For Ukraine conflict watchers, all eyes now are on President Donald Trump who famously promised to stop the war “within 24 hours”.

Trump also made it clear on a number of occasions that his stance on Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine is considerably more flexible than that of his outgoing predecessor, Joe Biden. The fear that Trump will pull the flush on Ukraine has been dogging its support team in the West for many months. That said, the Ukrainian reaction to Trump’s election victory, as observed on social networks, has been patchy and the faction of those hoping Trump would bring peace has made itself quite visible.

The truth though is that the fate of Ukraine was sealed before Trump’s win. The West lacks sufficient funds and weapons to maintain the support of Ukraine at the same level as in the last two years. Meanwhile Ukraine itself is running out human resources in the 25-plus age category which it chose to sacrifice for the sake of defeating Russia.

Announcing the mobilisation of younger men may cause social unrest but more importantly - it will deprive the country (which is already facing a demographic collapse due to mass emigration) of a future in the name of the now clearly unattainable goals like 1991 borders or Nato membership. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has recently pointed out that he is against this move despite Western pressure.

Meanwhile, Russia has been abstaining from large-scale missile attacks against the Ukrainian energy sector, but decision makers in Ukraine and the West realise that if it decides to strike substations linking nuclear power stations to the national grid, the country will face 20-hour long blackouts in the middle of winter. For a country where the vast majority of people live in large apartment blocks dependent on central heating this will be an epic catastrophe. This is likely a factor preventing the Biden administration and its allies in Europe from allowing Ukraine deep missile strikes into Russian territory.

Trump or not, finding ways for salvaging what can be feasibly salvaged for post-war Ukraine would be the most pressing issue for Kyiv and its allies in the coming months. But it’s fair to assume that the approaches of the outgoing and incoming US administrations will differ, at least stylistically.

Naturally the versions of Trump’s alleged strategy with regards to Ukraine that were leaked to the Wall Street Journal and The Telegraph days after the US election attracted a lot of attention. If these plans truly originate from the main decision makers in Trump’s close circle, then the purpose of the leak is to feel out the reaction, especially in Moscow and Kyiv. It means these versions are hardly final.

The key elements of the publicised plans involve Russia retaining the control of roughly 20% of the Ukrainian territory (without Ukraine officially recognising its loss) and a buffer zone emerging that would be filled by America’s Nato allies, with the Brits and Poles named among others. One version also suggests postponing the issue of Ukraine’s Nato membership by 20 years.

For anyone familiar with Moscow’s stance - in the situation when Russian troops are advancing at an ever-accelerating pace - these elements of the plan come across as self-evident non-starters.

There is one simple reason - Nato. Whether postponed by 20 or 120 years, Putin is just not going to make concessions on what was his main reason to launch a full-out invasion. Nato soldiers - even if you call them peacekeepers - appearing within 400km of Moscow fall into the same category. It is exactly the prospect which made the Russian leader pull the trigger, both in 2014 and in 2022.

The emergence of these delusional proposals can be explained by the lingering self-deception in the West about Putin’s motives - a self-deception that was engineered by those benefiting from the conflict. Putin was never going to conquer the whole of Ukraine, not to mention attack Nato countries.

The Kremlin's main goal in this conflict is to ensure Ukraine’s permanent neutrality and humiliate the West - but not too much so that a reset was impossible. Putin wants to finish the historical cycle he unleashed by annexing Crimea in 2014 on his terms. The rest is tactical.

In recent months, the Kremlin made it abundantly clear what its endgame is. At the Valdai Club meeting on November 7, Putin was unequivocal: Ukraine’s neutrality is non-negotiable. His argument went along the lines that neutrality, mentioned in Ukraine’s declaration of independence, a founding constitutional act, was the condition under which Russia agreed to endorse it in 1991.

But when the moderator, Fydor Lukyanov, asked Putin about the line of separation (of course he formulated it as Ukraine’s new borders), Putin dodged the question. So, land is up for bargaining, with some nuances and not within the scope the West might be hoping for.

