The Zelenskyy administration had inherited a very bad hand from its predecessors and was certainly not responsible for what had happened before it came to power in 2019. Yet the bad blood between Ukraine and Trump was already a serious factor for the new Ukrainian president to contend with. Trump viewed the machinations of some Ukrainians, in their attempt to gain favor with the Clinton campaign during the 2016 elections, as being an expression of state policy. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C., had played a bad hand against the Republican Party standard-bearer rather carelessly, and secret Ukrainian intelligence (SBU) files on Paul Manafort had been leaked to American and British newspapers during the week of the 2016 Republican convention—which had led to his sacking as Trump’s campaign chairman. A Kyiv insider previously speculated to us that Trump’s relationship with Zelenskyy was “likely beyond repair,” though as Zelenskyy has shown in his postelection commentary and in his meetings with Trump, that may not be the case.

Trump has always seen Ukraine as part of the “Russiagate” narrative. While hardly a “Russian asset,” or controllable in any way by anyone apparently, Trump is also deeply skeptical of the international alliances that constrain the freedom for the blunt application—or withdrawal—of American power in global trouble spots. In the process he appears willing to weaken and destabilize the multilateral institutions and security alliances that constrain Russia’s own influence. In that sense, Trump always seemed like a natural partner for Putin, even if the Russiagate narrative was always something between a political slander and a mass hallucination by people who didn’t know much about Eastern Europe and turned out not to be very bright.

Despite Putin’s public statements, such as his smirking claim to support Kamala Harris because of her “infectious laugh,” the Kremlin was almost certainly rooting for Trump’s victory in the 2024 election. That is even more so than during previous election cycles: In 2016, Moscow had incorrectly assumed that he had no chance of winning against an establishment candidate and supported Trump essentially as a spoiler. That assumption essentially reflected the Kremlin’s continuing inability to understand the American system and national character: Assuming that all democracies were as “managed” as Russia’s, Moscow could not believe a disruptive outsider would be “allowed” to win.

This time, however, the Kremlin viewed the American horse race as something closer to a win-win. A Trump victory was the preferred outcome, but a narrow and contested Harris victory would have served their purposes almost as well. A polarized and paralyzed America, engaged in months of recounts, recriminations and intense civil disobedience, would have certainly satisfied the Kremlin.

The Russians understand full well that Trump is a uniquely self-centered and transactional individual who has zero allegiance to them. He is seen with good reason as an unpredictable character, and they are well aware that although he poses a challenge to the Western concert of nations, he is equally capable of doing just as much damage to Russian interests. Indeed, it is noteworthy how far the state-controlled media have gone in trying to play down to the Russian people any overoptimistic expectations as to what a Trump presidency may mean. The tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets ran a commentary headlined “Uncle Trump’s Tales: Promises of ‘Swift Peace in Ukraine’ Are Worth Less Than Nothing,” while Nikolai Patrushev, one of Putin’s most hawkish advisers, even hinted that if Trump challenged the agenda of the U.S. deep state too severely, he faced the risk of assassination.

Patrushev is often something of a nationalist outlier in his circle, but later Putin himself picked up the idea, warning during a summit in Kazakhstan that “he is not safe now” considering the “absolutely uncivilized methods used to battle against Trump, up to and including an assassination attempt.” Of course, Putin in part is playing to Trump’s vanity, presenting him as an embattled champion fighting a ruthless elite, but he is also counseling against overenthusiasm at home.

The fact that Trump’s decisions are unpredictable to himself no less than to America’s elites and international partners makes him a totally unreliable partner for the Kremlin, and in some ways makes him much more dangerous than a conventional opponent. Russia’s armies, spooks, and saboteurs have always factored in some degree of U.S. restraint. So long as the Americans were determined to be the adults in the room, the Russians could play the role of the risk-taking adventurers. No such assumptions of responsible behavior or clear and stable “red lines” will be made under the next Trump administration. That lack of predictability is something that will make the Russians much more cautious in their decision-making, with the aggressive and opportunistic Trump liable to pocket those gains.

