The US president, Donald Trump, has said “something good just may be happening” at the talks in Switzerland intended to end the war in Ukraine. European and Ukrainian negotiators have been attempting to “rework” the 28-point peace plan that the president put forward last week into one more favourable to Ukraine. Trump keeps signalling that he is willing to compromise, but his original plan put Ukraine in a very tough starting position, handing Vladimir Putin concessions that Russia has so far failed to gain on the battlefield.

It is true Russia has made recent advances – especially around Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad in Donetsk province, and in parts of Zaporizhzhia. And Ukraine lacks the troops and firepower to retake all the territory lost since 2022, let alone Crimea. But the Ukrainian army isn’t about to unravel, and neither is Putin close to fulfilling his original objective: conquering the four Ukrainian provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Russia fully controls only Luhansk. This war could drag on until the summer. By then, Putin’s forces will have fought Ukraine for as long as Stalin’s fought Nazi Germany.

Ukraine’s shortages are well known: too few soldiers to hold an 800-mile contact line and inadequate air defences after Trump severely cut direct US military assistance. Europe’s stepped-up support hasn’t compensated. What is remarkable, given Ukraine’s disadvantages, is the scale of Russia’s losses: more than 1 million casualties according to the UK Ministry of Defence, nearly

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