Petro Poroshenko has some advice for his bitter rival, the current president of Ukraine.
MUNICH — Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has two key pieces of advice for anyone negotiating with Vladimir Putin.
First and most importantly, never trust him; and second, only start talking to the Russian leader when you’re arguing from a position of strength.
Poroshenko fears those maxims are being ignored in the current U.S.-brokered peace talks on Russia’s war, he told POLITICO in an interview in Munich. Poroshenko, Ukraine’s so-called Chocolate King, is guided by his experience of the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015. Designed to freeze the conflict over the Donbas, and signed by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, Germany and Ukrainian separatists, neither accord stuck.
His trenchant observations on the state of negotiations land as Russian and Ukrainian delegations meet in Geneva with U.S. envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, in the latest round of so-far-unsuccessful talks toward ending the war.
Poroshenko, Ukraine’s first elected president after the 2013-14 Euromaidan uprising that toppled Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovych, is preoccupied by the direction of those peace talks.
Poroshenko, who heads the European Solidarity party, Ukraine’s main opposition faction, believes his bitter rival, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has made a mistake by getting drawn into negotiations that have excluded the Europeans and should have insisted on an immediate ceasefire.
“Despite the catastrophe in the Oval Office in February a year ago, he should have stuck to demanding simply a ceasefire. He doesn’t understand Putin and he doesn’t understand Trump. And we have another problem: Trump doesn’t understand Putin. And that’s a global tragedy, and not just for Ukraine,” Poroshenko said.
“Trump thinks Putin is trading with him and trying to get better peace terms. This isn’t true. Putin isn’t trading. He has an absolutely different understanding. Putin wants to restore the Soviet Union. Putin wants to reestablish the Russian Empire. I have no doubt about that. Putin dreams about his place in history. And no matter the price in lives lost — Russian lives and, of course, Ukrainian lives,” he added.
Nor does Poroshenko reckon that Putin cares much about securing extra land in eastern Ukraine that his troops have been unable to seize and which the Kremlin boss is demanding Kyiv hand over in any peace deal.
He thinks Putin is using that demand “to try to destabilize the internal political situation in Ukraine” and wreck the country’s unity, as any territorial concession would have to be voted on in a referendum that would split Ukrainians.
“This is the Russian scenario. Remember, Putin is a KGB officer. He’s a specialist in this kind of thing,” Poroshenko said.
Boots on the ground
During the 2019 election campaign, Zelenskyy went after Poroshenko for signing the failed Minsk agreements, which were highly unpopular and that Russia failed to implement.
Poroshenko defends the Minsk process. He points out that he conceded little — and far less than Putin demanded. “But at least Minsk won me five years to help build up the Ukrainian state, church and army,” he said. Poroshenko believes those five years made all the difference in Ukraine being able to withstand the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022 and stave off defeat.
Europeans should now force themselves into the talks by taking up French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for the continent to participate directly, Poroshenko said.
“I think momentum will build behind it,” he said, but noted it needs an endorsement from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “Europe has every right to be at the table, as it is the one financing Ukraine now. That said, without Trump, without America, it is impossible to reach a peace deal. The role of [the] United States is important, but without Europe, also nothing can happen. They can play the good cop and bad cop,” he added.
But Poroshenko also believes that Trump needs to cross one of his red lines to guarantee Ukraine’s postwar security.
“It has to involve boots on the ground. Whose boots? America’s, because without them there will be conflict again,” he said.
Poroshenko believes that Trump — who has ruled out putting U.S. troops into Ukraine — might be persuaded to change his mind.
According to Poroshenko, in 2017, when he was president, and Trump was in his first term, they discussed an American deployment as part of a NATO or United Nations peacekeeping force. Trump ruled that out initially. “He hates NATO. He hates peacekeeping operations by the United Nations,” Poroshenko said.
But as they discussed it, as Poroshenko tells the story, Trump started to entertain the possibility. He notes that Trump has his legacy in mind and wants to go down in history as the president of peace.
“And Trump can’t deliver a peace deal without boots on the ground,” Poroshenko argued.
National unity
Both Poroshenko and Zelenskyy stayed at the same hotel during the Munich Security Conference last week — but their paths didn’t cross.
“I have only spoken with him three times the past seven years,” Poroshenko said. The last time was more than a year ago and “we discussed his so-called victory plan and I told him not to worry and that we would back it as he’s the commander-in-chief. Unfortunately, that was last time we spoke,” he said.
Poroshenko and Zelenskyy harbor deep animosity toward each other and traded fierce barbs during the 2019 election campaign. Nevertheless, Zelenskyy won by a landslide after saying he could settle the conflict with Russia through direct talks with Putin, and by reaching out to young voters via social networks with great success.
Ukrainian prosecutors, appointed by Zelenskyy, then ensnared Poroshenko in the courts, charging him with serious crimes, including treason, conspiracy and corruption. Poroshenko says all the charges are trumped up, and he’s confident that on March 6, the country’s Supreme Court will rule them illegal and unconstitutional.
Following a series of recent corruption scandals that have forced the departure of Zelenskyy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak, and amid growing criticism of democratic backsliding, Ukraine’s politics have become increasingly fragile, he argued.
Now, Zelenskyy is facing a parliamentary crisis, with more than 20 of his Servant of the People lawmakers under investigation for taking bribes to secure votes, which could deprive the president of a parliamentary majority.
“Parliament is now in the very deep crisis,” Poroshenko said. “And because of that, he will have no option but to form a government of national unity. I do not put forward any precondition. I don’t need any position in the government, but it is becoming a question of whether Ukraine will survive or not.”