A senior Ukrainian security analyst says Ukraine’s officials are participating in the Trump administration’s peace process mainly to avoid being blamed for its failure — and that nobody in Kyiv expects the Witkoff-Kushner shuttle diplomacy to deliver.
Mykola Bielieskov is a research fellow at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies and a senior analyst at the charity Come Back Alive. Days after President Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner made their first visit to Kyiv, he tells Independence Avenue Media editor-in-chief Ia Meurmishvili why the trip was still a tactical win, why Ukraine’s positions and Russia’s remain incompatible, and why Ukraine now depends on Europe and its own weapons rather than Washington.
Bielieskov also lays out the ” revolution” in wartime innovation that he says has slowed Russia’s advance and warns that the deepest long-term risk is a war-traumatized Ukraine turning toward a “third way” that Russia could exploit.
