Donald Trump will want to strike a deal on Russia’s war in Ukraine that brings him a “win” for ending the fighting but without also gifting a victory to Vladimir Putin.
Crucially, any settlement must be acceptable to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has spent the past few months working hard to impress the value of Kyiv as an ally upon the incoming US leader – and the global menace posed by an emboldened Moscow.
Such a tricky balancing act – after almost three years of all-out war, hundreds of thousands of casualties and millions of Ukrainians displaced from their homes – will require careful, patient diplomacy.
This was not always a feature of Mr Trump’s first term in office though his unpredictable, forceful style could yet bring something new to the table that enables the two warring sides to compromise in ways that had previously been impossible to imagine.
In a sign of reality biting, previous claims by the president-elect that he could end the conflict in a day have become less binding. General Keith Kellogg, his envoy to Ukraine and Russia, now says he hopes to secure a deal within the first 100 days of a Trump presidency.
Washington has unprecedented influence over the course of the war.
US military support to the Ukrainian armed forces has been pivotal in enabling them to withstand President Putin’s initial full-scale invasion, launch a counter-offensive and continue bloody battles in the east and northeast of the country as well as initiating their own counter-invasion into western Russia over the summer.
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Any decision by Mr Trump to reduce the flow of American weapons, ammunition and money would deal a devastating blow to Ukrainian chances of even holding the line, let alone ejecting Russian boots off their soil.
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European and other Western allies – despite strongly backing Ukraine – lack the military strength to fill the huge void that would be left by the US ending its support.
It means that what the new president decides on Ukraine will impact the fighting whether the Ukrainian president and his troops like it or not.
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But the incoming US commander-in-chief – strongly criticised during his first term for being too pally with Mr Putin – will not want to force any kind of compromise on the Ukrainians that will look to the outside world as a win for the Russian leader.
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President Putin had initially wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine and install a puppet government sympathetic to Moscow.
NATO remains a sticking point
There is no sign he has reduced that ambition, though he has made fully seizing the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south a core goal, along with guarantees that Ukraine will not join NATO.
Such a land grab – while significantly reduced from the whole of the country – would still be nothing other than a win for President Putin. But perhaps he could be lent on to freeze the frontline where it stands today.
For Ukraine, its president for a long time would only conceive of forcing all Russian troops off his territory including Crimea and swathes of the Donbas that were captured following Moscow’s first invasion in 2014.
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Could British forces be deployed?
However, Mr Zelenskyy, in an exclusive interview with Sky News in November, for the first time said he might be open to freezing the war along the current frontlines, provided the rest of Ukraine that is under his government’s control is given NATO membership.
That too seems very unlikely. Mr Trump has even agreed with Mr Putin’s view that NATO membership for Ukraine would be an unacceptable provocation for Russia.
Yet, again, maybe a compromise could be negotiated between Kyiv and Moscow that would see NATO troops, including British forces, deployed to Ukraine to secure the frontline, maintain the ceasefire and deter future Russian attacks.
