UA-D-05: Ukraine's 2025–2026 Negotiation Track — Trump-2 Pressure, the Oval Office Breakdown, the Minerals Deal, and the Architecture of an Unfinished Peace

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Document Outline

Key Takeaways — 10–12 paragraph-bullets covering the Trump-2 inaugural framing, the Witkoff-Putin track, the Riyadh exclusion of Ukraine, the 28 February Oval Office breakdown, the aid pause and Jeddah reset, the minerals deal architecture, the energy ceasefire, the coalition of the willing, the territorial-concession constitutional debate, the postponed-elections debate, the operational backdrop (Pokrovsk, Kursk), and the three-account interpretive frame.
The Record in Brief — Why 2025–2026 Is a Category Break — the structural rupture between Biden-era "fight for as long as it takes" and Trump-2 transactional reframing; comparators to the Minsk-1/Minsk-2 sequence; the Ukrainian-side institutional response.
Inheritance: The November 2024 Election, the Zelensky Victory Plan, and the Pre-Inauguration Posture (November 2024 – 19 January 2025) — the 5 November 2024 Trump win, the Zelensky 16 October 2024 Verkhovna Rada Victory Plan with its critical-minerals proposition, the December 2024 Phoenix Park meeting [TBD-VERIFY], the late-Biden December–January aid acceleration, the pre-inaugural Kellogg appointment.
The Inaugural and the "24 Hours" Framing (20 January – 11 February 2025) — the inaugural address, the immediate Trump statements, the Hegseth Brussels NATO ministerial speech (12 February 2025), the Vance Munich speech (14 February 2025), the abandoned "24 hours" promise as floor and ceiling of expectations.
The Witkoff-Putin Moscow Visits and the Riyadh US–Russia Talks (12–18 February 2025) — the 11 February Witkoff Moscow trip and the Marc Fogel release, the 12 February Trump-Putin call, the 18 February Riyadh US-Russia talks with Lavrov, Ushakov, and Kirill Dmitriev opposite Rubio, Waltz, and Witkoff; the Ukrainian and European exclusion and the diplomatic crisis it produced.
The 28 February 2025 Oval Office Breakdown — the morning-of choreography, the planned minerals deal signing, the Vance intervention and the "have you said thank you?" exchange, the Trump escalation, the Zelensky-team exit, the press conference cancellation, the immediate Western European reaction.
The 3–11 March 2025 Aid Pause and the Jeddah Reset — the 3 March announcement of military-aid suspension, the 5 March intelligence-sharing pause, the operational consequences on the battlefield, the 11 March Jeddah US-Ukraine talks, the 30-day full ceasefire proposal accepted by Ukraine, the Russian non-acceptance, the resumption of aid and intelligence sharing.
The Energy-Infrastructure Partial Ceasefire (25 March 2025) and the Easter and Victory-Day Attempts — the Riyadh expert-level talks, the limited maritime / energy-infrastructure undertaking, the 19–21 April Easter ceasefire announcement and its near-immediate collapse, the 8–9 May Victory-Day ceasefire failure, the pattern of selective and unenforceable arrangements.
The 30 April 2025 United States–Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund Agreement — the February 5 draft, the post-Oval Office renegotiation, the architectural shift from "rare earths repayment" framing to joint-investment fund, the 30 April Bessent-Svyrydenko signature, the 8 May Verkhovna Rada ratification [TBD-VERIFY], the fund governance, scope, and the contested-sovereignty critique.
The European Track and the Coalition of the Willing (March–November 2025) — the 2 March Lancaster House summit, the Starmer-Macron axis, the ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 Commission package (6 March 2025), the European reassurance-force proposals, the Merz government's Taurus posture, the Polish strategic position, the Nordic-Baltic engagement, the gap between aspiration and capability.
Domestic Ukrainian Politics: Zelensky's Position, the Yermak Departure, and the 2025 OP Reshuffle — the early-2025 collapse of Zelensky approval, the Yermak departure in late 2025 [TBD-VERIFY], the Svyrydenko premiership from July 2025 [TBD-VERIFY], the Sluha Narodu faction dynamics, the European Solidarity (Poroshenko) opposition, the Tymoshenko and Batkivshchyna repositioning, the SBU-NABU institutional confrontation of summer 2025.
The Constitutional Debate on Territorial Concessions and Postponed Elections — Article 73 and the territorial-concessions referendum requirement, the Verkhovna Rada debates on what could and could not be ceded, the Article 19 of the Martial Law statute and the legal frame for postponed elections, the Russian and (initially) US framing of "illegitimate" Zelensky, the Ukrainian and Western legal-academic counter-position, the Centre for Civil Liberties intervention.
The Operational Backdrop (January 2025 – May 2026) — the gradual Russian advance in Donetsk Oblast, the Pokrovsk crisis of August 2025, the Kursk salient withdrawal of April 2025, the Sumy Oblast counter-incursion, the long-range strike campaigns, the manpower pressure (cross-reference to UA-D-04), the connection between operational position and negotiation leverage.
The Three-Account Interpretive Frame and Forward View — the three accounts (Oval Office fault attribution, minerals-deal character, postponed-elections legitimacy), the structural reading of US-Russia détente and Ukrainian agency, the post-May 2026 trajectory, the contested questions left open.

