A new round of peace talks kicks off today in Geneva. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kuchner have already landed and are due to begin talks in a few hours. We're getting close to the end in the sense that we're running out of time. Trump has already made it clear that he wants the deal done by June ahead of the midterm elections.

This is the second time there has been a Swiss summit. The first was in June 2024, but despite 78 countries signing the final communiqué to end the war, it was a failure. The working of the communiqué was weak and no one who really mattered was there – especially not China who could have made a difference.

This time it’s not about rallying support by Ukraine’s allies, but a simple nuts and bolts trilateral bargaining session to get a deal on territorial ownership and a strong security guarantee.

For US President Donald Trump it's going to be important to close the Ukraine deal as he promised to end the war in the first 1st 24 hours in office and obviously failed to do that so that he doesn't want to go into the mid-terms later this year with a Ukraine failure on his card which will be embarrassing. He is very unpopular already and the make-up of Congress could swing back to the Democrats which is something he will want to avoid at all costs.

The pressure is mounting on Zelinsky. The Ukrainian president complained in Munich that the pressure is one-sided -- mostly on Kyiv and very little on Moscow – as Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear he will not budget so if there is a deal it is Zelenskiy that will have to make the biggest concessions.

However, the talk coming out of Kyiv is that if compromises can be found Bankova is now ready to give up Donbas depending on what is agreed over the promised US security deal. That remains completely up in the air and is probably going to be the top item on the agenda in Geneva.

Another sign these talks are more serious than the last round is Vladimir Medinsky will lead Russia’s delegation again. He was in charge of the talks that lead to the failed 2022 Istanbul peace deal and also headed the delegation when this series of talks kicked off in Riyadh on February 18. The Kremlin explained that the last round was more concerned with security issues than the last round and so sent largely senior military members, but this round is universal again, hence Medinsky’s participation.

"This time it’s different. The talks are meant to cover a much broader agenda, including the key issues [such as] territory and everything else tied to Russia’s demands,” presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said yesterday. “That’s why the chief negotiator needs to be there, meaning Medinsky. The delegation will indeed be expanded: alongside Medinsky, Deputy Foreign Minister [Mikhail] Galuzin and other officials will also take part."

This is basically the same team that negotiated the Istanbul deal in 2022. The Bell opined that this is a good sign as it means, “for the first time at this stage, Russia is ready to discuss a ceasefire not only technically but also at least substantively.”

Trump has also introduced some new deadlines. He's insisting on presidential elections and a referendum on giving up territory to be held sometime in mid-May. The referendum is key because the Ukrainian constitution bans Zelenskiy from giving away unoccupied territory so he needs a referendum in order to legally allow him to do that.

The original 28-point peace plan (28PPP) thrashed out between Witkoff and head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, also included presidential elections as both Trump and Putin want to see the back of Zelenskiy.

A new law was passed earlier this month that makes it possible to hold elections in wartime -- something else that's banned by the Ukrainian constitution – and reportedly preparations for some sort of elections are already underway. The logistics of that is going to be extremely difficult but this week the Kremlin has already said that they will halt all missile attacks during elections should Ukraine go to the polls.

The Financial Times reports that an announcement on elections and referendum, which will probably be run concurrently, could be made on February 24, the fourth anniversary of the war. It also reported that the White House has threatened that if the votes are not held by May 15 then it will withdraw its offer of a security deal. Famous journalist Simon Schuster, who is in Kyiv now, also reported that two anonymous presidential advisers said Ukraine might be willing to cede control over part of the Donetsk region.

Clearly this is also in the Kremlin's interest because they're anticipating that Zelensky will lose and be replaced by someone else -- the top candidates are former commander-in-chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi and Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s former HUR spy master and now the head of the presidential administration. You can see that if a new president comes in it's an obvious point for softening of the resistance.

Zelenskiy's entire brand is built around sticking to his guns and giving nothing away. A new president has the space in order to be more realistic about the catastrophic position the country is in and stop the destruction.

The time has come to do that. I'm currently in a conversation with some of Ukraine’s ardent supporters who are saying that the country is actually already wrecked and will not recover for at least three decades after a ceasefire has begun. The mood amongst some prominent commentators, like Iuliia Mendel, Zelenskiy’s former press secretary, has also soured recently, who are highlighting the non-stop death of their compatriots and were openly scathing of the MSC summit and the empty platitudes coming out of the EU delegates that are not matched by materiel or money commitments.

The argument is that nearly all of the power infrastructure has been destroyed and is currently functioning at 20% of capacity. The demographic crisis is the worst in the world with mortality running at three times fertility, which is going to make economic growth next to impossible unless there's a huge return of refugees which is unlikely at this point.

At the same time the €500bn-plus rebuild bill is going to be next to impossible to raise. Currently the international financial institutions have committed themselves to $75bn. Ukraine could probably restart bond issues and borrow from European governments. It could raise maybe another €100bn and already has the €90bn EU loan over two years, which is enough to get things going.

But the issue at hand is if you can invest enough to start a virtuous circle turning off: spending, growth, profit, wage increases, and investment. We saw in Russia at the end of the 1990s that led to Russia’s boom years. Ukraine should enjoy a post-war boom, but things like the demographics are so bad and the cost of the rebuild so high – equivalent to five-times the value of the entire pre-war economy – there is a very real chance it will remain a failed state.

There are Ukrainian supporters that worry we're not going to reach this threshold which means that the economy will remain a client of Europe for decades and the economy will actually shrink as will the population. People like the UN are predicting a shrinkage of population from the current 25mn down to as low as 16mn which means Ukraine would go backwards not forwards.

I have always said that the best way of unseating Putin is to ensure that Ukraine flourishes so that the standard of living overtakes that of Russia. Ukraine has everything it needs to do – especially if it joins the EU in 2027. Having spent a long time in Russia I can tell you if people's lives in Kyiv became better than those in Moscow that would really shock the Russian population and make them question Putin's authority and credibility in a way that nothing else would.

But that's not on the cards because Europe is almost bankrupt and where the money will come from, I have no idea. The current plan to tap the private sector is a fantasy because they will need at least five years to get past the political risk of a potential Russian second invasion. Fund managers I know say until that risk is at least mitigated, they won't invest dollar-one despite the attractiveness of the Ukrainian story.

So, that brings us back to the beginning: getting the US to sign off on a real and strong security guarantee backed by Europe in Geneva is absolutely essential as that at least would create an investment climate that is tolerable to the more adventurous of the investors.