Actor turned statesman Volodymyr Zelensky may only ever have played at being a soldier, but as a wartime leader he knows an ambush when he sees one.
Having previously been trapped in the Oval Office and eviscerated by Donald Trump and JD Vance, he has avoided an enfilade from a crack team of American diplomats in the London kill zone by not turning up at all.
Tipped off that his intended target was not going to wander into his sights, the US team leader, secretary of state Marco Rubio, called off the operation altogether and stayed in Washington along with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to Vladimir Putin.
Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, who was already in London, was left to peer through the privet while foreign secretary David Lammy met the Ukrainian foreign minister for much-downgraded “talks”.
Not be outdone on a trip to India, Trump’s vice president JD Vance then warned that it was time for Ukraine and Russia to “say yes” to Washington’s peace proposals or “for the US to walk away from this process”.
The only surprise here is that Vance, who's echoing his president's "threat" has not blamed Ukraine specifically for the failure of the American peace initiative. That will come.
At least the British hosts were not saddled with what could have been a historic mess in which Zelensky was presented with a US-Russian ultimatum and then painted as a rejectionist warmonger when he said “Nemaye” (no).
Rubio has signalled that the US is prepared to walk away from brokering peace talks if there is no breakthrough in negotiations about a “ceasefire”.
Ukraine would have been told to freeze Russian control of the east of the country. Zelensky would have been further asked (or told) to recognise the Kremlin’s de facto rule over Crimea, to agree that Ukraine can never join Nato, and generally to roll meekly under Putin’s tank tracks.
Zelensky cannot negotiate away Ukrainian territory, even if he were to fold to US pressure. Ukraine’s constitution forbids it. Membership of Nato is an objective enshrined in the same document.
His response to the latest US idea was straightforward. “There is nothing to talk about – it is our land, the land of the Ukrainian people.”
Lammy, who had described the London talks as coming at a “critical point”, did his best to spin the latest breakdown by saying: “The UK is working with the US, Ukraine and Europe to put an end to Putin’s illegal invasion.”
But he knows deep down that Trump and his men do not believe that Russia has illegally invaded Ukraine. They have all variously pinned the blame for the 2014 and 2022 assaults on Ukraine’s Nato ambitions and Europe’s creeping “conquest” of former Soviet-bloc colonies in Eastern Europe.
Trump sees Ukraine much like Putin does (though without the sentimental attachment to a Russian imperial fantasy) – as a vast resource of minerals to feed American industrial profit like a Thanksgiving turkey. Putin wants Ukraine’s stuff, too, and its people can go hang – literally.
France and Germany were also planning to send their foreign ministers and security advisers for Wednesday’s summit. They’re not going now, because Ukraine isn’t walking into the ambush and won’t need rescuing.
They are all now part of a “coalition of the willing” formed by Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron to offset the rapid withdrawal of America from European affairs – and the blatant support for Russia from the White House.
They can’t, and won’t, admit that Trump and his administration have done everything they can, not to pursue peace in Ukraine, but to cement the Kremlin’s suzerainty over lands it has invaded.
They have been spared the task of trying to keep America inside the Western tent when, in fact, it appears as though US strategy is being written in the Russian camp.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, has already signalled Putin’s delight with the US position on Ukraine’s ambition to join Nato.
“Of course we’re satisfied with this,” he cooed.
As well he might, given that Russia is being promised sanctions relief, and generally expanded business opportunities with America, if it agrees to a “ceasefire” – while there has been no signal from Washington that Putin would face any retribution if he failed to observe, or agree to, even a short-term armistice.
Indeed, there has been talk of turning the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, currently occupied by Russian troops and no longer generating any power, into an American-run project that will supply electricity to Russian-held Crimea.
Ukraine knows what happens when it defies Trump. As a taster, it suffered suspended military aid, and later its intelligence feed from the US was cut – just as Russia launched attacks in its Kursk province.
According to Kyiv, Moscow has massed close to 70,000 troops on Ukraine’s northern border and may be planning a major drive into Ukraine.
Kyiv’s forces are bracing for that – keeping the Ukrainian president safe at home, where he’s only got drones, missiles and Russian assassins to fear.
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