1. Key Takeaways

The 2025–2026 negotiation track is the most consequential rupture in Ukrainian wartime diplomacy since the February 2014 Crimea annexation, and its character is structurally different from any prior Western-led process. Where the 2014–2015 Minsk negotiations operated within a Normandy Format of France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine — with Ukraine present at the table even when its interests were poorly served — the 2025 Trump-2 track inaugurated a parallel US–Russia bilateral channel from which Ukraine was, in its initial phase, deliberately excluded. The 18 February 2025 Riyadh meeting between Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and the Russian delegation led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov — to which neither Ukrainian nor European representatives were invited — is the founding document of this rupture. It produced an immediate diplomatic crisis between Kyiv and Washington that was only partially repaired by the 11 March 2025 Jeddah US–Ukraine talks, and it inaugurated a 14-month period (through the May 2026 cut-off) in which the architecture of negotiation, the terms of any settlement, and the identity of the indispensable interlocutors have remained contested.
The 28 February 2025 Oval Office breakdown between President Zelensky and Presidents Trump and Vance was the single most consequential bilateral diplomatic incident of the post-2022 war and produced a category shift in US–Ukraine relations from security alliance to transactional bargain. The meeting had been scheduled for the signing of the US–Ukraine "minerals deal" — a draft Reconstruction Investment Fund framework that the Trump administration had pressed Ukraine to accept since early February. The breakdown began approximately 40 minutes into a televised press appearance, when Vice President JD Vance pressed Zelensky on whether he had "said thank you" for US support, leading to a cascading exchange in which Trump warned Zelensky he was "gambling with World War III" and ordered the Ukrainian delegation to leave the White House before the planned working lunch. The minerals agreement was not signed that day; Zelensky departed Washington without the joint press conference, the lunch, or the document. The episode produced [TBD-VERIFY: contemporaneous Ukrainian-government readout cited the Office of the President's official statement that Zelensky "expressed gratitude to the American people" before the meeting and "values the support" — the Ukrainian counter-narrative to the Vance framing].
The 3–11 March 2025 US suspension of military aid and intelligence sharing represented the most severe coercive instrument deployed by any US administration against Kyiv since 1991 and demonstrated the structural dependence of Ukrainian battlefield posture on US-provided systems. On 3 March 2025, the Trump administration announced the pause of all US military aid deliveries to Ukraine; on 5 March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe announced the suspension of intelligence sharing covering [TBD-VERIFY: targeting cells for HIMARS and ATACMS, satellite imagery sharing, and certain ISR feeds — exact scope was reported in fragmentary form by Reuters, Bloomberg, and the Financial Times but never publicly catalogued by the US government]. The operational effect was visible within 72 hours: Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian rear areas tapered; Patriot battery readiness against Russian missile and Iskander launches reportedly degraded; and Russian forces accelerated the recapture of the Kursk salient. The 11 March 2025 Jeddah US-Ukraine talks — led on the Ukrainian side by Andriy Yermak (Head of the OP), Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, and Defence Minister Rustem Umerov — produced a joint statement in which Ukraine accepted a US-proposed 30-day comprehensive ceasefire and the US resumed aid and intelligence sharing.
Russia's response to the 11 March Jeddah ceasefire proposal was to reject the comprehensive 30-day frame and propose only a limited energy-infrastructure pause, exposing the asymmetry of the negotiation incentive structure. Where Ukraine had agreed within hours to the US-proposed comprehensive ceasefire — an acceptance that materially shifted the diplomatic burden onto Moscow — President Putin's 18 March 2025 phone call with President Trump countered with an offer of a 30-day pause on attacks against energy infrastructure only, which was formalised in a Riyadh expert-level meeting on 25 March 2025 with separate US–Russia and US–Ukraine bilateral tracks. The energy-infrastructure ceasefire was repeatedly violated by both sides within weeks; by the 19–21 April Easter ceasefire and the 8–9 May Victory-Day ceasefire — both unilaterally announced by Putin and not bilaterally agreed — the pattern of selective, time-limited, and unenforceable arrangements had been established. The structural reading is that Russia was willing to engage in process without conceding substance, while Ukraine engaged in substance to preserve process.
The 30 April 2025 United States–Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund Agreement was a structurally novel instrument with no direct precedent in modern bilateral economic-security architecture. Signed in Washington by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Yulia Svyrydenko, the agreement established a 50–50 jointly governed fund into which Ukraine would contribute 50 per cent of proceeds from future monetisation of state-owned critical-minerals deposits (including lithium, titanium, rare earths, graphite, uranium, and certain hydrocarbons), and into which the United States could contribute additional financial or material assistance. Crucially — and to the relief of Ukrainian negotiators — the final text dropped the original Trump-administration demand for $500 billion in compensation for past US aid (a figure that exceeded total US aid to Ukraine by roughly a factor of three), did not characterise Ukrainian existing aid as "debt," and explicitly acknowledged Ukrainian sovereignty over subsoil resources. The Verkhovna Rada ratified the establishment agreement on 8 May 2025 by [TBD-VERIFY: a recorded vote whose exact margin was widely reported as 338-of-401 but should be confirmed against the Verkhovna Rada session transcript]. The agreement is at once economic colonialism (in the critical reading), smart leverage that preserved a US stake in Ukrainian post-war recovery (in the pragmatist-Zelensky reading), and a sovereignty-compromised concession achieved under coercion (in the Russian-propaganda reading).
The European "coalition of the willing" track — formalised at the 2 March 2025 Lancaster House summit chaired by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer — was the most ambitious post-1949 European security initiative undertaken without US leadership, and its real institutional yield remained limited through 2025–2026. The Lancaster House summit, convened the Sunday after the Oval Office breakdown, brought together leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany (Olaf Scholz then), Italy (Giorgia Meloni), Poland (Donald Tusk), the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Baltic states, Canada, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and European Council President António Costa, with President Zelensky in attendance. Its outputs included Starmer's announcement of a UK-French led "reassurance force" concept (a proposed post-ceasefire deployment of European troops to Ukraine with US "backstop" support), a pledge to accelerate weapons deliveries, and a commitment to develop European-funded air-policing missions. The European Council on 6 March 2025 adopted the ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 framework, mobilising up to €800 billion in defence spending capacity (€650 billion via national fiscal flexibility, €150 billion via a new SAFE instrument). The gap between announcement and delivery, however, remained substantial: by May 2026, no European reassurance force had been deployed, and European weapons deliveries — while consequential — had not closed the capability gap that US withdrawal would impose.
Zelensky's domestic political position in 2025–2026 was simultaneously the most contested and the most stable of his presidency. Razumkov Centre and KIIS polling tracked a sharp Zelensky approval decline from the >90 per cent first-month-of-war peak to [TBD-VERIFY: approximately 52 per cent trust in February 2025 per the KIIS poll of 14–18 February, rising to 67 per cent on 28 February – 3 March in the immediate post-Oval-Office sympathy effect, then declining again through 2025]. The 28 February Oval Office sympathy effect was real but bounded; by autumn 2025, sustained operational pressure at Pokrovsk, the contested handling of the SBU-NABU summer confrontation, and the postponed-elections debate had eroded the Bankova's political room. The Office of the President underwent a major reshuffle in late 2025 with the departure of Andriy Yermak after [TBD-VERIFY: reported allegations connected to the NABU corruption investigations of summer 2025; exact circumstances of Yermak's departure require verification against the OP's own readouts]. Yulia Svyrydenko's elevation to Prime Minister in July 2025 [TBD-VERIFY] reorganised the executive-economic team around the minerals-deal architecture. The Verkhovna Rada's working majority of Sluha Narodu remained, but its discipline frayed; the opposition factions — European Solidarity (Poroshenko), Holos, Batkivshchyna (Tymoshenko) — pressed for greater consultation on negotiation parameters without rupturing the wartime unity-coalition consensus.
The constitutional debate over what could and could not be conceded in a peace agreement was conducted in the Verkhovna Rada in 2025–2026 with greater intensity than at any time since the 2015 Minsk-2 ratification debate. Article 73 of the 1996 Ukrainian Constitution requires that issues of alteration of the territory of Ukraine be decided exclusively by an all-Ukrainian referendum. Article 17 designates the protection of sovereignty and territorial integrity as the most important function of the state. The political-legal consensus emerging from Foreign Affairs Committee debates (chaired by Oleksandr Merezhko) is that Ukraine cannot constitutionally recognise Russian sovereignty over occupied territories — including Crimea — but may, as a de facto matter, accept ceasefire lines that do not entail legal recognition. This distinction between de jure recognition (constitutionally impossible without referendum and arguably impossible at all) and de facto control (politically painful but not constitutionally barred) became the operative framework for Ukrainian negotiating posture. The Russian and (initially) US negotiating positions pressed for some form of recognition of "the realities on the ground," to which Kyiv consistently replied through Foreign Minister Sybiha and Presidential Adviser Mykhailo Podolyak that recognition is constitutionally foreclosed.
The postponed-elections debate became, in early 2025, a Russian and (briefly) Trump-administration framing tool against Zelensky's legitimacy and required active Ukrainian and Western legal-academic counter-argument. On 18 February 2025 in Mar-a-Lago, President Trump asserted that President Zelensky had "a 4 per cent approval rating" and was a "dictator without elections," language that closely tracked long-standing Russian Foreign Ministry framing. The Ukrainian constitutional position — set out in Article 83 (which extends the Verkhovna Rada's mandate during martial law) and Article 19 of the 2015 Law on the Legal Regime of Martial Law (which prohibits elections during martial law) — is that the constitutionally-mandated October 2024 presidential election was lawfully deferred. The Ukrainian academic constitutional consensus, reflected in writings by Mykola Kozyubra, Volodymyr Vasylenko, and the work of the Centre for Civil Liberties (whose director Oleksandra Matviichuk received the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize), reads the deferral as constitutionally required, not optional. The Trump administration walked back the "dictator" language within ten days, and by late March 2025 the legitimacy question had been removed from the working US-Ukraine agenda — though it remains a persistent Russian propaganda theme.
The operational backdrop of January 2025 – May 2026 was characterised by Russian incremental advances at high cost, Ukrainian defensive resilience under manpower strain, and a structural shift in long-range strike capabilities on both sides that made negotiation more rather than less urgent. Russian forces gradually advanced in Donetsk Oblast through the first half of 2025, with the Pokrovsk salient becoming the focal point of operational concern by August 2025 [TBD-VERIFY: exact dates of the Pokrovsk crisis peak; ISW's daily assessments document a sustained but uneven pressure pattern]. Ukrainian forces conducted a phased withdrawal from the August-2024 Kursk salient in March–April 2025, ending the territorial bargaining chip that the Sudzha incursion had provided. A parallel Ukrainian incursion into Sumy Oblast's borderlands [TBD-VERIFY: this characterisation may invert the geography — verify which side initiated the spring 2025 Sumy front] and continuous long-range drone strikes against Russian oil refineries, depots, and airbases (the Operation Spider Web sequence of June 2025 destroying [TBD-VERIFY: number of strategic aircraft reportedly 41, with significant fraction destroyed]) demonstrated Ukrainian capability to impose strategic cost. The manpower question (covered in UA-D-04) remained the chronic constraint: contract recruitment, conscription pressure, the under-25 cohort exemption, and TCC legitimacy crisis all interacted with the negotiation question, since any settlement architecture would require sustaining a deterrent-credible force into the post-ceasefire period.
Three accounts must be held in view at every level of analysis. On the Oval Office breakdown: the Ukrainian-government reading attributes the rupture to a coordinated Vance-Trump escalation of an event meant to embarrass Zelensky; the Trump-team reading attributes it to Zelensky's failure to display gratitude and his "litigation" of Trump in front of the cameras; the external strategic reading sees a structural outcome of irreconcilable US and Ukrainian negotiation preferences amplified by the asymmetry of the Witkoff-Putin channel. On the minerals deal: the critical reading characterises it as economic colonialism that compromised sovereignty under coercion; the pragmatist-Zelensky reading characterises it as smart leverage that preserved a long-term US stake in Ukrainian recovery; the Russian reading characterises it as evidence of Ukrainian "comprador" capitulation. On postponed elections: the Zelensky-team reading frames them as constitutionally required wartime governance; the critical-opposition reading (within Ukraine) frames them as legitimate-but-overextended and overdue for civil debate; the Russian and initial Trump-administration framing characterises them as democratic erosion. All three sets of readings are factually present in the public record; the document presents them in parallel rather than reconciling them prematurely.
The negotiation track as of May 2026 had produced no comprehensive ceasefire, no agreed armistice line, no Russian undertaking against renewed offensive, no Western security guarantee architecture, and no clear pathway to permanent settlement — but it had nonetheless restructured the geopolitical baseline of European security. The post-1949 assumption that European security would be underwritten by US leadership had been substantially weakened in operational fact, even where formal NATO commitments were not abrogated. Ukraine had moved from "Western support unconditional" to "Western support transactional," with the minerals deal as the institutional embodiment of the new bargain. European member states had begun, with varying speeds, to substitute capability for the US gap. Russia had achieved a partial geopolitical objective (the splintering of the Western coalition) without conceding battlefield gains. And Ukraine had survived the most acute external pressure of its wartime period without strategic collapse — though at heavy operational cost and with the question of post-war state design now urgent and unresolved. The forward view through 2026 and beyond is that the 2025 negotiation track will not be remembered as the moment when the war ended, but as the moment when the post-war order began to be designed under conditions of incomplete agreement.

2. The Record in Brief — Why 2025–2026 Is a Category Break

The 2025–2026 Ukrainian negotiation track must be understood as a category break from every prior diplomatic episode of the post-2014 war, and the dimensions of that break shape every analysis of the subsequent record. The break operates along five axes.

The first is the identity of the lead negotiating principal. From the 5 September 2014 Minsk Protocol through the 12 February 2015 Minsk-2 package and into the post-2022 negotiation episodes (the Istanbul talks of March 2022, the Black Sea Grain Initiative negotiations of 2022–2023, the periodic prisoner-exchange dialogues), the European framework had been a Normandy-Format quartet of Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine, with the United States in a supporting role. The 2025 track inverted this architecture: the United States became the lead negotiating principal, conducted bilateral talks with Russia in which neither European nor Ukrainian representatives participated, and only subsequently consulted with Ukraine on terms developed in that bilateral channel. The 18 February 2025 Riyadh meeting between US and Russian principals — to which Ukraine and the European partners were not invited — is the founding instance of this inversion. The diplomatic-cultural shock in Kyiv and across the European capitals was substantial; it was widely characterised, in the language of Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and (in measured terms) by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, as a discontinuity in alliance practice.

The second is the substantive negotiating premise. The Biden administration's posture from February 2022 through January 2025 had been to support Ukraine's strategic objectives — the restoration of pre-2014 territorial integrity as an aspirational frame, the restoration of pre-24 February 2022 lines as a working objective — while providing the security assistance to make those objectives achievable on the battlefield. The Trump-2 posture from January 2025 reversed this premise: a negotiation outcome would be pursued first, with the territorial and security parameters to be settled through US-led bilateral diplomacy with Moscow, and Ukrainian and European preferences to be accommodated only where compatible with the negotiation arc. President Trump's pre-inaugural statements, including the 7 January 2025 Mar-a-Lago press conference and the 20 January 2025 inaugural address — both of which framed ending the war as a US national-interest objective rather than as a Ukrainian self-defence imperative — operationalised this reversal.

The third is the role of economic conditionality. No prior Ukrainian war-period negotiation had been structured around an economic instrument the size and architectural novelty of the proposed US–Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum had assurances. The 2014–2022 IMF programmes had conditionality. The 2022 EU candidate status had structural reform requirements. But none of these instruments approached the conceptual category of a 50–50 jointly governed fund into which a state would commit a defined percentage of future natural-resource proceeds in exchange for ongoing security and reconstruction support. The 30 April 2025 agreement therefore introduced a new category of bilateral US–Ukraine economic instrument, the implications of which extend well beyond the immediate ceasefire arc.

The fourth is the operational backdrop. Where prior negotiation episodes had taken place either in a posture of Ukrainian operational success (the autumn 2022 Kharkiv-Kherson period) or stable defensive posture (most of 2023 and 2024), the 2025–2026 negotiations took place in a period of slow but cumulative Russian operational gain — the Donetsk Oblast westward grind, the Pokrovsk salient pressure, the Kursk withdrawal — and severe Ukrainian manpower strain. The negotiating leverage of the parties was structured by this asymmetry. Russia, having absorbed manpower losses on a scale that would have stopped most armies, continued to commit forces; Ukraine, having sustained its lines through 2024, faced harder choices about depth and reserves. The negotiation was therefore being conducted while the war's operational logic continued to evolve against the Ukrainian position, a fact understood and continuously emphasised by ISW, RUSI, and Mick Ryan's commentary.

The fifth is the European institutional response. The 2 March 2025 Lancaster House summit, the 6 March 2025 special European Council adoption of ReArm Europe, the rapid sequence of European leader visits to Kyiv, and the working-group architecture around the coalition of the willing represented a level of autonomous European institutional response that had no precedent in any prior phase of the war. Whether this response would translate into capability — whether Europe could substitute for the US gap on the timelines available — was the open question of the period. As of May 2026 the substitution had begun but was incomplete.

These five axes — lead-negotiator identity, substantive premise, economic conditionality, operational backdrop, and European autonomous response — collectively justify treating 2025–2026 as a distinct historical phase rather than as an extension of earlier phases. Where Block UA-E (Wartime Governance) and Block UA-D (Pre-War and Wartime Zelensky-Era Domestic Politics) cover the broader war period, this document focuses tightly on the negotiation track of January 2025 – May 2026 and the political and constitutional architecture surrounding it.

3. Inheritance: The November 2024 Election, the Zelensky Victory Plan, and the Pre-Inauguration Posture (November 2024 – 19 January 2025)

The November 2024 US presidential election result was understood in Kyiv from the morning of 6 November 2024 as a structural inflection. President Zelensky's first public statement on the result, posted on his Telegram channel within hours of the call for President-elect Trump, congratulated Trump and emphasised Ukraine's commitment to working with the incoming administration. The tone was deliberately stripped of the earlier rhetorical war-time intensity that had characterised Zelensky's January 2024 Davos appearances and his September 2024 United Nations General Assembly address. It reflected an institutional recognition — already developed within Bankova and the Foreign Ministry through 2024 — that a Trump return would require new instruments, new framings, and new bilateral choreography.

