By Derek H. Burney

March 7, 2026

With the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and the U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran, the global spotlight has shifted markedly away from the Ukraine-Russia conflict that began its fifth year last month.

Despite Donald Trump’s promise that the Ukraine war would end 24 hours after he assumed office, it drags on with increasing lethality and severe damage to Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.

Though heavily outnumbered and outgunned, the Ukrainians stubbornly refuse to yield. With equal firmness, they resist Trump’s pressures to concede to a one-sided deal favouring Russia on key issues to secure “peace.”

Efforts by Trump’s amateur diplomats — real estate mogul Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, neither of whom has any expertise on either combatant in this war — have failed repeatedly.

Despite overtures from Congress to increase sanctions, i.e. leverage on Russia, the president has been reluctant to intervene except to put rhetorical pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky to make unilateral concessions to close a deal.

To most observers, Trump is being played by the wily Putin, who believes time is on his side and will eventually allow him to gain his unflinching goal of complete domination over Ukraine. (Putin’s personal fate may hang in the balance, which is why he is reluctant to yield on any key issue.)

What seems to be lost in all the hype about a peace deal is that Russia is the aggressor, having callously broken the most fundamental international law by invading a sovereign state, and Ukraine is the victim.

Russia has blatantly kidnapped Ukrainian children, attempting to brainwash them to become Russian. It has committed vile atrocities against Ukrainian prisoners of war and has ravaged much of Ukraine’s civil infrastructure.

Putin has been branded a war criminal by the International Criminal Court, a charge that remains open. Yet, in all the exchanges that have taken place there has yet to be any talk about reparations, or about when and how legitimate claims will be addressed.

Not much has really changed since Zelensky was callously chewed out in the White House more than a year ago — the “You don’t have the cards” spectacle — or when, in August 2025, Putin was greeted so warmly by Trump in Alaska.

However, Zelensky is proving to be adroitly resilient, banking on his most promising card – the solemn resolve of Ukrainians not to give in to Russia. Despite severe damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, they have survived yet another brutal winter and will likely be emboldened to fight even harder as the weather improves.

Russia, on the other hand, must increase its financial bribes just to keep its military intact. Their fighting prowess to date has been less than stellar.

What seems to be lost in all the hype about a peace deal is that Russia is the aggressor, having callously broken the most fundamental international law by invading a sovereign state, and Ukraine is the victim.

The Europeans are trying to fill the void left by the U.S. under Trump on financial and military support for Ukraine. But so far, the offers have been mostly words, not substance.

For one thing, the EU’s financial aid is blocked by the solitary veto of Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orban, who is even more chummy with Putin than is Trump. Orban is also blocking the EU’s attempt to fast-track Ukraine’s application to join the bloc.

In a performative demand to reinforce his veto, Orban insists that Ukraine rebuild a broken Russian pipeline to ship oil to Hungary. Kyiv claims that the pipeline was damaged by Russian attacks and that repairs are currently unsafe. Zelensky also questioned why they should help provide oil to a nation that has not supported them during the war.

Meanwhile, the E.U. is hamstrung but earnest.

Admittedly, Ukraine is not without its flaws. Charges of corruption persist. But it is hardly alone in that category. Russia is no model of economic or political virtue. The news that the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was killed by poison in a Siberian prison was a one-day news story. Protests were muted.

Acceptance into the E.U. would serve to strengthen the capacity of the Ukrainian government to get a better handle on corruption. The end of the war would also pave the way for open and fair elections, a right the Russians will never experience under Putin.

No-one really knows why Trump is reluctant to exercise any pressure on Putin to move towards a peace deal, but the fact that he has doubled down in his second term on  behaviour that shifts the United States from the existing rules-based world order further toward the autocratic one led by predatory hegemons — the “rupture” to which Mark Carney responded in his Davos speech — may explain the intractability.

Regardless, the Ukrainians must rue the day they gave up Europe’s second largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from the signatories of the 1994 Budapest accord, (Russia, Britain, and the U.S.), which have proven to be as hollow as Putin’s promise to negotiate a ceasefire and peace agreement.

It should not surprise anyone if Ukraine decides to resuscitate its nuclear weapons arsenal. Their exceptional drone and other weapons technology suggest they have the capacity to do so. In fact, their drones are being used by the U.S. today in Iran. That would, at a minimum, give them leverage others keep telling them they do not have.

What is certain is that if Putin does prevail and brings Ukraine completely into Russia’s orbit, that will be an indelible stain on America and Western resolve that will be much more consequential than was the disastrous 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Having tested the experience and benefits of independence from Russia, that is not something the Ukrainians will give up. It is also the reason why, against all odds, they have held the mightier Russians to a deadlock for more than four years.

Derek H. Burney is a former 30-year career diplomat who served as Canada’s Ambassador to the United States from 1989-1993. He now shares operations of a family cattle and horse ranch in Colorado.