As U.S. Tilts to Russia, a View from Ukraine

the recent blizzard of developments involving the war in Ukraine – the Trump administration’s plans to end the conflict, its negotiations with Russia, and the sidelining for the moment of Ukraine and other European nations from the process – most of the attention has been on the White House, the recent Munich Security Conference, and now on the Saudi capital Riyadh, where American and Russian negotiators met Tuesday for the first time since Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Those talks, described in positive terms by both sides, appear to herald the beginning of a new chapter in U.S.-Russia relations and a worrisome moment for the resistance in Ukraine. In the wake of these events, The Cipher Brief turned its attention to Ukraine itself, and to a delegation of Cipher Brief experts who have been in the country while these major developments have played out. 

Former CIA senior officials Ralph Goff and Glenn Corn have traveled in Ukraine over the past week – in the capital, Kyiv, in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, and at various frontlines as well – and they spoke to Cipher Brief CEO Suzanne Kelly about how the latest news has been received in the country. They described a state of deep unease and anxiety among Ukrainians they met; Goff described a “well-founded fear” of what Russian President Vladimir Putin will do in Ukraine after any deal, and Corn added that people in the country are “very concerned with the fact that Russia will probably make another play to take more territory or take their sovereignty from them in a few years.”