The instrument that the Office of the President had already developed for this contingency was the Victory Plan, formally presented by President Zelensky to the Verkhovna Rada on 16 October 2024 in an addresses subsequently delivered (in modified form) to the European Council on 17 October 2024 and to the leaderships of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy. The Victory Plan had five published points, with three additional non-public elements [TBD-VERIFY: the precise content of the non-public annexes has been reported in fragments by The Economist, Bloomberg, and Ukrainska Pravda but is not officially confirmed]. Its first public point was a NATO invitation; its second was a strengthening of Ukrainian defence capability including long-range strikes against Russian military targets; its third was the deployment of a non-nuclear strategic deterrent on Ukrainian territory [TBD-VERIFY: language preferred to "deterrent package"]; its fourth was the strategic economic potential of Ukraine, including the critical-minerals proposition that became, in modified form, the foundation of the eventual minerals deal architecture; its fifth was the post-war provision of Ukrainian-trained forces to European security.

The critical-minerals component of the Victory Plan was the element that most clearly anticipated the Trump-2 negotiating preference. In Zelensky's 16 October presentation, Ukraine was described as a "strategic partner" in critical resources, with Ukrainian deposits of titanium, lithium, uranium, graphite, and rare-earth elements positioned as a future contribution to allied energy and industrial security. The framing was deliberately tailored to a US audience that had, since 2022 and especially since the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, developed an articulated interest in critical-minerals supply security. Zelensky in private and his economic team in public elaborated this proposition through October and November 2024, including in interactions with then-candidate Trump's senior policy figures (notably Robert Lighthizer and Lighthizer's economic-policy network).

In December 2024 the Ukrainian Office of the President and Foreign Ministry conducted a sustained pre-inaugural outreach, with delegations including Andriy Yermak, Andriy Sybiha (who had become Foreign Minister on 5 September 2024 succeeding Dmytro Kuleba), and Defence Minister Rustem Umerov travelling to Washington, Mar-a-Lago, and the principal European capitals. The Phoenix Park meeting in Ireland in mid-December 2024 [TBD-VERIFY: precise attendees and date of the European track meeting at Phoenix Park; this characterisation may conflate with a separate Brussels NATO meeting] brought together Ukrainian, European, and (in some sessions) US transition figures around the question of pre-inaugural diplomatic positioning. The late-Biden administration in parallel accelerated the disbursement of remaining Presidential Drawdown Authority tranches; the 9 January 2025 Ramstein-format meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group in Germany was the final Biden-era convening, with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin presiding.

The Trump transition team, in this same period, made the principal personnel decisions that would shape the negotiation track. Lieutenant General (Retired) Keith Kellogg, a former National Security Adviser to Vice President Pence with prior involvement in Heritage Foundation Project 2025 Russia-Ukraine policy chapters, was named Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Steve Witkoff, a New York real-estate developer and longtime Trump associate with no prior diplomatic experience, was named Special Envoy for the Middle East — but, as events would demonstrate, his Trump-personal-relationship status would extend his portfolio de facto into the Russia file. Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor (until his April 2025 departure following the Signalgate revelations [TBD-VERIFY]), Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, and John Ratcliffe as CIA Director composed the security cabinet that would carry the policy. The composition was significant: Rubio, Waltz, and Hegseth had each been associated with hawkish Russia positions in their prior legislative or media roles, while Gabbard's posture had been notably softer; the internal debates of February–May 2025 would reflect this composition.

The January 2025 pre-inaugural period also saw the publication of Kellogg's policy framing, in a Heritage Foundation note co-authored with Frederick Fleitz in April 2024 titled America First, Russia, and Ukraine. The note proposed a negotiation framework structured around an immediate ceasefire on existing lines, a postponement (rather than abandonment) of Ukrainian NATO membership ambitions, sustained but conditional US military assistance, and a US-led diplomatic track with Russia. The Kellogg framing was widely read as the working policy template for the incoming administration. It became, in the event, the floor of the actual Trump-2 negotiating posture: the eventual posture was significantly less favourable to Ukraine than Kellogg's published framework, with the "24 hours" rhetoric of Trump himself and the deeper transactional reframing pushing beyond Kellogg's published baseline.

4. The Inaugural and the "24 Hours" Framing (20 January – 11 February 2025)

President Trump's inaugural address on 20 January 2025, delivered in the rotunda of the United States Capitol after weather had pushed the ceremony indoors, contained no extensive Ukraine-policy framing — but its tonal architecture, including the framing of "peace through strength," the criticism of allied free-riding, and the assertion of an "America First" foreign-policy doctrine, defined the rhetorical environment in which the negotiation track would unfold. The first explicit Ukraine statements came in the post-inaugural press appearances of 20–23 January, in which the President repeated the campaign formulation that he could end the war "in 24 hours" and added that he would meet with President Putin "very soon."

The "24 hours" framing — pre-inaugural in origin but consolidated in early-inaugural-period statements — operated as both floor and ceiling of expectations. It signalled to Moscow that an early engagement was forthcoming; it signalled to Kyiv that the diplomatic clock was running; and it signalled to European capitals that a US-led process was now the operative track. Foreign policy commentators of all factions noted the rhetorical excess of the formulation, but the structural signal — the relegation of operational and military aid to subordinate status behind a diplomatic objective — was the consequential element.

The next consequential development was Pete Hegseth's speech to the NATO Defence Ministerial in Brussels on 12 February 2025. In what was widely characterised as the most direct US repudiation of pre-2024 Ukraine-policy assumptions, the Secretary of Defense stated explicitly that "returning to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective," that Ukrainian NATO membership "is not a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement," and that the United States no longer considered itself the primary security guarantor of European security in the future. The speech also stated that US forces would not be committed to enforcement of any post-ceasefire arrangement in Ukraine. The Hegseth speech was extensively analysed in the immediate aftermath: ISW and RUSI characterised it as a substantial concession to Russian negotiating positions made publicly before the formal negotiation had begun, while supporters of the administration characterised it as an overdue alignment of US rhetoric with operational realities.

Vice President Vance's speech to the Munich Security Conference on 14 February 2025 completed the rhetorical predicate. The Vance Munich speech — substantively focused on European internal political affairs (immigration, censorship, the AfD framing) rather than on Ukraine per se — produced a profound shock in the European audience. President Zelensky, in attendance, met with Vance on the margins; the meeting was reported as polite but without material agreement. The Vance speech materialised, for the European leaderships in the room, the proposition that the US under Trump-2 would not only conduct an unfamiliar Ukraine policy but would actively recalibrate the broader trans-Atlantic relationship.

Between 12 February and 18 February 2025, the structural decision had thus been made: the United States would conduct a bilateral negotiating channel with Russia, would proceed with that channel notwithstanding Ukrainian or European reservations, and would frame the outcome as a US national-interest negotiation rather than as a coalition undertaking. The Kyiv response in this period — including Zelensky's measured public statements and the urgent diplomatic outreach to European capitals — sought to recover Ukrainian inclusion in the process. It would not succeed in the next phase.

5. The Witkoff-Putin Moscow Visits and the Riyadh US–Russia Talks (12–18 February 2025)

The Witkoff Moscow trip of 11–13 February 2025 was the operational opening of the Trump-2 Russia track. Steve Witkoff, accompanied by [TBD-VERIFY: precise composition of the Witkoff delegation; reported elements include Kellogg's deputy and select intelligence-community staff], flew to Moscow in a US government aircraft. The publicly stated purpose was the negotiation of the release of Marc Fogel, an American teacher detained in Russia since 2021 on drug charges. Fogel was indeed released on 11 February 2025 and travelled with Witkoff back to the United States; he was received at the White House by President Trump in a televised event on the evening of 11 February. The Fogel release was the public deliverable of the trip, but its more consequential element was the Witkoff-Putin meeting held in the Kremlin during the same window. The duration of the Witkoff-Putin exchange has been variously reported as [TBD-VERIFY: ranges from approximately three hours per The New York Times readout based on US sources to "more than four hours" per Kommersant citing Russian sources] and included a detailed meaningful exchange on Ukrainian war-termination scenarios.

The 12 February 2025 Trump-Putin telephone call, which followed Witkoff's return briefing, was the formal opening of presidential-level US-Russia diplomatic re-engagement after a two-year hiatus. The call was approximately 90 minutes in length; it was followed within minutes by President Trump's Truth Social announcement that he and Putin had "agreed to begin negotiations immediately" on ending the war in Ukraine, and that he had "directed" Secretary Rubio, National Security Advisor Waltz, Special Envoy Witkoff, and CIA Director Ratcliffe to "lead the negotiations." The call announcement made no explicit reference to Ukrainian participation; it referred to a subsequent presidential conversation between Trump and Zelensky (which took place later the same day, with Zelensky publicly characterising it as "long and detailed" but pointedly omitting any characterisation of agreement on substance).

The political-symbolic significance of the 12 February sequence — Witkoff trip, Trump-Putin call, Trump-Zelensky call as appendix — was clear to all observers. The American diplomatic engagement with Moscow was being conducted as the primary track; the engagement with Kyiv was secondary; the engagement with European partners was tertiary. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte's measured public statement that "any negotiation must include Ukraine" was a clear protest against the emerging architecture.

The 18 February 2025 Riyadh US–Russia talks, held at the Diriyah Palace, were the first formal high-level bilateral US–Russia diplomatic engagement on Ukraine since the February 2022 invasion. The US delegation was led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia [TBD-VERIFY: identification of accompanying State Department staff]. The Russian delegation was led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov and Russian Direct Investment Fund Chief Executive Officer Kirill Dmitriev (a Russian official with US-business connections through the Witkoff channel). The talks lasted approximately four-and-a-half hours. The post-meeting press readouts described a "framework for further engagement" and an agreement to establish technical-level working groups on (1) bilateral US-Russia relations including embassy normalisation, (2) framework for further Ukraine-related negotiations, and (3) potential economic cooperation post-settlement.

The Ukrainian and European response to Riyadh was immediate and severe. President Zelensky, speaking to reporters in Ankara on a previously scheduled visit, stated that Ukraine "cannot recognise as legitimate any agreements reached without our involvement." Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski, in unusually direct language for a NATO ally, characterised the Riyadh format as "betraying" allied principles. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock issued joint statements reasserting that "nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine, nothing about Europe without Europe." The European Council's emergency Paris consultation on 17 February (anticipating Riyadh) had already produced the framework for what would, two weeks later, become the Lancaster House summit.

The Riyadh meeting produced no operational ceasefire, no territorial agreement, and no Russian commitment on any matter of Ukrainian sovereignty. What it produced was the public demonstration that a US-Russia bilateral channel existed on the question of Ukraine. The structural significance of that demonstration — for the Russian narrative of US-Russia equivalent-great-power status, for the Russian narrative of Ukrainian indispensability denial, and for the Russian operational calculus on what it could extract through a process rather than through battlefield gains — was the principal Russian win of February 2025. [TBD-VERIFY: this attributed Putin quotation on the Riyadh meeting was not independently corroborated in a Tier-1 audit (2026-08-29) — search results locate a closely related but distinct statement from Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, characterising the Riyadh talks' purpose as "rebuilding Russian-American relations in all areas," but no verbatim match to a Putin statement on 19 February 2025 was found across the sources reviewed. Treat the specific attribution and wording as unverified pending a primary Kremlin transcript.] The framing was not coincidental; it was the explicit Russian objective.

It was against this backdrop — Ukrainian exclusion from Riyadh, the emerging US-Russia bilateral architecture, and the imminent need for Ukraine to find some instrument of its own to recover negotiating presence — that the visit of President Zelensky to Washington on 28 February 2025 was scheduled. The minerals deal, which had been under negotiation in technical-level US-Ukraine talks through February, was to be the instrument of that recovery. The Oval Office breakdown of 28 February was the moment when that instrument failed in its first attempted deployment.

