Ukrainian Endgame, 2025 Edition
- Thomas Neuburger
- Mar 11
- 4 min read
By Thomas Neuburger
What’s the current endgame for Ukraine? What do we wish it to be? What is it likely to be, given recent events like the dust-up in DC and later negotiations?
I want to look at all this through the lens of a recent report by Seymour Hersh, since he seems to have an inside view of the state of play in divided DC and elsewhere.
His title tells half the tale:
An Endgame In Ukraine? Washington remains split as secret talks on a settlement proceed
The other half of the story involves his question mark. Early in the piece he implies it should be deleted:
I can report that some of those involved in the on-and-off secret talks between Ukraine and Russia are convinced that the long stalemated war will soon be ended by a closely calculated division of territory that has been lost by each side in a war that Putin chose to initiate in February of 2022.
Let’s look first at the Washington fight.
On the One Hand…
The Democratic Party side, and indeed the foreign policy establishment side, has been clear for a while. Hersh explains it this way:
There is still a widespread belief in the Democratic Party that President Donald Trump’s chronic complaints about the leaders of the nations that make up NATO are not paying their way are, as one international scholar told me, ‘a ruse.’ Trump is really interested, the scholar said, ‘in weakening democratic, liberal Europe and its collective institutions in order to make it easier for his new ally, Putin, to throw his weight around.’
Hersh finds many in DC who defend and support the view that Trump is literally “little more than a Russia asset.” Major American media says this as well, saying Putin would use any American settlement as an opportunity to “undercut the leadership of the Baltic states and continue to undermine Nato and the European Union.” Anecdotally, I can say I’ve encountered views like this on every non-Fox evening news show I’ve watched.
I would take this as a prescription to fight on in Ukraine — to continue to arm and support both Zelensky and his army — but no one I’ve listened to actually takes it that far.
Is this side correct? It is the prevailing view.
…And On the Other
Hersh pivots to the other side this way:
A much different view came last week from Jack F. Matlock, Jr., who served four tours as a US diplomat in Russia, the last as Ronald Reagan’s and George H.W. Bush’s ambassador to Moscow from 1987 to 1991. “Finally,” Matlock writes in an essay for Responsible Statecraft, “there is a prospect for bringing the war in Ukraine to an end. President Trump and his foreign policy team have created the conditions for a negotiated end to the war, replacing a fundamentally flawed and dangerous set of policies adopted by his predecessors including, ironically, the Donald Trump of his first administration.
In the quoted piece Matlock touts the benefits of an end to hostilities. He believes the “war would not have occurred” if U.S. policy had not attempted to involved Ukraine in NATO, and adds: “I say this not as a Trump supporter — I did not vote for him and have been critical of most of his moves.”
As I said to RJ Eskow in a recent interview, I don’t see how these views can be reconciled, and I don’t expect them to be. I expect events to play out between the Trump and Vladimir Putin, and then — public, media and hard-line desire be damned — we’ll see what occurs.
The Endgame
Hersh closes with the juicy parts, a report “from inside a series on-and-off talks between some Americans and Russians that have been going on since it became clear in 2023 there would be no victors in the war.”
One element is this: there will be no place for Zelensky when the war is concluded. Hersh:
Zelensky has long been long known by American intelligence to be among a group of political officials and military leaders siphoning millions of dollars from American and European war aid. At one point, I was told that Zelensky was warned by William Burns, director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Biden, that the corrupt generals and political figures involved in skimming funds were angry because Zelensky himself was taking too big a cut.:
As to the rest, the shape of a deal, according to one insider, it looks like this:
No rapprochement between the “historic hatred and distrust” between Russia and Ukraine (and also within Ukraine?) will be attempted.
Instead, direct American involvement in the corporate redevelopment of Ukraine will provide “implicit deterrence.”
Europe will be told “Don’t do it”; don’t tank the agreement. (The bet seems to be that, after the EU complains, they will comply.)
Trump will take the domestic hit from the prevailing U.S. establishment and move on.
My View
I’m not sure the war's outcome is set, but if I were playing Trump’s hand, I wouldn’t worry. Trump has the power to succeed if he’s not undercut from within — within his administration (that seems unlikely); within his own party (historically, their caving seems guaranteed). So if he really wants peace, or as he calls it, “a deal,” he’ll get it.
As John Mearshiemer pointed out in a recent interview, Trump has almost no place else to go, since there’s so little middle ground. If a deal’s not struck, Russia will get what it wants by means of war — they’re close to that already — and then what will we do? Send in our own troops? Trump seems strongly opposed.
As to whether peace will have Chamberlain overtones, I think we’ll have to see. Mearsheimer says in the interview that “Russia is not Nazi Germany, it does not have the Wehrmacht at its disposal, it's not a threat to overrun all of Ukraine, much less all of Europe, and a lot of people realize this.”
Seems we’ll find out who’s right.
Your Weekly Reminder
In case you’ve forgotten why things are the way they are, there’s this: Even if these numbers are off, we’re all being robbed.
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