Ukraine’s acceptance of a 30-day ceasefire will be seized with glee by Vladimir Putin

Ukraine’s agreement to accept a 30 day ceasefire in its war with Russia, which will now be taken as an offer to the Kremlin, is likely to be seized with glee by Vladimir Putin.

It gives his troops a breather, undermines Ukraine’s morale, and can be used to drive a further wedge into relations between Kyiv and Washington.

The agreement has been forced on Ukraine by the US after the Trump administration cut military aid and intelligence sharing with its former allies in Kyiv.

The intelligence taps will be turned back on as part of the “deal” which also says the two countries will work towards a mineral exploitation agreement.

There is no faith that the US are honest brokers in talks with Russia among the people of Ukraine or in its corridors of power. Every move made by the Trump administration since it came into office has been to enfeeble the Ukrainian war effort.

A ceasefire risks doing the same. It allows for Russia to re-arm and repair the damage done by Ukrainian long-range strikes and attacks on logistics nodes, supply routes and command and control centres.

The Ukrainians have been losing ground in Kursk following the Russian offensive that exploited the US suspension of intelligence sharing which effectively blinded Kyiv to Russian movements.

But in the east, in the “meat grinder” fighting that Mike Waltz the US negotiator referred to, Russian forces have been unable to use artillery, heavy armour, and to resupply their front lines with much ammunition for several months – a result of Ukraine’s use of longer range missile and drones.

The Jeddah talks produced a commitment that the US would renew intelligence and “security” support. It was not immediately clear whether this includes the resumption of military aid.

European nations and the UK have rushed to fill the gap left by US military and intelligence support for Ukraine. But meeting Ukraine’s immediate battlefield needs will take time.

The Ukrainian agreement to a 30 day ceasefire will also have been demanded by European allies, who are worried that the breakdown in the relationship between Trump and Zelensky would cripple Kyiv’s war machine before they can step in to help keep it going.

Zelensky himself has argued against ceasefires and insisted that a full scale peace agreement, underpinned by security guarantees that would mean Putin would face military force if he broke them, was the only way for Ukraine to survive.

Russia has an appalling record of violating temporary truces dozens of times in Ukraine since the Kremlin’s forces first invaded in 2014.

Putin is likely to agree to a ceasefire because he has already been promised many of the concessions that he would have wanted to extract in talks about descalation, or even peace.

The US, once Ukraine’s ally, has ruled out Ukrainian demands Russia should return its occupied territories and has also ruled out any American, or NATO support for a security guarantee to underwrite a future formal peace deal.

Putting that guarantee together has been a desperate effort led by France and the UK to form a “coalition of the willing”.

Ukrainians are desperate for peace. But they believe that they can’t survive as a nation unless they have an overwhelming deterrent against Russia’s imperial ambitions to swallow their country.

A ceasefire will not dampen that fire. But it risks Ukraine losing combat energy amid the raising of false hopes for peace which make Kyiv weaker still.

There will, inevitably, be ceasefire violations even if one is agreed. These, one can be sure, will be blamed on Ukraine by the Trump administration before the Kremlin has had time to whip out a press release saying the same.

And there’s no guarantee that the US won’t blind Ukraine’s intelligence systems again. In Kyiv they’ve learned not to trust Putin. The same goes for Trump.