6. The 28 February 2025 Oval Office Breakdown

The 28 February 2025 Oval Office meeting between Presidents Donald J. Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in attendance and a substantial media pool present, was the most consequential single bilateral diplomatic incident of the post-2022 war. It was meant to be the signing ceremony for an initial framework version of the US–Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund — the "minerals deal" — which had been the subject of intense US-Ukraine technical negotiations through February. Instead it produced a public rupture broadcast on live television, the cancellation of the planned joint press conference and working lunch, and a five-day diplomatic freeze culminating in the 3 March military-aid pause.

The Ukrainian side had prepared for the visit with detailed choreography. President Zelensky had travelled with First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, OP Head Andriy Yermak, Presidential Adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, and Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova. The Ukrainian delegation had stayed overnight at Blair House. The morning of 28 February included a meeting with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and a brief visit to Capitol Hill. The principal event was scheduled as a bilateral Oval Office exchange followed by a joint press conference in the East Room and a working lunch.

The Oval Office press appearance, which began at approximately 12:50 pm Eastern, was scheduled for a brief media availability — the customary pre-meeting photo opportunity that, in normal practice, runs five to ten minutes. It ran for forty-five minutes, with the significant breakdown beginning at approximately the 35-minute mark. The early portion of the exchange was tense but within diplomatic norms: President Trump asked about ceasefire prospects, Zelensky responded with reference to security guarantees, and Vance interjected on the question of US diplomatic engagement with Russia.

The breakdown was triggered by an exchange initiated by Vice President Vance, who pressed President Zelensky on whether Ukraine should not be exploring "diplomacy" rather than "litigating" with the United States in front of cameras. Zelensky responded with reference to specific Russian violations of past agreements — the 2019 Zelensky-Putin Normandy Format meeting, the various Minsk-period commitments — and observed that "diplomacy" with Russia had a documented track record of failure. Vance then asked, in language widely subsequently quoted, "Have you said thank you?" Zelensky's response — that he had thanked the United States "many times" and would do so again — was characterised by Vance as inadequate display of gratitude. President Trump escalated, stating that Zelensky was "gambling with World War III," was not "in a position to dictate," and "doesn't have the cards." The exchange concluded with Trump's statement that the meeting was producing "great television" but no agreement.

The Ukrainian delegation departed the White House approximately one hour later, without the planned joint press conference, without the working lunch, and without the signed minerals deal. President Zelensky issued a measured Twitter / X statement thanking the United States for past support and reiterating Ukraine's openness to a "just peace." Ukrainian Ambassador Markarova issued no separate statement. The contemporaneous Ukrainian-government readout from the Office of the President characterised the exchange as "regrettable" but did not assign personal blame to Trump or Vance — a discipline that was widely commented on as evidence of the Ukrainian position that the relationship could be repaired.

The immediate Western European reaction was unprecedented in tempo and content. Within four hours of the Oval Office event, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom convened an emergency conversation with President Macron of France; by the morning of 1 March, the Lancaster House summit had been called for 2 March 2025. By the evening of 28 February, leaders including Macron, Starmer, Scholz, Meloni, Tusk, Costa, von der Leyen, and Rutte had issued individual public statements of solidarity with Zelensky. Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski's tweeted characterisation that Zelensky deserved "respect" rather than condescension was widely retweeted. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda, Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs, and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas (newly appointed as EU High Representative) issued joint Baltic statements. The German government, in caretaker status pending the post-election coalition negotiation, issued a statement under Chancellor Olaf Scholz reaffirming "our solidarity with Ukraine."

The three-account interpretive frame on the Oval Office breakdown is structurally important. The Ukrainian-government account, voiced by Podolyak in subsequent days and in articulate detail by Foreign Minister Sybiha, characterises the breakdown as a coordinated escalation by Vance and Trump of an event that was structured to produce a confrontation favourable to the Russian narrative. In this reading, Vance's "have you said thank you" formulation was prepared in advance, Trump's escalation followed a deliberate political-television logic, and the absence of any pre-meeting briefing to Ukraine on the planned approach indicates intent. The Russian celebratory readouts within hours — Zakharova's characterisation that Trump and Vance's restraint in "not hitting" Zelensky was "a miracle of restraint," and, separately, Dmitry Medvedev's Telegram post that the "ungrateful pig got a solid slap from the masters of the pigsty" [TIER-1 AUDIT 2026-08-29: the doc's original text attributed the quotation "the master gave a slap to the Kyiv pig" directly to Maria Zakharova; this exact phrasing is UNCORROBORATED by any of ≥6 independent sources found (Meduza, Kyiv Independent, SCMP, Yahoo, Deccan Herald, National Herald India). The "slap" framing traces to Medvedev, not Zakharova, whose own verbatim quotes are the "miracle of restraint" and "biting the hand that feeds him" lines; the doc's quotation was a fabricated/conflated compression and has been corrected here to the two actual, separately-attributed statements] — are cited by Ukrainian commentators as evidence of expected Russian benefit. The Trump-team account, voiced by Vance in subsequent media appearances (notably Fox News, 1 March 2025) and by Trump in Truth Social posts, characterises Zelensky as having "disrespected" the Oval Office, "litigated" Trump in front of the cameras, and failed to demonstrate the gratitude appropriate to a beneficiary of three years of US support. In this reading, Zelensky's response was the proximate cause; the Trump and Vance escalations were responses to Zelensky's posture. The external strategic reading, articulated by Lawrence Freedman, Fiona Hill, and Steven Pifer in subsequent commentary, treats the breakdown as a structural outcome of fundamentally incompatible US and Ukrainian negotiation preferences — Ukrainian preference for security guarantees and process-with-Russia rejection, US preference for an early ceasefire and process-with-Russia priority — amplified by the asymmetry of information between the Witkoff-Putin channel (developed for two weeks) and the Trump-Zelensky channel (in its first considerable iteration). On this reading, the choreography was the trigger; the underlying incompatibility was the cause.

All three accounts are present in the factual record. The corpus presents them in parallel.

7. The 3–11 March 2025 Aid Pause and the Jeddah Reset

The post-Oval Office period from 1 March to 11 March 2025 was the most acute coercive episode of the US-Ukraine bilateral relationship in its entire post-1991 history. It demonstrated, in nine days, the structural dependence of Ukrainian battlefield posture on US-provided systems and the structural fragility of any negotiating leverage Ukraine possessed independent of that posture.

On 3 March 2025, the Trump administration announced a pause on all US military aid deliveries to Ukraine. The pause covered shipments under the remaining Biden-era Presidential Drawdown Authority tranches (which had been accelerating through the late-Biden and pre-inaugural period), Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative contracted deliveries, and ongoing surplus-equipment transfers. The exact scope of the pause was described by Pentagon and White House officials in fragmentary form: it included [TBD-VERIFY: characterised in Reuters readouts of 4 March 2025 as covering "all military aid currently being shipped" and in Bloomberg as including "munitions transiting Poland"], with reports of munitions held at the Jasionka logistics hub in southeastern Poland that were inbound to Ukrainian forces. Senior administration officials characterised the pause as a "pause," not a cancellation, and stated that "the President is reviewing US support to Ukraine."

On 5 March 2025, the intelligence-sharing suspension was announced. CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard confirmed that the United States had paused the sharing of certain intelligence categories with Ukraine. The exact scope was, again, characterised in fragmentary form by US officials: it included [TBD-VERIFY: targeting cells supporting Ukrainian long-range strikes — HIMARS, ATACMS, and certain drone operations; satellite imagery sharing through the Maxar and commercial-provider channels that the US underwrote; and certain ISR feeds from US assets]. The operational consequence was visible within 48 to 72 hours: Ukrainian long-range strikes against Russian airfields and depots tapered in frequency; Ukrainian forces in the Kursk salient reported degraded battlefield-awareness; and Patriot air defence battery operations reportedly suffered degraded warning of incoming Iskander missile launches.

The combined effect was strategically severe. RUSI's Jack Watling, writing on 6 March 2025, characterised the pause as having "immediate and disproportionate operational effect," because the US-provided components of Ukrainian capability — long-range precision fires enabled by US-provided targeting, air defence enabled by US-provided cueing, and operational planning enabled by US-provided intelligence — had no European substitutes at the timelines available. The decision to use both instruments simultaneously was widely characterised in subsequent commentary as the most coercive single decision taken by a US administration against an ally in active conflict in modern memory.

The Ukrainian government response across 3–10 March was disciplined and outward-facing. President Zelensky issued a public statement on 4 March stating Ukraine's openness to peace, its commitment to working with the United States, and its readiness to sign the minerals deal "at any time." He proposed in subsequent statements a series of confidence-building measures including a partial ceasefire on energy infrastructure and a prisoner exchange. The OP Head Yermak and Foreign Minister Sybiha conducted parallel European outreach. The Verkhovna Rada Sluha Narodu faction issued internal-discipline communications instructing members to avoid public criticism of the United States.

The 11 March 2025 Jeddah US-Ukraine talks at the Diriyah Palace and the As-Salam Royal Palace produced the reset. The Ukrainian delegation was led by Yermak, with Sybiha, Umerov, and Deputy Head of the OP Pavlo Palisa. The US delegation was led by Secretary of State Rubio, National Security Advisor Waltz, and Special Envoy Witkoff. The talks lasted approximately eight hours across two sessions and produced a joint statement released on the evening of 11 March 2025. The joint statement contained three operative elements: Ukraine's acceptance of a US-proposed 30-day comprehensive ceasefire, subject to Russian acceptance; the immediate resumption of US military aid and intelligence sharing; and an agreement to "intensify" work on the Reconstruction Investment Fund framework with a view to early signature.

The Ukrainian acceptance of the 30-day comprehensive ceasefire was, in negotiating terms, a substantial concession. It transferred the diplomatic burden onto Moscow: if Russia rejected the proposal, the rejection would be visible; if Russia accepted, Ukraine would face a pause that, depending on its terms, could entrench front lines. Foreign Minister Sybiha, in his press readout, emphasised that the proposal was for a "comprehensive" ceasefire — covering ground, air, and sea — and was unconditional. The framing was deliberate: it inverted the post-Oval-Office narrative of Ukraine as the obstacle to peace.

President Putin's response over the next ten days established the pattern of all subsequent Russian responses to ceasefire proposals: rhetorical acceptance of "the idea" combined with tangible rejection of the terms. In an 18 March 2025 phone call with President Trump, Putin proposed instead a 30-day ceasefire confined to attacks against energy infrastructure. The Putin counter-proposal was operationally significant: Russian forces had, since autumn 2024, conducted an intensive campaign against Ukrainian electricity infrastructure; halting that campaign for 30 days would preserve Russian capability while sacrificing only an offensive line that was already producing diminishing returns. The 25 March 2025 Riyadh expert-level talks formalised the energy-infrastructure undertaking and produced separate US-Russia and US-Ukraine bilateral arrangements that ran in parallel without becoming a single instrument.

The Jeddah reset thus repaired the immediate US-Ukraine relationship without resolving the underlying negotiating asymmetry. Ukraine had recovered aid and intelligence; the United States had recovered the pathway to the minerals deal; Russia had successfully diluted the comprehensive ceasefire to a partial one on terms it could absorb. The structural cost — the demonstration that US coercive instruments could be deployed against Ukraine at will — was permanent.

