KYIV — The United States met with Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Saudi Arabia this week as it ramps up pressure for a speedy end to the war, but Ukraine worries that in its rush to get a deal, Donald Trump’s administration will avoid holding Russia to account for war crimes.
“The current U.S. administration chooses concessions, flattery and bargaining instead of pressure on Russia,” a senior Ukrainian official familiar with the matter told POLITICO, speaking on condition of being granted anonymity.
There is growing alarm in Kyiv at how Trump is framing the war and if in his race to end the fighting as soon as this Easter he is tossing aside Ukraine’s interests — from recapturing lost territories to security guarantees to justice for the crimes committed by Russia.
America has shifted from being Ukraine’s ally to taking a neutral stance on the war and even tilting toward Russia while blaming Kyiv for holding up efforts to end the fighting.
“I believe Russia has managed to influence some people on the White House team through information,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Time magazine. “Their signal to the Americans was that the Ukrainians do not want to end the war, and something should be done to force them.”
Washington has officially stopped calling the Russian invasion an act of aggression, withdrew from a task force investigating war crimes and cut funding for Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which had detailed the mass deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
The U.S. State Department has denied that the lab’s data has been deleted, but there is no information as to what has happened to the files.
At the same time, the U.S. is urging Kyiv to get ready for territorial concessions and is using U.S. military aid and intelligence sharing as a way of exerting pressure on Ukraine.
U.S. Russia Envoy Steve Witkoff, in an interview with pro-Russia propagandist Tucker Carlson that largely repeated Kremlin talking points, claimed the U.S. is outcome-oriented and wants a deal that would make both Ukrainians and Russians satisfied.
Another possible reason for the rush is Trump’s long-standing obsession with winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
“They would never give me a Nobel Peace Prize. I deserve it, but they would never give it to me,” Trump said last month.
Despite Trump’s pressure to end the war as soon as possible, Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties, an actual Nobel Peace Prize-winning NGO, which has spent over a decade documenting Russian war crimes in Ukraine, believes that there will be no permanent end to the fighting without an effort to seek justice.
“I think [the U.S.] has a completely different goal, looking at this situation from a short-term perspective. At this stage, their task is to achieve peace, as they see it. And in this case, quite often justice and peace are mutually contradictory categories,” said Matviichuk. “Pursuit of justice prevents a quick settlement.”
Her center has documented more than 81,000 possible Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Russia launched the illegal war, indiscriminately bombed cities, massacred civilians, kidnapped children, executed prisoners of war, tortured people in captured territories and stripped them of their nationality and many other crimes.
“Justice is a prerequisite for sustainable peace, especially when we are talking about Russia, which has been using wars as a method of achieving its political interests for decades, and for decades has been using war crimes as a method of winning those wars,” Matviichuk said.
About three-quarters of Ukrainians agree that justice cannot be achieved without the arrest and trial of those guilty of the attack on Ukraine and war crimes, according to a poll by the Rating Group think tank.
Olena Tregub, executive director of the Independent Anti-Corruption Commission, worries that if Russia’s crimes are swept under the carpet by Trump to reach a quick peace, the anger will fester and poison any effort at reconciliation.
Escaping punishment
It’s part of Trump’s world view that sees powerful countries — a definition that includes powers like the U.S. and Russia — as having more rights than smaller ones.
“If smaller countries do not accept the demands of larger powers and do not make a deal, then the smaller powers are actually to blame for inciting wars and resistance is a bad decision, because it brings death and destruction,” a Ukrainian diplomat told POLITICO, requesting anonymity to be able to speak candidly, adding that that puts pressure on Ukraine to make more drastic concessions than Russia.
Handing over occupied Ukrainian territories, as Witkoff demands, also leaves the people living there under the Kremlin’s control.
“We cannot leave them to die and be tortured under Russian occupation. This is not just changing one flag for another. Russian occupation does not reduce human suffering, it simply makes it invisible,” Matviichuk said.
Allowing Russia to escape justice will have an impact well beyond Ukraine, said Wayne Jordash, president of Global Rights Compliance, an international legal foundation.
“The long-term outcome of the ongoing ceasefire talks will not only determine Ukraine’s future as a sovereign nation but will also shape the future of international law and global order,” he said in a statement to POLITICO, adding that other authoritarians are watching.
“Either they will see that accountability for aggression and international crimes is a real thing and thus be deterred from such behavior, or they will conclude that law is only for the weak and can be ignored by those with power. In this latter case, we will return to a world where brute force has currency and where tyranny is allowed once again to triumph over the rule of law,” he added.
Long arm of the law
But even if the U.S. manages to ram through an agreement with no accountability for Russia’s past actions, those who committed crimes won’t be able to relax, warned Matviichuk.
She pointed out that international investigations into Russia’s behavior are ongoing.
An International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin is still in force.
Eurojust, the EU’s arm for cooperation among prosecutors, confirmed to POLITICO that the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine is continuing its work assisting Kyiv in investigating war crimes. Ukrainian prosecutors have registered more than 150,000 war crimes committed by the Russian army since 2022.
The Council of Europe has completed technical discussions on creating a special tribunal for crimes against Ukraine.
“War crimes have no statute of limitation,” Matviichuk said. “If today, due to some geopolitical reasons, we are unable to bring Putin, the top political leadership, and the military command to account … then tomorrow, when such an opportunity does arise, we will do it.”
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