runaway inflation, with price rises at 9.5 percent in Russia and 12 percent in Ukraine.
According to the media reports, President Zelenskyy said on Sunday he was willing to give up his position if it brought peace, quipping that he could exchange his departure for Ukraine’s entry into NATO. “If (it means) peace for Ukraine if you really need me to leave my post, I am ready,” an irritated-looking Zelenskyy said during a press conference when asked if he was ready to leave his post to secure peace.
“I can exchange this for NATO (membership), if that condition is there, immediately,” he added.
Since January, US President Trump has pushed for holding fresh elections in Ukraine, and branded Zelenskyy a “dictator,” as the latter’s five-year-term ran out in 2024. Indirectly, he even held Ukraine responsible for the war, which Russia started on February 24, 2022.
President Trump’s criticism of Zelenskyy came as relations between the two leaders deteriorated sharply in recent weeks. The Ukrainian leader has opposed the idea of elections in the midst of an ongoing full-scale war, a position supported even by his major domestic political opponents.
Zelenskyy also said he wanted to see Trump as a partner to Ukraine and more than simply a mediator between Kyiv and Moscow. “I really want it to be more than just mediation… that’s not enough,” he told a press conference in Kyiv.
Businessman-turned-politician, President Trump, in a bid to get back the billions of dollars, is negotiating with Kyiv a mineral resources deal, as a compensation for the wartime aid his predecessor Joe Biden gave Ukraine.
In exchange, Ukraine wants any agreement signed with the United States to include security guarantees.
Meanwhile, Washington has initiated talks with Moscow to discuss the ending of the war in Ukraine after re-establishing diplomatic relations. So far, Kyiv has been kept out of the negotiations—and even peace talks held in Saudi Arabia.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) data, Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) slumped to -1.3 per cent at the outset of the war but has since recovered to post 3.6 percent in each of the last two years. But now the Russian economy is showing the first signs of cooling, with sales and orders falling in various sectors due to high interest rates and inflation.
“Already based on the results of November and especially December, we see that growth has stopped being frontal…The pace has slowed in a number of industries: the food industry, the chemical industry, wood production, and certain sectors of machine building…The volume of orders from businesses is decreasing,” Russia’s Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov admitted.
“We are looking for a balance between curbing inflation and economic growth,” he was quoted as saying.
So far, despite wide-ranging US and European sanctions, Russian factories have continued to source the components and raw materials needed to keep the war machine going. The influx of funds from the illicit sale of oil, and to a lesser extent natural gas, nickel and platinum, has allowed for an expansion of a state apparatus that 18 months ago looked bending on its knees.
Ukraine’s GDP, which sunk 36 percent by the summer of 2022, rebounded to 5.3 percent in 2023 and 3 percent in 2024. But, according to Ukraine’s economy ministry forecast, its GDP growth is expected to slow to 2.7 percent this year, below the expected 3 to 4 percent.
Looking to the next 10 years, Ukraine has a wealth of metal deposits, many of them rare, that some estimates put at USD 11 trillion.
But the real toll of the war is on the people. Thousands of Ukrainian citizens have died and over 6 million now live as refugees abroad.
Military losses have also been catastrophic, although they remain closely guarded secrets. Western estimates based on intelligence reports vary widely, but most say hundreds of thousands have been killed or wounded on each side.