8. The Energy-Infrastructure Partial Ceasefire (25 March 2025) and the Easter and Victory-Day Attempts

The 25 March 2025 Riyadh expert-level talks were conducted by US delegations meeting in parallel with Russian and Ukrainian counterparts in the Diriyah Hotel complex. The format — separate bilateral US-Russia and US-Ukraine sessions — preserved the broader negotiation architecture (US-led bilateral channels) while allowing for technical-level work on the limited subject matter (energy-infrastructure halt and Black Sea maritime arrangements). The US delegation was led by Special Envoy Witkoff and Senior Director for Russia-Ukraine [TBD-VERIFY: name of NSC director]. The Ukrainian delegation was led by Deputy Defence Minister Pavlo Palisa, accompanied by representatives of the Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Energy.

The output of the 25 March talks was two separate documents — a US-Russia understanding and a US-Ukraine understanding — covering: (1) mutual restraint from attacks against energy infrastructure in both countries; (2) Russian agreement to a Black Sea maritime "safe shipping" understanding in exchange for [TBD-VERIFY: removal of US sanctions on Russian agricultural exports and on Rosselkhozbank, which had been a sticking point since the 2023 collapse of the Black Sea Grain Initiative]; and (3) continued working-level dialogue on prisoner exchange and the return of Ukrainian children deported to Russia. The two documents were not a single agreement; their bilateral character was a Russian-insisted-upon structural feature.

The implementation of the energy-infrastructure partial ceasefire was contested from its first week. The Ukrainian government published a running list of Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure during the supposed ceasefire window; the Russian government issued counter-claims of Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy sites (notably refineries in Krasnodar Krai, Volgograd Oblast, and Saratov Oblast). Both sets of allegations had documentary support; both sides accused the other of violations [TBD-VERIFY: specific figures on attacks during the partial-ceasefire window vary; ISW's tracking documented sustained low-intensity exchange with periodic spikes]. By the end of April 2025, the energy-infrastructure ceasefire had effectively lapsed in practice if not in formal terms.

The 19–21 April 2025 Easter ceasefire was unilaterally announced by President Putin in a 19 April 2025 press appearance, with the stated reason being "Orthodox Easter humanitarian considerations." It was not the product of bilateral agreement; the Ukrainian government was informed of the announcement through public channels approximately one hour before the Russian announcement. President Zelensky responded by stating that Ukraine would observe the ceasefire if it was observed by Russia, but characterised the unilateral announcement as a propaganda exercise rather than a sincere step. Russian forces continued combat operations through the Easter window at reduced but non-zero intensity; Ukrainian forces engaged in measured response. ISW's 21 April assessment characterised the Easter ceasefire as having produced "no operational pause" but rather a "rhetorical pause."

The 8–9 May 2025 Victory-Day ceasefire followed the same pattern. Announced unilaterally by Putin on 28 April 2025, framed around the Russian celebration of the 80th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War, the Victory-Day ceasefire was advertised as covering 72 hours from 0:00 Moscow time on 8 May. Ukraine responded similarly — observing reciprocity but characterising the framing as propaganda. The ceasefire was widely violated; ISW's 9 May assessment documented sustained Russian artillery and drone activity across the front. President Trump, on 8 May 2025, posted a Truth Social statement expressing disappointment at the violations and indicating that he was "running out of patience" with Russia — a tonal shift that was widely noted as the first clear public US-administration criticism of Russian negotiating behaviour in the entire post-inaugural period.

The pattern that emerged from the energy-infrastructure, Easter, and Victory-Day arrangements was structurally consistent: limited, selective, unilateral, and unenforceable arrangements that allowed each side to preserve operational capability while engaging in process. From the Russian perspective, this pattern was the optimum: it sustained the appearance of negotiation, fragmented Western unity around a series of declined Ukrainian comprehensive ceasefire proposals, and preserved Russian operational gains. From the Ukrainian perspective, it was a sustained negotiating disappointment that nonetheless preserved the underlying US-Ukraine working relationship.

9. The 30 April 2025 United States–Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund Agreement

The United States–Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund Establishment Agreement, signed in Washington on 30 April 2025 by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Yulia Svyrydenko, was the principal notable outcome of the post-Oval-Office negotiation track. It established a structurally novel bilateral economic instrument with no direct precedent in modern US foreign-economic-policy practice.

The architectural history of the agreement is essential to understanding its final form. The initial Trump-administration demand, presented to the Ukrainian side through the Bessent-Svyrydenko channel in early February 2025, had been characterised in Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Bloomberg reporting as comprising three principal elements: first, a Ukrainian commitment to provide $500 billion in mineral-resource compensation as "repayment" for US wartime aid; second, a structural framework under which a US-administered fund would have governance rights over Ukrainian critical-minerals development; and third, the absence of any reciprocal US security guarantee. The 5 February 2025 draft text (the "first draft") was characterised by Ukrainian negotiators in subsequent reporting as imposing "colonial" terms and lacking any reciprocal commitment.

The post-Oval-Office renegotiation of March–April 2025 substantially altered each of these elements. The $500 billion compensation framing was dropped; the final text contains no characterisation of Ukrainian existing aid as "debt" or as requiring "repayment," and contains no aggregate dollar figure. The governance structure was modified to a 50–50 jointly governed fund (a "United States–Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund") with equal US and Ukrainian voting representation on the governing board. The security guarantee question was unresolved in the final text — the agreement contains no formal US security commitment — but the broader framework included a US-Ukraine commitment to ongoing security cooperation and a statement that "the United States supports Ukraine's efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace."

The scope of the agreement covers Ukrainian critical-mineral and hydrocarbon resources developed from new state-owned licences issued after the agreement's entry into force; it does not retroactively apply to existing private-sector mineral developments. The covered resources include: titanium (in which Ukraine possesses substantial deposits including the Irshansk Mining and Enrichment Combine), lithium (the Polokhivske and Shevchenkivske deposits, both pre-war Ukrainian state-licensing properties), rare-earth elements (with deposits in Zhytomyr Oblast and other locations), graphite (the Zavallia deposit), uranium (Ukrainian deposits exploited by the state-owned company SkhidGZK), and certain hydrocarbons including unconventional gas. The 50–50 split applies to proceeds from new licences, not to gross production; the structure is therefore closer to a sovereign-wealth-fund coinvestment than to a royalty arrangement.

The governance architecture of the fund includes a joint board with three US-appointed and three Ukrainian-appointed members [TBD-VERIFY: exact membership composition; some reporting indicates additional independent or rotating members]. Investment decisions require joint approval; profits are reinvested into Ukrainian reconstruction projects through a defined investment-thesis architecture (infrastructure, energy, defence-industrial). The fund's geographic scope is Ukrainian territory, and its purpose is Ukrainian reconstruction; this is the architectural feature that allowed the Ukrainian side to characterise the agreement as a sovereign-positive instrument despite its concessional economic terms.

The Verkhovna Rada ratification, which the agreement required to enter into force, was conducted on 8 May 2025. The vote was widely reported as 338-of-401 [TBD-VERIFY: exact margin pending confirmation against the Verkhovna Rada session transcript]. The supporting majority included Sluha Narodu, most of European Solidarity (Poroshenko's faction, whose support was widely noted as an example of wartime cross-party consensus on negotiation instruments), most of Holos, and Trust group MPs. The opposition included a portion of Batkivshchyna (Tymoshenko's faction, on the grounds that the agreement was insufficiently protective of Ukrainian economic sovereignty), [TBD-VERIFY: certain Restoration of Ukraine MPs], and a small number of independents.

The three-account interpretive frame on the minerals deal is essential. The critical reading — voiced most articulately by Tymoshenko, by certain European Solidarity MPs in floor speeches that nonetheless voted yes, and by analysts including [TBD-VERIFY: Olga Tokariuk for Carnegie has been a measured rather than critical voice; better attribution to specific critics] — characterises the agreement as economic colonialism that compromised Ukrainian sovereignty under coercion. The argument: the agreement was negotiated under the duress of an active aid pause, on terms structured by an administration that had publicly demanded $500 billion in repayments, in a window where Ukraine's battlefield position was deteriorating, and contains no reciprocal US security guarantee. The pragmatist-Zelensky reading — voiced by Svyrydenko, Yermak (until his departure), and Podolyak — characterises the agreement as smart leverage that preserved a long-term US economic stake in Ukrainian recovery, embedded a US institutional interest in Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity (since US fund returns depend on Ukrainian state control of its mineral resources), and turned a coercive demand into a sovereign-positive instrument. The Russian reading — articulated through Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, through Dmitry Medvedev's Telegram, and through Russian state media — characterised the agreement as evidence of Ukrainian "comprador" capitulation to American economic interests; the irony of Russian critique was that this reading aligned in substance with the Ukrainian critical reading while differing in motivation.

The forward consequences of the minerals deal, as of May 2026, were partial and contested. No major mineral-development projects under the fund had reached operational stage; the institutional architecture (board appointments, initial capital, first investment decisions) was being constructed through 2025–2026. The agreement's structural role had been principally diplomatic-political — preserving the US-Ukraine working relationship through the post-Oval-Office crisis — rather than economic. Whether it would, in the longer term, deliver the reciprocal economic benefit envisaged by the pragmatist-Zelensky reading was a question for the post-war period.

10. The European Track and the Coalition of the Willing (March–November 2025)

The 2 March 2025 Lancaster House summit, convened by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer two days after the Oval Office breakdown, was the most ambitious autonomous European security initiative undertaken since the founding of NATO in 1949. Held at the historic Lancaster House on Stable Yard in central London, the summit was attended by leaders or senior representatives of the United Kingdom (Starmer), France (Macron), Germany (Scholz, in caretaker capacity), Italy (Meloni), Poland (Tusk), the Netherlands (Schoof), Denmark (Frederiksen), Spain (Sánchez), Norway (Støre), Sweden (Kristersson), Finland (Orpo), Czechia (Fiala), Romania (Ciolacu), the Baltic states (Latvian PM Siliņa, Estonian PM Michal, Lithuanian PM Paluckas), Canada (Trudeau, in caretaker), Türkiye [TBD-VERIFY: Turkish attendance level], NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and European Council President António Costa, with President Zelensky in attendance throughout.

The summit's principal concrete outputs were four. First, the announcement of a UK-French led "reassurance force" concept — a proposed post-ceasefire deployment of European troops to Ukraine, with the understanding that any such force would require US "backstop" support (logistics, intelligence, air-defence umbrella). Starmer's press readout characterised the reassurance force as comprising "ground troops, air and naval support" with a force level to be defined through working-group planning. By May 2026, the reassurance force remained a planning concept rather than a deployed reality; the gap between aspiration and deployment was structural rather than transitional.

Second, the summit produced a commitment to accelerate weapons deliveries to Ukraine. The UK announced an additional £1.6 billion in export-finance support for 5,000 air-defence missiles. France pledged additional SCALP missiles and additional CAESAR self-propelled howitzers. Germany [TBD-VERIFY: under the Scholz caretaker government the German announcement was constrained; under the subsequent Merz government from 6 May 2025 the Taurus question reopened] announced additional IRIS-T systems. The Netherlands and Denmark accelerated F-16 deliveries.

Third, the summit produced a commitment to maintain sanctions pressure on Russia, including the joint position that the approximately €200 billion in frozen Russian Central Bank assets held principally at Euroclear in Brussels would not be unfrozen as part of any settlement without Russian acceptance of reparations principles.

Fourth, the summit produced a commitment to support Ukraine's continuing participation in any negotiation track; the leaders explicitly rejected the model of US-Russia bilateral negotiations excluding Ukraine.

The 6 March 2025 special European Council in Brussels operationalised the financial dimension. Under President von der Leyen's ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 framework, the Council agreed to: (a) the activation of the national-fiscal-rule escape clause for defence spending, providing up to €650 billion in fiscal flexibility across member states over four years; (b) the establishment of a new Security Action for Europe (SAFE) instrument providing up to €150 billion in EU loans for joint defence procurement; (c) the redirection of cohesion-policy funds toward defence-related investments; (d) the extension of European Investment Bank lending to defence projects. The total announced envelope of approximately €800 billion was the largest single European defence-finance commitment in EU history.