Trump’s instincts are also filtered through the policy recommendations of his team, and many of the proposed security and cabinet officials whom Trump has nominated are more hawkish on Ukraine than had been anticipated. Even as some of his team would strongly prefer that the Americans hand over the Ukrainian burden to Europe, most understand the stakes of the conflict—as well as its capacity to disrupt their other foreign and domestic policy priorities. Trump’s penchant for theatrical negotiation means that he is just as likely to pressure the Russians to make concessions as he is willing to do so with the Ukrainians.

The Russians had been horrified in April 2017 by the experience of watching Trump impulsively order a cruise missile strike into Syria when he was angered by dictator Bashar Assad’s brutal chemical attack on civilians. An American president with an impulsive temperament, mercurial and opaque decision-making processes, radical pride, a deeply egoistic sense of self, no appetite for following conventional wisdom, a low threshold for the use of force, and no interest in consulting with allies is the definition of a Russian strategic nightmare. By the end of the first Trump administration, U.S. policy toward Russia was the toughest it had been at any time since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. “Look at what he is doing, and not what he is saying on TV,” conservatives would reply to complaints from Ukraine hands at that time. Admittedly, this was above all because Congress arrogated Russia policy to itself, but many within the Kremlin, mirror-imaging their own autocratic politics, presumed Trump was somehow behind this. Even the more sophisticated America-watchers were disappointed as it became clear that he was not willing to invest any of his own political capital to intervene and moderate Congress’ hawkish actions toward Russia.

Putin’s congratulatory remarks to Trump included boilerplate about negotiations with Ukraine—but not under “Kyiv’s demands.” Putin’s best chance for a quick and positive end to the war, or at least a cease-fire on his terms, is to have the Americans force concessions on Kyiv. It is, of course, unclear whether Trump would be able to impose a cease-fire on Kyiv, let alone a lasting end to the conflict. He can surely threaten to limit or block further military aid, which would be disastrous for Ukraine, but this would have severe potential political repercussions, especially as a cease-fire would almost certainly favor Putin, allowing him a space in which to rearm and reconstitute his forces, but also leaving him with the initiative, able to resume hostilities whenever he thinks is best to his advantage.

The Ukrainians understand this dynamic perfectly well, and will therefore resist any such concessions unless they are accompanied by reliable security guarantees. Such guarantees will be even more crucial for any lasting agreement, which would likely be framed as “land for peace,” with Ukraine accepting some or all of Russia’s territorial conquests—currently accounting for perhaps 19% of all Ukraine—in exchange for an end to the war. Having been badly burned by the lack of response to Moscow’s breach of its commitments under the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, which saw Ukraine surrender its share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal in return for promises that the other signatories would never attack it, Kyiv will need those security guarantees legally codified in treaty form. Ideally in their eyes, this would take the form of full NATO membership—indeed, Zelenskyy explicitly floated the idea that he would waive any hopes of militarily regaining the occupied territories (which in practice means abandoning them, at least for the foreseeable future) in return for quick entry of the rest of Ukraine into the NATO alliance, so that it would be under its Article 5 guarantee of mutual protection.

Getting Washington to lean on Kyiv and impose a cease-fire or peace process will require Putin to try to woo Trump. Putin may well have trouble accepting that in the process he will implicitly be acknowledging that Trump and the United States will be the ultimate guarantors of the negotiation process. All of which carries serious potential risks for Moscow. Trump is easily offended, and if the Russians signal a lack of flexibility in negotiations, or appear to be acting in bad faith or drag their feet, or in any way seem to be the ones denying him a quick and satisfying political triumph, they will deeply anger Trump and thus risk losing an opportunity to end the conflict on terms acceptable to them.