First of all, Moscow made it clear there would be no talks until Ukrainian troops are ousted from Russia’s Kursk region where a major Russian offensive is currently underway.

Secondly, there is the Russian starting position in the bargain. The Kremlin reiterated following Putin’s Valdai appearance that potential talks with Trump will be based on Moscow’s June 14 ultimatum which outlines Russian demands as a return to the framework of the failed Istanbul peace deal, but in addition to that - and as a punishment for intransigence - Russian wants full Ukrainian withdrawal from the four regions Russia proclaimed as its own two years ago.

The good news is that we know from the Istanbul example, the initially radical demands (a version of Russia’s first draft of the Istanbul agreement was unearthed by Meduza recently) may be eventually followed by very significant concessions. It is likely that the Kremlin is prepared to lose what it doesn’t control yet although the longer Ukraine is hesitating, the more it is going to lose.

The Kremlin will try to grab one of Europe’s largest lithium deposits near Velyka Novosilka and the coking mine in Pokrovsk on which the metallurgical industry depends in Kryvbas, on the right bank of the Dnipro. Both are currently located within a few kilometres of the frontline. But beyond that, the Russians could just as well stop and agree to a ceasefire.

Apart from the land, there is a major prize that Ukraine could successfully bargain for - Russia’s $300bn in frozen assets. The trick is in convincing Moscow that would be a win-win deal.

Putin knows it will be hard to get them back. But allocating them for post-war reconstruction will be good for Russia’s image and his own, for winning hearts and minds in Ukraine which will be strongly anti-Western after what most people will see as a defeat in a war that could have been avoided. It will also allow Russia to negotiate the lifting of sanctions with the West, taking the burden of reconstruction off the Western taxpayers’ shoulders.

There is a bit more room for bargaining, but not much. As per the Istanbul framework, Russia will insist on a small-sized Ukrainian army - but the exact size and armaments are negotiable, within reason. Crucial for the understanding of Moscow’s position is that it wants the resulting agreements to be set in stone – in 2022 the Kremlin was insisting on “legally binding, ironclad guarantees –  rather than another version of the Minsk agreements, which Ukraine and the West were never going to implement, as admitted by the three national leaders involved. Allowing Ukraine to rebuild military strength is definitely not on the table. And part of one of the mooted Trump plans is to send more arms to Ukraine to prevent further Russian aggression.

Russia will also press ahead with denazification and lifting the laws aimed against Russian language and common heritage. Ukraine could and should use these issues as a bargaining chip, but ultimately proceeding with a clampdown on highly militarised extremist far right groups like the Azov Movement and ditching discriminatory legislation will be for Ukraine’s own good if it strives to be a democratic and truly European country. It is also crucial as a conflict-preventing measure.

It’s hard to imagine a worse moment for Ukraine to enter negotiations - when Ukrainian troops are retreating and nearly all military, political and economic leverages against Russia have been exhausted. But it is already up to historians to establish who is to blame for the missed opportunities of getting a much better deal in Istanbul or - even better - through implementing Minsk agreements and preventing the full-scale aggression altogether. Those trains have long gone.

What these missed opportunities should inform us about is that time has never been on Ukraine’s side - the terms of the deal it can feasibly get now are worsening with each of the deceptively minor Russian advances that are being reported daily. But that has been Putin’s approach all along - to raise the cost for each day of intransigence.

The conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine is characterised by two diametrically opposite approaches to crisis management displayed by the adversaries. One of them consistently demonstrates a steely fixation on reaching a realistically attainable goal and good understanding of the enemy - seemingly better than the enemy has of itself.

Another one has its thinking clouded by the Huntingtonian clash of civilisations esotericism and conspiracy theories with regards to Kremlin’s motives which stem from deep ignorance about contemporary Russia. Also, in all truthfulness, it doesn’t really care about its Ukrainian allies. There is no surprise that it is the former who is gaining the upper hand.