The Friedrich Merz government in Germany, taking office on 6 May 2025 after the formation of a CDU/CSU-SPD coalition following the 23 February 2025 federal election, substantially altered the German contribution. Chancellor Merz had campaigned on an explicit commitment to deliver Taurus long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine — a step the Scholz government had refused. The Merz coalition agreement included Taurus delivery [TBD-VERIFY: exact delivery timing and quantities pending verification against the German government's official statements; the first deliveries were widely reported but precise volumes were not publicly catalogued]. Merz also championed substantial constitutional debt-brake reform to enable defence-spending increases; the relevant constitutional amendment was passed by the outgoing 20th Bundestag in March 2025 with the necessary two-thirds majority, providing for the Sondervermögen Bundeswehr expansion and infrastructure spending. The German contribution to European Ukraine-support architecture moved, between January and May 2025, from constrained Scholz-era caution to Merz-era activist posture.

The Polish role was structurally significant throughout. Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Foreign Minister Sikorski conducted continuous shuttle diplomacy between Kyiv, Washington, Brussels, and the principal European capitals. Polish military assistance to Ukraine, while constrained by Poland's own re-equipment programmes, continued; the Jasionka logistics hub remained the principal land-bridge between European weapons and Ukrainian forces. Polish public opinion on Ukraine was, by 2025, increasingly mixed [TBD-VERIFY: CBOS polling indicated declining Polish public support for unconditional aid, though support for Ukrainian-defensive-purpose aid remained majority]; the bilateral relationship remained close but had become more transactional. The June 2025 Polish presidential election produced [TBD-VERIFY: Karol Nawrocki's victory] which created an additional layer of complexity in Polish foreign-policy execution.

The Nordic-Baltic engagement intensified through 2025. The June 2025 Nordic-Baltic Eight summit in Helsinki produced commitments to substantial multi-year support packages. The deployment of Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian air assets to Baltic air policing rotations was sustained. Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian governments maintained aid contributions exceeding 1 per cent of GDP — a level no other European NATO ally approached.

The gap between European aspiration and capability remained the structural limitation. By May 2026, no European reassurance force had been deployed to Ukraine. European weapons deliveries, while consequential, had not closed the capability gap that US withdrawal would impose. European defence-industrial production, while accelerating, had not reached the operational tempo of Ukrainian or Russian wartime production. The institutional architecture of European autonomous security — the alternative to US leadership — had been built in design; its operational instantiation was incomplete.

11. Domestic Ukrainian Politics: Zelensky's Position, the Yermak Departure, and the 2025 OP Reshuffle

President Zelensky's domestic political position in 2025–2026 was simultaneously the most contested and the most stable of his presidency — a paradox that requires careful examination. The contested element was the polling trajectory: Razumkov Centre and KIIS surveys tracked Zelensky's trust rating from a notional 90+ per cent peak in March–April 2022 to [TBD-VERIFY: a working figure of approximately 52 per cent trust in mid-February 2025 per the KIIS poll of 14–18 February, rising to approximately 67 per cent on 28 February – 3 March in the immediate post-Oval-Office sympathy effect, then declining gradually through autumn 2025 to approximately 55 per cent by spring 2026]. The stable element was institutional: through every external shock — the Oval Office breakdown, the aid pause, the Pokrovsk crisis, the SBU-NABU confrontation, the OP reshuffle — the Sluha Narodu working majority in the Verkhovna Rada held, the opposition factions did not coordinate a vote of no-confidence in the Cabinet, and the executive-legislative settlement of wartime governance continued.

The early-2025 collapse of Zelensky polling had three identifiable drivers. The first was the cumulative cost of the war: by early 2025 nearly three years of operational tempo had eroded the morale of the urban professional middle class that had been Zelensky's strongest pre-war constituency. The second was the framing produced by the Trump-administration "dictator" language in February 2025, which — while notably contested in Ukraine — did real damage to the international-credibility component of Zelensky's domestic standing. The third was the specific operational pressure of January–February 2025, in which the loss of operational momentum became increasingly visible and the General Staff's mobilisation demands became increasingly difficult to satisfy politically.

The post-Oval-Office sympathy effect was real and was tracked carefully by both Bankova and the opposition. KIIS polling conducted in the days immediately after 28 February showed a 15-percentage-point trust uptick. The effect was bounded; by April 2025 polling had returned to pre-Oval-Office baseline. The episode demonstrated that the legitimacy of Zelensky's presidency could be temporarily reinforced by visible external pressure, but could not be permanently restored by such episodes.

The Yermak departure in late 2025 was the most consequential institutional change of the period. Andriy Yermak had served as Head of the Office of the President since February 2020 and had been, throughout the wartime period, the second-most-powerful figure in Ukrainian governance — controlling the OP's diplomatic, security-coordination, and political-management functions. His departure, on [TBD-VERIFY: a date variously reported in fragmentary form; some accounts indicate November 2025 in the context of the NABU corruption investigations of summer 2025; the exact circumstances of Yermak's exit require verification against the OP's own communications and the subsequent press coverage], altered the executive architecture. The successor leadership of the OP — under [TBD-VERIFY: the identity of Yermak's successor as Head of the OP and the precise reorganisation of OP functions] — was less centralised and operated with reduced executive autonomy from the President.

The Yulia Svyrydenko premiership from July 2025 [TBD-VERIFY: exact appointment date and the circumstances of the Shmyhal-to-Svyrydenko transition] reorganised the economic-executive team around the minerals-deal architecture and the broader reconstruction-finance agenda. Prime Minister Svyrydenko, who had led the Ukrainian negotiation of the Reconstruction Investment Fund as First Deputy Prime Minister, brought executive responsibility for economic policy into close coordination with the foreign-economic-policy agenda. The transition was widely interpreted as a Bankova decision to align the post-Reconstruction-Investment-Fund executive team with the new economic-diplomatic architecture.

The summer 2025 SBU-NABU institutional confrontation was a separately analysed event of considerable consequence. In late July 2025, the SBU conducted searches at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO), citing investigation of Russian-intelligence penetration of those bodies [TBD-VERIFY: the official SBU framing and the contested civil-society interpretation]. On 22 July 2025 [TBD-VERIFY: exact date] the Verkhovna Rada passed legislation that civil-society and Western partners characterised as substantially weakening NABU and SAPO independence. The legislation triggered the first significant street protests of the wartime period — small but unprecedented gatherings in Kyiv and other cities. International partners including the European Commission, the IMF, and the G7 ambassadors issued public concerns. Within several days, President Zelensky signalled a willingness to revise the legislation; subsequent revisions [TBD-VERIFY: passed in August 2025] partially restored the anti-corruption architecture. The episode — covered in detail in UA-I-ANTI-01 — was a significant test of the wartime social contract and revealed the limits of executive accumulation of authority even under martial law.

The opposition factions repositioned through this period without rupturing the wartime unity-coalition consensus. European Solidarity, under former President Petro Poroshenko, maintained sustained public critique of the executive (particularly on the OP architecture and on Bankova economic appointments) while supporting the genuine wartime agenda — voting for Reconstruction Investment Fund ratification, supporting defence budgets, and avoiding any move toward formal no-confidence proceedings. Holos (under interim leadership following Sviatoslav Vakarchuk's departure from politics) pressed harder on transparency and anti-corruption questions, particularly during the SBU-NABU crisis. Batkivshchyna under Yulia Tymoshenko maintained a more populist-economic critique focused on the minerals deal's economic-sovereignty implications. The pattern, across factions, was preservation of the wartime executive's actual room for manoeuvre paired with sustained voice on procedural and institutional questions.

12. The Constitutional Debate on Territorial Concessions and Postponed Elections

The constitutional debate over what could and could not be conceded in any peace agreement, and over the legitimacy of the postponed October 2024 election, was conducted in the Verkhovna Rada and in Ukrainian academic constitutional law throughout 2025–2026 with greater intensity than at any time since the 2015 Minsk-2 ratification debate.

The territorial-concessions question is governed by three principal constitutional provisions. Article 2 of the 1996 Constitution declares that "the territory of Ukraine within its existing border is indivisible and inviolable." Article 17 designates "the protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine" as "the most important functions of the State." Article 73 stipulates that "issues of altering the territory of Ukraine are resolved exclusively by an All-Ukrainian referendum." These provisions, read together with the 2014 Verkhovna Rada resolution on the temporary occupation of Crimea (Law No. 1207-VII of 15 April 2014) and the 2018 Law on the Peculiarities of State Policy on Securing Ukraine's State Sovereignty over the Temporarily Occupied Territories in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (Law No. 2268-VIII of 18 January 2018), establish a constitutional architecture under which any de jure recognition of Russian sovereignty over occupied Ukrainian territories — including Crimea, the Donbas, and the territories occupied since 24 February 2022 — would require a national referendum, and would be politically and legally unprecedented.

The political-legal consensus emerging from Foreign Affairs Committee debates (chaired by Oleksandr Merezhko) and from successive Verkhovna Rada discussions in spring and summer 2025 is that Ukraine cannot constitutionally recognise Russian sovereignty over occupied territories, but may, as a de facto matter, accept ceasefire lines that do not entail legal recognition. This distinction — between de jure recognition (constitutionally foreclosed without referendum, and politically unattainable in the foreseeable future) and de facto control by an occupying power along an agreed ceasefire line (politically painful but not constitutionally barred) — became the operative framework for Ukrainian negotiating posture. Foreign Minister Sybiha, in repeated press conferences through 2025, articulated this distinction as the Ukrainian position. Presidential Adviser Podolyak emphasised the same distinction in his public commentary.

The Russian and (initially) US negotiating positions pressed for some form of recognition of "the realities on the ground." The Russian position, as articulated by Foreign Minister Lavrov and Presidential Aide Ushakov, was that any settlement must include recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea (in Russian self-understanding incorporated into the Russian Federation in 2014) and over the four oblasts (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson) declared annexed in September 2022. The US position in early Trump-2 statements (particularly Hegseth's 12 February Brussels speech, which characterised return to pre-2014 borders as "unrealistic") aligned partially with the Russian framing without endorsing the formal recognition demand. By spring 2025, the US position had clarified to a "de facto recognition of the line of contact" framework rather than a formal recognition demand — a narrower framing that allowed the Ukrainian constitutional architecture to remain unviolated even under a settlement.

The postponed-elections debate is the second principal constitutional question. The applicable provisions are Article 83 of the Constitution (which provides for the extension of the Verkhovna Rada's authority during martial law) and Article 19 of the 2015 Law on the Legal Regime of Martial Law (Law No. 389-VIII), which expressly prohibits the holding of presidential, parliamentary, and local elections during martial law. The constitutionally-mandated October 2024 presidential election was not held under these provisions; the constitutionally-mandated October 2023 parliamentary election was likewise deferred. President Zelensky's term, which would have expired on 20 May 2024 under non-martial-law conditions, continues under Article 19 of the Martial Law statute and Article 83 of the Constitution.

The Russian and initial Trump-administration framing characterised this deferral as evidence of Zelensky's illegitimacy. On 18 February 2025 in remarks at Mar-a-Lago, President Trump asserted that Zelensky's approval rating was "down to 4%" (a figure contradicted by all credible Ukrainian polling, including a contemporaneous KIIS finding of 57% trust); the separate "dictator without elections" characterisation followed on 19 February 2025, in Trump's public response to Zelensky's remark that Trump was operating in a Russian "disinformation space" [TIER-1 AUDIT 2026-08-29: corrected — ≥2 sources (CNN, ABC News, Times of Israel) place the "4%" claim on 18 February and the "dictator" characterisation as a distinct statement the following day, 19 February, not as a single 18 February remark]. The language closely tracked long-standing Russian Foreign Ministry framing dating to 2024. The framing was internationally amplified in early 2025 — including by Vice President Vance in subsequent interview commentary — before being walked back by the Trump administration within approximately ten days. By late March 2025 the "dictator" framing had been removed from the operative US working-level agenda.

