Ukraine war: the idea that Kyiv should have signed a peace deal in 2022 is flawed – here’s why

By Stephen Hall, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics, University of Bath

It has been an eventful and, for Ukraine and its European allies, alarming past week or so. First they heard that the US president, Donald Trump, had spent 90 minutes on the phone with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. In one stroke, Trump upended three years in which his predecessor, Joe Biden, had sought to isolate Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On the same day, February 12, Trump’s newly installed secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, told a gathering…

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