By Matthew Grace
As President Elect Donald Trump assumes the presidency, his bold claims about ending the war in Ukraine “in a day” echoes a less than optimistic tune for Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine’s unaltered independence. This sentiment is also held by Ukrainian soldiers on the front like Sergent Dmytro, “Let the people in power decide, but I don’t think the ones who fell would want them (Ukraine’s leadership) to sit around the table”. Having lasted nearly three years and claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians and over seven hundred thousand Russian casualties, the war in Ukraine may be entering into its twilight.
With Ukraine’s western aid, especially from the US, wavering and Russia having deployed armored units that have not seen action since the 1970s, there are suggestions that the war may end with Trump’s presidency, especially after claiming he could do so. Experts believe that Zelensky saw the excursion into the Kursk region as a bargaining chip to use against Russia with the change in American leadership or faltering continued support by a similar administration. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) speculated that Kyiv aims to prove to western powers that Ukraine remains capable at fending off Russian attacks, having done so for three years against an expected “2-week special military operation”, and is “committed to the fight and can continue to defend its sovereignty”. Although a formal peace agreement is “highly unlikely”, there is the belief that if the Trump administration serves as the mediator to end the war, he is likely to favor Putin, and possibly bypass European participation, as he has expressed admiration to on many occasions, leaving Zelensky anxious at the idea of mediating.
The Patterson Journal of International Affairs 
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