Trump’s personal antipathy toward the Ukrainians, whom he rightly or wrongly views as having been on his opponent’s side for the past three electoral cycles, will no doubt be balanced out by his desire to deliver a big and flashy deal. Trump will also be keen to avoid a debacle like the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. This may help protect the Ukrainians from being totally abandoned to Moscow. Although Trump very much desires to rebalance the burden of the war and force the Europeans to shoulder a greater share—especially by buying more American weapons and ammunition on behalf of Ukraine—he will not want to look weak or a “loser” by capitulating to Putin. Proffering the unsentimental and transactional businessman the understanding that he is forcing European freeloaders to pay their own way—and even better to pay Americans for defending them—would be one way of keeping him on board.

There is also a belief in some quarters in Ukraine that Trump could potentially be their savior, forcing a deal—whether good or bad—before the country bleeds to death through attrition. Trump’s election has therefore been met with a surprising amount of positivity within Ukrainian political circles, which have grown frustrated with the way in which the Biden administration had been slow-rolling assistance, much as it attempted to limit Israel’s offensives in Gaza and Lebanon. As a result, many in Kyiv—including figures within the presidential administration—are entirely ready to give Trump the chance to break the current stalemate.

That said, it is also important to avoid assuming that Trump’s election will necessarily bring dramatic changes to the war front. Negotiating the temporary cease-fire that Putin wants without offering Ukraine security guarantees would not be accepted by Kyiv, even as Moscow will not accept Ukraine’s integration into Western military alliances (with or without NATO membership). Trump’s high profile and theatrical attempts at procuring a deal with North Korea fell through because America fundamentally had no leverage to make the North Koreans dismantle their nuclear program. Likewise, it is entirely possible that, faced with a similarly intransigent situation between Kyiv and Moscow, Trump would shrug and move on to the next thing while directing the Europeans to take matters into their own hands, leaving the Russians without a resolution to the war and the Ukrainians in more dire shape than before.

A former Ukrainian diplomat who used to be close to the administration in Kyiv admitted that “Trump is no more a friend of ours than he is of the Russians, he just wants to prove he is the master dealmaker, get that Nobel Peace Prize, prove he can accomplish what Biden failed to do. But let’s be clear, if something else more appealing comes along, or if it looks too hard, he’ll just drop this.” Neither Moscow nor Kyiv want to be seen as the intransigent party, and both have recently restated their maximalist negotiating positions precisely to indicate that they are willing to see what they can get.

However, while the Russians have enough arms to fight until the end of 2025, the Ukrainians are running critically low on manpower. What they may face is not a sudden collapse of their lines, but a continued, slow and bloody Russian advance. To some, the unpalatable choice seems to be between a bad deal sooner or an even worse one later. As the Russians grind away at Ukraine’s forces and now seem to be winning, many in Kyiv see Trump’s intervention as their only option, even if this may not be Kyiv’s optimal time for negotiations in terms of battlefield dynamics.

After all, what happens if there is no cease-fire, let alone an actual peace deal? Trump is not going to be able to pull Russia away from its revisionist authoritarian alliance with China, Iran, and North Korea, as it needs them too much. Likewise, Ukrainian dreams that a popular uprising, economic collapse, palace coup, army mutiny, or heart attack would rid them of Putin and end the war have not panned out. At the same time, while a growing proportion of Ukrainians supports some kind of negotiations, most still oppose any long-term land-for-peace deal, let alone capitulation to Moscow. If NATO is not willing to let Ukraine join, perhaps a multinational alliance of more combative European states such as Britain, Poland, and the Baltic states could provide some meaningful security guarantees that could permit a genuine peace deal. However, it could just as easily be that the war continues for several more years before concluding with an Iraq-Iran 1980s style stalemate—only with even a higher number of dead Russians and Ukrainians.

It is tempting to view Trump’s efforts as nothing more than a vanity project, but it may also be that they offer the best, or only, hope of silencing the guns, and preventing even worse outcomes.

If that happens, he may well deserve a Nobel Prize.