The Ukrainian constitutional consensus counter-position is that the deferral of elections during martial law is constitutionally required, not optional. The principal academic articulations of this position include the writings of Mykola Kozyubra (a former Constitutional Court justice), Volodymyr Vasylenko (a senior constitutional law scholar), and the work of the Centre for Civil Liberties under Oleksandra Matviichuk (whose director's 2022 Nobel Peace Prize had given the Centre's institutional position particular weight). The position is grounded in the textual reading of Article 19 of the Martial Law statute, in the structural reading that no European or comparative constitutional democracy holds national elections under foreign military invasion of its territory, and in the practical reading that approximately 6 million Ukrainian citizens (refugees abroad) and approximately 4–5 million Ukrainian citizens (residents of occupied territories) would be effectively disenfranchised by any election held during martial law.

The three-account interpretive frame on postponed elections is essential. The Zelensky-team account, voiced by Presidential Adviser Podolyak and by Foreign Minister Sybiha, characterises the deferral as constitutionally required wartime governance — not a political choice but a legal mandate. The account emphasises the disenfranchisement problem, the security-risk problem (elections under wartime conditions present coordinated-attack vulnerabilities), and the institutional-precedent problem (the principle that occupiers cannot disrupt national elections). The critical-opposition reading, voiced within Ukraine by certain civil-society and opposition voices, frames the deferral as legitimate-but-overextended — recognising the constitutional basis while questioning whether the absence of any civic-debate process on extension renews democratic accountability. This critical-but-loyal reading was articulated, with variation, by Vakhtang Kebuladze, certain Holos MPs, and some elements of the independent journalism community (Ukrainska Pravda, ZN.UA). The Russian and initial Trump-administration framing characterises the deferral as democratic erosion — a propaganda framing the corpus records as a fact about the discourse without endorsing its legal substance.

The Ukrainian academic-constitutional response to the Trump-administration "dictator" framing was unusually unified across normally-divided scholarly and political traditions. The constitutional consensus held; the discourse moved on; the constitutional architecture of wartime governance survived the most direct external attack on its legitimacy since the war began.

13. The Operational Backdrop (January 2025 – May 2026)

The operational backdrop of January 2025 – May 2026 was characterised by Russian incremental advances at high cost, Ukrainian defensive resilience under manpower strain, and a structural shift in long-range strike capabilities on both sides that made negotiation more rather than less urgent. The negotiating leverage of every diplomatic episode in 2025–2026 was structured by the operational position at the moment of the episode; the relationship between battlefield and diplomatic tracks is therefore essential to the analysis.

The Pokrovsk crisis of summer 2025 was the focal point of operational concern through the negotiating year. Russian forces had pressed westward in Donetsk Oblast since the February 2024 fall of Avdiivka, with the Pokrovsk-Mirnohrad urban agglomeration becoming the operational objective by autumn 2024. By [TBD-VERIFY: August 2025, with the exact dates of peak crisis pending verification against ISW's daily assessments] Russian forces had advanced to within approximately [TBD-VERIFY: distance to Pokrovsk varies in reporting from "less than 10 kilometres" to "the southern outskirts"] of the city. Ukrainian forces under Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi conducted a sustained defensive operation, with the deployment of [TBD-VERIFY: specific brigade deployments and the dynamic between Donetsk Oblast and Pokrovsk-area forces]. The crisis produced sustained internal Bankova-General Staff tension over manpower allocation, with Syrskyi reportedly pressing for additional mobilised personnel and contract recruits to be directed to the Pokrovsk axis. The crisis was operationally severe; Pokrovsk did not fall (as of the May 2026 cut-off) but the cumulative cost of its defence was substantial.

The Kursk salient withdrawal of March–April 2025 ended the territorial-bargaining chip that the August 2024 Ukrainian incursion had created. The August 2024 Kursk operation, planned and executed by the Ukrainian General Staff under then-Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi (himself appointed in February 2024), had seized approximately 1,300 square kilometres of Russian territory and held it through autumn and winter 2024. The strategic objective had been multidimensional: forcing Russian force diversion, creating a bargaining chip for any negotiation, and demonstrating Ukrainian operational capability deep in Russian territory. By spring 2025, in the context of the aid-pause-and-restoration period and the post-Jeddah reset, the strategic calculus had shifted. The Ukrainian withdrawal proceeded in a phased pattern through March and April 2025; by [TBD-VERIFY: late April 2025] the salient had been substantially abandoned, with Ukrainian forces returning to pre-incursion positions. The withdrawal was conducted under sustained Russian pressure and produced operational losses, including the controversial period of attempted withdrawal under fire that produced [TBD-VERIFY: Ukrainian casualty estimates ranging widely; ISW's tracking documented sustained but ordered withdrawal rather than collapse, though Russian reporting characterised the period as collapse].

The Sumy Oblast borderlands became, in spring and summer 2025, a contested area between Ukrainian and Russian forces. [TBD-VERIFY: the geographic dynamics of the Sumy Oblast front are complex — Russian forces conducted cross-border operations into Sumy Oblast through 2024 and 2025; Ukrainian forces conducted defensive operations and limited counter-incursions. The framing in the source prompt suggests Ukrainian incursion, which may not be the dominant dynamic; verify against ISW assessments.] The Sumy front was operationally consequential but did not produce decisive movement in either direction.

The long-range strike campaigns of both sides produced a structural shift in the strategic-cost calculus. Ukrainian long-range drone strikes against Russian oil refineries, depots, airbases, and command nodes intensified through 2025. The most significant single episode was Operation Spider Web of [TBD-VERIFY: 1 June 2025], in which Ukrainian Security Service drones — pre-positioned in containers near Russian strategic-aviation airbases over an extended logistics operation — struck multiple Russian strategic-aviation bases, reportedly destroying or damaging [TBD-VERIFY: 41 strategic aircraft per Ukrainian SBU and Foreign Ministry briefings; Western satellite-imagery analysis confirmed multiple aircraft losses at lower numbers]. The operation demonstrated a structural Ukrainian capability to impose costs on the Russian strategic-aviation force; it also demonstrated the elaboration of Ukrainian unconventional-operation capability.

Russian long-range strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure continued, with the second-half-2025 winter campaign producing renewed pressure on the electricity grid. The pattern of strikes — Iskander and Kalibr missiles, Shahed-type drones in mass salvos, and increasingly North Korean-supplied KN-23 missiles [TBD-VERIFY: KN-23 supply chains and Russian-North-Korean operational dynamics] — sustained pressure on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Ukrainian air defence operated under sustained munition-supply constraints, particularly during the aid-pause periods and during the post-pause restoration when stockpiles required replenishment.

The manpower question (covered in detail in UA-D-04) remained the chronic constraint. Mobilisation under Law 3633-IX, the Reserve+ digital architecture, the contract-recruitment programmes (including the under-25 contract programme), and the continuing TCC legitimacy crisis interacted with the negotiation question throughout 2025–2026. Any settlement architecture would require sustaining a deterrent-credible force into the post-ceasefire period — a requirement that the General Staff and the Office of the President consistently emphasised in negotiation preparation. The argument that the Armed Forces of Ukraine must not be demobilised below a level (variously argued at 700,000 to 900,000 active personnel) that maintains deterrent credibility after any ceasefire became, by mid-2025, a settled Ukrainian negotiating position.

The relationship between operational position and negotiation leverage was complex and asymmetric. Russian incremental advances did not produce strategic Russian leverage in the negotiation track, because the advances were too slow and too costly to compel Ukrainian capitulation. Ukrainian operational resilience preserved the negotiating baseline but did not produce strategic Ukrainian leverage either, because the absence of a decisive operational shift meant that the diplomatic track remained the principal axis of resolution. The structural reading is that 2025–2026 was a year in which neither side achieved the operational outcome that would have forced the other's diplomatic concession; the negotiation track therefore continued without resolution.

14. The Three-Account Interpretive Frame and Forward View

The three-account interpretive frame, applied across the principal contested questions of 2025–2026, allows the corpus to preserve historiographical honesty without premature reconciliation. Three sets of contested accounts are recorded.

On the 28 February 2025 Oval Office breakdown. The Ukrainian-government account attributes the rupture to a coordinated Vance-Trump escalation, with Vance's "have you said thank you" formulation as a prepared trigger and the broader episode as an exercise structured to embarrass Zelensky in pursuit of the Witkoff-Putin track's continued primacy. The Trump-team account attributes the rupture to Zelensky's failure to display gratitude and his "litigation" of Trump in front of cameras; in this reading Zelensky was the proximate cause and the administration's escalations were proportionate responses. The external strategic reading treats the breakdown as a structural outcome of irreconcilable US and Ukrainian negotiation preferences amplified by the information asymmetry between the Witkoff-Putin channel (developed for two weeks before 28 February) and the Trump-Zelensky channel (in its first material iteration on 28 February). On this reading, the choreography was the trigger; the underlying incompatibility — Ukrainian preference for security guarantees and US preference for early ceasefire on terms acceptable to Russia — was the cause.

On the minerals deal. The critical reading characterises the agreement as economic colonialism — Ukrainian sovereignty compromised under the duress of an active aid pause, on terms structured by an administration that had publicly demanded $500 billion in repayments, in a window where Ukraine's battlefield position was deteriorating, and without reciprocal US security guarantee. The pragmatist-Zelensky reading characterises the agreement as smart leverage — a Ukrainian instrument that preserved a long-term US economic stake in Ukrainian recovery, embedded a US institutional interest in Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and converted a coercive demand into a sovereign-positive instrument with the worst elements stripped from the final text. The Russian reading characterises the agreement as evidence of Ukrainian "comprador" capitulation to American economic interests — a reading whose meaningful content aligned ironically with the Ukrainian critical reading while differing in motivation.

On postponed elections. The Zelensky-team account characterises the deferral as constitutionally required wartime governance — Article 19 of the 2015 Martial Law statute prohibits elections during martial law, Article 83 of the Constitution extends mandates accordingly, and approximately 10–11 million potential Ukrainian voters (refugees abroad and residents of occupied territories) would be disenfranchised by any wartime election. The critical-opposition reading within Ukraine accepts the constitutional basis but questions whether the absence of any civic-debate process on extension renews democratic accountability — a reading that supports the deferral on legal grounds while pressing for greater procedural transparency. The Russian and initial Trump-administration framing characterises the deferral as democratic erosion — a framing the corpus records as a fact about the discourse rather than as a legitimate constitutional reading.

The structural reading of the 2025–2026 negotiation track — across all three contested questions — is that the year produced a substantial restructuring of the geopolitical baseline of European security without producing a resolution of the underlying war. The post-1949 assumption that European security would be underwritten by US leadership was substantially weakened in operational fact, even where formal NATO commitments were not abrogated. The US-Ukraine bilateral relationship was reclassified from security alliance to transactional bargain, with the minerals deal as the institutional embodiment of the new category. European member states began, with varying speeds, to substitute capability for the US gap — but the substitution was incomplete. Russia achieved a partial geopolitical objective (the splintering of the Western coalition) without conceding battlefield gains. Ukraine survived the most acute external pressure of its wartime period without strategic collapse — though at heavy operational cost and with the question of post-war state design now urgent and unresolved.

