The debate has shifted away from the minutiae of settlement terms to the global chessboard

THREE years and counting — this is what we might have possibly said of Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. But today, we may need to count no more. If this sounds too good to be true, it is. The big story on the third anniversary of the war is not the untold death and destruction, not the imminent collapse of the Ukrainian forces and not the rupture of Europe’s relations with Russia. It is the arrival onto the diplomatic stage of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, with his determination to bring the war to an immediate end. President Trump is set to succeed, not because he says so but because the adversary is saying so. Russia is ready for closure.

For India, and for most of the world, there could not be better news. India, for a very good reason, has been on the side of peace and has always wanted the conflict to end on the negotiating table. Not everyone is happy. The Munich Security Conference has been a celebration of the trans-Atlantic alliance. Its 2025 edition could well have been its funeral ceremony. The blunt admonition of Europe by US Vice-President JD Vance was the forerunner to even more dramatic events that followed. The US and Russia met face to face soon thereafter and in a historic breakthrough have set the ball rolling for an early summit meeting between their Presidents, and resetting the relationship. Ukraine will only be one piece of this reset.

Few would have imagined this turn of events. If Russia’s invasion in 2022 was a geopolitical shock, the manner in which the war is being steered to an end is no less disruptive.

Trump’s diplomatic blitzkrieg has not happened in a vacuum. Apart from domestic causes within the US, it has come against the backdrop of a growing sense of frustration, despair and fatigue in Europe over the war. Europe’s political institutions and its economy have not measured up to the challenge. The war has taken a heavy toll on the European project. Today, Europe is seething, bitter, divided and feeling let down. Trump has succeeded in convincing US voters that Europeans have become free riders. Europe is thus faced with its biggest crisis since the end of the Cold War.

Ukraine, and specifically President Zelenskyy, has been accused by Trump and Elon Musk of not only not avoiding the war, but of even causing it. The tables have been turned. Yesterday’s allies are today’s detractors. Ukraine’s existence as a functional state is under question. It is on the brink of defeat with 20 per cent of its territory under Russian occupation and 60 per cent of its energy infrastructure damaged.

On the Russian side, 30,000-35,000 troops are estimated to have been killed every month. According to British Defence Ministry sources, the war has led to 700,000 Russian casualties, the loss of 19,000 pieces of equipment and 9,000 tanks and APCs (armoured personnel carriers), giving it the epithet of a ‘meat grinder’. In this war of attrition, Russia has won on the battlefield but at a high human cost and reputational damage. Even if not evident in the immediate term, sweeping sanctions have squeezed its economic choices.

The debate has shifted away from the minutiae of the terms of a settlement over Ukraine to the global chessboard. How far will the new version of US-Russia detente go? What will be its terms? And what impact will it have on the global order as we know it? A grand bargain is in the offing, reminiscent of the Ronald Reagan-Gorbachev moment. A new post-1991 architecture will be created to accommodate Russia’s security interests in Europe, but with a deeply divided Europe. US and European approaches to Russia are set to diverge, and even within Europe, there are sharp differences. If Russia wants to build on the new opportunity that President Trump is offering it, and address European fears, it will have to make compromises and give concessions. Signals coming so far indicate that this is indeed the likely trajectory.

The US is going it alone. Europe is watching and is a straggler, left to its own devices. It will find a ready and willing partner in India to provide strategic succour, as it discovers the imperative of exercising its strategic autonomy. This could well be a transformative moment for India-Europe relations. Similarly, with the imminence of rehabilitation and return of Russia into the international fold, the shackles that held back the growth of normal India-Russia relations will be broken. There is a lot of slack and lost ground to be recovered.

The push factors that drove Russia’s unnatural and involuntary dependence on China will reduce drastically. Russia, too, will pursue its own version of strategic autonomy vis-à-vis China, and engage in self-correction. This will be both voluntary and also part of the grand bargain that President Trump will enforce on Russia. All told, hard alliances will loosen and major actors will exercise freedom of action not seen before. The geopolitical playing field is poised to open up. The Global South will heave a sigh of relief as it will not have to look over its shoulders as it pursues its foreign policy interests.

The elephant in the room is China. If it is Russia today, it will be China tomorrow. The next stop on the Trumpian caravan is China, and the latter is ready and waiting. China is already watching how its close partner, Russia, is being weaned away to greener pastures. The US-China relationship can go in many directions. It is today the most complex and most consequential relationship in the world, and because of this, it is unlikely to swing from one extreme to another. Yet, China is the force that drives President Trump’s project to make America great again and restore its global glory.

All of this is good for India. The idea of strategic autonomy is getting mainstreamed. A world that is not divided into alliances is what India has been arguing for. This is the stepping stone towards multipolarity. The question is how democratic the new order will be, or whether it will settle into only a latter-day concert of major powers.

Thus, on the third anniversary of the Ukraine war, it is not about Ukraine!