Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy today claimed that the absence of a security pact in 2014 and 2021—such as membership of NATO, the EU or with any European power—had denuded his country of a deterrent against Russian aggression, leading to Russia’s invasions. He now wanted a security agreement that will take Ukraine into an enforceable future peace.

Two things, however, are wrong with Zelenskyy’s statement:

He failed to acknowledge that the US and UK did offer this security guarantee through the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, in return for the handover of Ukraine’s nukes. He failed to mention that both then reneged in 2014 when Russia crossed through Donetsk.

He didn’t say whether he believed that any such security guarantee could prevent a future Russian puppet government eventuating, such as 2014’s Yanukovych who brought about the Euromaidan protests—and Russia’s response.

If Putin did not try to annex Ukraine on the basis of pressuring the West to repeal its Magnitsky Acts that have frozen his crony personal global assets, there is a basis for a Russian right to the Ukraine’s landmass.

Ukraine’s steppes have historically served as Russia’s breadbasket (and tool of political abuse). Its Donbas served as Russia’s industrial and coal base. Crimea was its Mediterranean-accessible deep warm water port.

A former Soviet Union, in other words, broken into its parts at the fall of Communism in 1991, took away much of Russia’s essence, not to mention leaving the Kaliningrad Oblast (region) isolated on the Lithuanian and Polish borders.

That said, I do not believe that Putin had expansionist aims. His interests were purely financial. Hence the Trump symbiosis.

The quickest road to peace right now then, in the absence of any European ability or immediate willingness to shore-up Ukraine’s Don-Crimea Axis—and prevent a Russian crossing of the Belarusian border north of Kiev—is to acquiesce to Putin’s financial demands.

The EU has weakened Europe to the point of internal ethnic anarchy. It is doubtful whether UK, France or Germany could fill a mobilisation willing to fight for undefined war aims, and we know what happened last time the UK vowed to come to Poland’s aid in 1939.

Trump is willing to let Europe sort itself out.

Thing is, without the US’s arms trade with the West, quite a hit to Trump’s GDP will result. Does he think we’ll see M1 Abrams parading through Red Square and F-35 Lightnings flying out of Pyongyang as clients?

No. So, war and cutting off Europe is not the way.

Establish a ceasefire and hostage return (we cannot forget Ukraine’s stolen children), give Putin his billions and put him on a close economic chain. Free-elections in both Russia and Ukraine would be a fitting conclusion.

That only leaves Russia’s ties to Iran and North Korea. Diplomacy is often a stack of Matryoshka dolls.

© 2025 Adam Parker.

Picture credit: “The first original Matryoshka, Sergiev Posad Museum of Toys Russia”, circa 1892. Public domain.