The forward view through 2026 and beyond is conditioned by four open questions. First, whether the comprehensive ceasefire that Ukraine accepted at Jeddah on 11 March 2025 and that Russia has consistently rejected will eventually be agreed in some form, or whether the war will continue along the pattern of selective, time-limited, and unenforceable arrangements that characterised 2025–2026. Second, whether the European autonomous security architecture announced at Lancaster House and in ReArm Europe will translate into deployed capability at the timelines required, or whether the gap between aspiration and delivery will widen into a structural weakness. Third, whether the US-Ukraine economic relationship embedded in the Reconstruction Investment Fund will mature into a durable bilateral architecture or will be subordinated to subsequent shifts in US policy preferences. Fourth, whether Ukrainian domestic political settlement — the Verkhovna Rada working majority, the executive-legislative wartime social contract, the anti-corruption architecture, and the constitutional frame of postponed elections — will hold through the eventual transition from active wartime to post-ceasefire governance.

The 2025 negotiation track will not be remembered as the moment when the war ended. It will be remembered as the moment when the post-war order began to be designed under conditions of incomplete agreement — and when the architecture of European security, of US-Ukraine economic-political integration, and of Ukrainian wartime democratic governance entered a period of consequential and contested transformation. The closing of that period, when it comes, is the subject of documents not yet written.

Spiral Index

This document sits at the intersection of multiple corpus threads.

Within Block UA-D (Pre-War and Wartime Zelensky-Era Domestic Politics): it is the negotiation-track companion to UA-D-01 (Zelensky Pre-War Presidency), UA-D-04 (Wartime Mobilisation), and the sibling documents on wartime governance.

Within Block UA-E (Wartime Governance): it provides the diplomatic-track context for UA-E-01 (Wartime Governance Under Martial Law) and the operational backdrop interface with UA-E-08 (Ukrainian Defence-Industrial Mobilisation, which covers the Trump-2 aid-pause in §13).

Within Block UA-F (Foreign Policy): it is the immediate sequel to US-F-06 (US-Ukraine Bilateral 1994–2025) on the US side, and to UA-F-01 (Ukraine NATO Trajectory) and UA-F-02 (Ukraine EU Accession Trajectory) on the Ukrainian-Western architecture side.

Within Block UA-G (Social and Economic Policy): it provides the post-2025 reconstruction-finance frame that interfaces with UA-G-02 (Wartime Reconstruction Lugano to Berlin) and forward-references UA-O-01 (Ukraine Reconstruction Governance).

Within Block UA-I (Institutions): it provides the negotiation-period context for UA-I-ANTI-01 (NABU/SAPO/HACC) through the summer 2025 SBU-NABU confrontation, and for the underlying wartime constitutional architecture.

Cross-country links: US-F-06 (US-Ukraine Bilateral) is the principal US-side counterpart; US-F-08 (US-Russia Bilateral 2025–2026, forward-stub) is the US-Russia track counterpart; RU-D-06 (2025 Trump-2 Russia Negotiation Track, forward-stub) is the Russian-side counterpart; and the relevant European foreign-policy documents (UK, France, Germany, Poland) provide the European-track counterparts.

Forward-looking dependencies: this document will require revision when the negotiation track produces a settlement (or definitive failure), when the Verkhovna Rada ratification status of subsequent Reconstruction Investment Fund instruments is clarified, when the precise circumstances of the Yermak departure and the Svyrydenko premiership transition are publicly documented, and when the Russian-side documentation becomes accessible for cross-verification of the Witkoff-Putin and Riyadh tracks.

Sources

President of Ukraine, Office of the President (Bankova), official readouts and press briefings, January 2025 – May 2026; principal readouts include the 11 March 2025 Jeddah joint statement, the 30 April 2025 Reconstruction Investment Fund signing communiqué, and the Zelensky evening addresses (Telegram and YouTube channels, daily through May 2026).
President Donald J. Trump, Inaugural Address (20 January 2025); Joint Address to a Joint Session of Congress (4 March 2025); Truth Social posts on Ukraine policy (cited by date) January 2025 – May 2026; Oval Office press appearance with President Zelensky (28 February 2025) and with Prime Minister Mark Carney (United Kingdom segment, 27 February 2025 ahead-of-Zelensky context).
Vice President JD Vance, Munich Security Conference Speech (14 February 2025) and Oval Office statements (28 February 2025).
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, press conference Riyadh (18 February 2025); statements on Jeddah meetings (11 March 2025).
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Keith Kellogg, public statements and press readouts January 2025 – May 2026.
Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, statements following the 13 March, 11 April, 25 April, and 8 May 2025 Moscow trips; Trump administration readouts.
President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, statements on negotiations January 2025 – May 2026; Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Riyadh press conference (18 February 2025) and subsequent statements; Presidential Aide Yuri Ushakov readouts.
Mykhailo Podolyak, Adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, public commentary on negotiations, Telegram and Twitter / X, January 2025 – May 2026.
Andriy Yermak, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine (until 28 November 2025 reshuffle [CORRECTED — Tier-2 block audit, 2026-08-30: prior text read "25 November 2025"; corrected to match the Tier-1-audited date in UA-E-01, sourced to the approved evidence ledger's Wikipedia-infobox cross-check (11 Feb 2020 – 28 Nov 2025)]), and successor leadership of the OP.
Yulia Svyrydenko, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Ukraine (and Prime Minister from July 2025 [TBD-VERIFY]), as principal Ukrainian-side negotiator on the Reconstruction Investment Fund; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as US-side signatory.
Government of Ukraine and US Treasury, United States–Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund Establishment Agreement, signed Washington 30 April 2025; companion Limited Partnership Agreement signed May 2025 [TBD-VERIFY: exact date of LPA signature and the Verkhovna Rada ratification step (8 May 2025 reported)].
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, session transcripts and committee readouts January 2025 – May 2026, with particular reliance on Foreign Affairs Committee (Chair Oleksandr Merezhko), National Security, Defence and Intelligence Committee (Chair Oleksandr Zavitnevych), and Budget Committee transcripts; European Solidarity (Poroshenko) and Holos faction statements.
Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment daily reports, January 2025 – May 2026 (Frederick W. Kagan, Karolina Hird, Mason Clark, George Barros, Kateryna Stepanenko, Angelica Evans principal authors).
Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) — Jack Watling and Justin Bronk, commentary and reports on the 2025 negotiation period; Tactical Lessons report series continuation through 2025–2026.
Atlantic Council Eurasia Center, Ukraine Alert commentary series (Peter Dickinson editor); Atlantic Council statements on the negotiation track.
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Russia & Eurasia programme — Olga Tokariuk, Andrey Kortunov [TBD-VERIFY: institutional affiliation post-2022], Tatiana Stanovaya commentary on negotiations.
European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) — Marie Dumoulin, Gustav Gressel, Camille Grand, Jana Puglierin briefings on European track and the coalition of the willing.
International Crisis Group, Negotiating a Just Peace in Ukraine report series (2024–2025), including the February 2025 update; the May 2025 follow-on briefing on minerals architecture.
Lawrence Freedman, Comment is Freed Substack commentary on Ukraine strategy and negotiations, 2025–2026; Mick Ryan, Futura Doctrina Substack analysis on operational developments.
Financial Times (Henry Foy, Christopher Miller, Roman Olearchyk, Felicia Schwartz), Wall Street Journal (Yaroslav Trofimov, Bojan Pancevski, James Marson, Vivian Salama), Reuters (Olena Harmash, Tom Balmforth), Associated Press, Bloomberg (Jennifer Jacobs, Daryna Krasnolutska) coverage January 2025 – May 2026.
Kyiv Independent (Olga Tokariuk, Anna Belokur, Asami Terajima, Francis Farrell) and Ukrainska Pravda (Roman Romaniuk, Roman Kravets) sustained reporting January 2025 – May 2026; European Pravda on diplomatic track; Liga.net economic reporting.
Steven Pifer (former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine 1998–2000), Brookings Institution commentary 2025–2026; Angela Stent commentary; Fiona Hill Foreign Affairs essays on negotiations.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (United Kingdom), Lancaster House summit statements (2 March 2025) and the "coalition of the willing" framework; President Emmanuel Macron (France), statements on European reassurance force proposals; Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Germany, from 6 May 2025 [TBD-VERIFY]) statements on Taurus and aid; Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk statements; NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte readouts.
European Commission and European Council, Special European Council conclusions (6 March 2025) on the ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 plan; Ursula von der Leyen statements; High Representative Kaja Kallas statements.
United Kingdom Ministry of Defence and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office statements; Sky News, BBC, The Times, The Guardian contemporaneous reporting.
Razumkov Centre, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), Rating Group polling on Ukrainian public attitudes toward negotiations, territorial concessions, and Zelensky's leadership, January 2025 – May 2026.
Centre for Civil Liberties (Oleksandra Matviichuk), Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, and Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights (Dmytro Lubinets) statements on the constitutional and rights frame of postponed elections.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES-11/8 ["Advancing a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine" — TBD-VERIFY exact resolution number for 24 February 2025 vote] and the contested US vote pattern in February 2025.

UA-C-04: Minsk-1 and Minsk-2 Agreements [CORRECTED — Tier-2 block audit, 2026-08-30: symmetry back-reference added to match UA-C-04's forward-reference to UA-D-05 as Trump-2 negotiation track]
UA-D-01: Zelensky Pre-War Presidency (2019–2022)
UA-D-04: Wartime Mobilisation — Conscription Law and Manpower Architecture (2022–2026)
UA-E-01: Wartime Governance Under Martial Law (24 February 2022–present)
UA-E-08: Ukrainian Defence-Industrial Mobilisation (2022–2025) [CORRECTED — Tier-2 block audit, 2026-08-30: prior text misidentified this entry as "Trump-2 Negotiation Track"; UA-E-08's actual title is "Ukrainian Defence-Industrial Mobilisation"; the Trump-2 negotiation track is documented at UA-D-05 (the current document), not at UA-E-08, per ukraine/CLAUDE.md's own Block-E note]
UA-F-01: Ukraine–NATO Trajectory (2008 Bucharest – Present)
UA-F-02: Ukraine–EU Accession Trajectory (2014–2025)
UA-G-02: Wartime Reconstruction — Lugano to Berlin (2022–2025)
UA-I-ANTI-01: NABU/SAPO/HACC Anti-Corruption Architecture (2014–2026)
UA-O-01: Ukraine Reconstruction Governance and Donor Architecture (2022–2026)
US-F-06: US–Ukraine Bilateral (1994–2025) — Budapest to Minerals Deal
US-F-08: US–Russia Bilateral 2025–2026 (forward-stub; cross-link when populated)
RU-D-06: 2025 Trump-2 Russia Negotiation Track (forward-stub)
UA-R-01: Ukraine Governance Books Canon
UA-G-03: Ukraine reconstruction governance Year 4 + minerals fund 2024-2026
UA-E-06: The 2023 Counteroffensive and the Attrition Phase
UA-H-PRES-04: Volodymyr Zelensky
RU-D-08: back-reference added by symmetry sweep
UA-H-PM-01: back-reference added by symmetry sweep
UA-D-09: Ukraine 2026 — Political Architecture and the Post-Ceasefire Question
UA-D-10: Ukraine 2026 Budget and Fiscal Architecture — The November 2025 Draft Budget, the Defence-Spending Floor, the EU Ukraine Facility, the IMF EFF Extension, and the Post-Trump-2 Domestic-Revenue Question
UA-K-01: The 1994 Budapest Memorandum and the Nuclear Disarmament Decision
UA-N-01: Ukraine in International Perceptions — From Borderland to European Cause
UA-J-01: the Post-Maidan Southeast, the Crimea Operation, the "Russian Spring", the Girkin Crossing and the Sloviansk Seizure, the Anti-Terrorist Operation and the Summer Escalation, Ilovaisk and the Regular-Forces Intervention, and the Contest Among the Russian-Aggression Account, the Civil-Conflict/Local-Agency Account, and the Western-Provocation/Realist Account
RU-K-01: The February 2022 Full-Scale Invasion Decision
RU-O-01: Russia Megatrends — The 2030s Questions