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It is not a coincidence that President Donald Trump has given in to the requests of the Kremlin for the oozing peace and insisted that kyiv did the same, the same day that Russia launched his deadliest attack on Ukrainian civilians in almost a year.
Then, a day later, deepening the delusions he has long shown in the war and his own power to affect his course, Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin to resume his senses and stop the murder.
“Vladimir, stop!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “I am not satisfied with the Russian strikes on kyiv. Not necessary and a very bad timing. “
In addition to the familiarity that rebuilds the bones (Trump has already tackled Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky by his first name?), Is there the presumption that the chief of the Kremlin has ever regretted to explode civil apartments or to worry about what Trump or someone else might think about his murder. Trump had complained once before Russian bombings – then, a few minutes later, he returned to blame the Ukrainians for having triggered the war (and, of course, Joe Biden so as not to have stopped). Admittedly, the “peace plan” that Trump had just put on the table should have pointed out that the Russians can get away with all the levels of violence they would like to commit.
Trump’s plan, according to European sources that have seen the plan of a page, calls the following:
• Russian and Ukrainian troops cease to shoot their current positions on the battlefield. This means that Moscow would control around 20% of the Ukrainian territory, including most of its four most east provinces (and, before the war, the rich industrial) in Donbas.
• The United States also raises all the economic sanctions it imposed on Russia following the invasion of February 2022.
• Russia is recognized as controlling Crimea (which the Soviet Union had given Ukraine as a gift in 1954, until Putin Reannet La Peninsula in 2014).
• The United States is prohibited from setting peacekeeping troops in Ukraine after the ceasefire, and Ukraine is prohibited from joining the West NATO military alliance.
• In exchange for all this, Russia is forced to concede … Well, it seems, Nothing. In fact, Russian spokespersons continue to demand that a temporary ceasefire be preceded By a colony of all the “deep causes” of war, which it blame entirely on Ukraine.
As a NATO official told a politico journalist when he was asked what he thought of Trump’s proposal: “Did Putin wrote this for him?” Another diplomat responded with an emoji “with an explosive head”.
The media controlled by the state of Russia certainly understood the essentials of the agreement, by writing: “It is practically a lost conclusion that the United States will withdraw from Ukrainian talks”, and “the unity of the West has disappeared. Geopolitically, it is no longer an alliance.
If it is not also Trump’s goal, then we can only ask: what East His goal?
One could argue that some of these elements could be woven in a peace agreement after the two parties – Russia and Ukraine – are ready or which can both be in a hurry, to stop fighting. However, to access the position of Russia at to start Negotiations, with pressure only on kyiv and no concession of Moscow, is equivalent to Ukrainian surrender.
Unless such pressure or desire, a ceasefire, in the words of Trump, would simply give Putin’s army a chance to come together, to re-mobilize and at least threaten to resume an offensive towards kyiv. Anyone who believes that Putin would hold the line in Donbas, would leave the government of kyiv in place or refrain from threatening other former Soviet republics did not pay attention to what Putin himself said about his goals last year. was formerly the Soviet Warsaw Pact.
As for NATO, shortly after the 2022 invasion, Zelensky declared that he had “cooled” to adherence to the West Military Alliance as compromise for peace. He repeated the point this week. However, in the two times, and on several occasions in the meantime, he demanded a form of security guarantee from Western countries, asked what they could involve in the absence of a NATO niche, and heard nothing in return.
Zelensky also stressed that, whatever the checked history of Crimea, the Constitution of Ukraine simply prohibits letting it go. Trump has removed legal subtleties. If the Ukrainians want Crimea, he asked: “Why did they not fight for that 11 years ago” when the Russian troops stormed and annexed it “without a shot?”
There are some good answers to this question. First, it should be noted that Zelensky was not president before 2019, five years after the annexation of Crimea and subsequent incursions in eastern Ukraine by the Russian special forces. Second, at the time of annexation, the army of Ukraine had almost dissolved. (It would begin to rebuild, with the help of American aid and certain European armies, during the Donbas wars preceding the 2022 invasion.) Thirdly, the annexation seemed, at the time, to be a unique event – the attempt to stop the pro -democracies of Kyiv of all alliance with all Western organizations, in particular of the European Union.
While Putin extended her war in an invasion of all of Ukraine, the terms and the challenges of war have changed. Even at the start of the war, many residents of the Donbas and Crimea considered themselves Russians; In a hypothetical war, they could have rallyed in Moscow. But once Moscow started bombing their apartments, hospitals and other targets, sympathies have changed. Ukrainians to have fought the donbas and Crimea In battles since.
It should be noted that in 2018, during his first mandate as president, Trump said that the United States would not recognize Crimea as a Russian territory. As an active republican within the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Marco Rubio also called for a similar policy. Now he joined Trump on the passage in Moscow. Most of the Republicans who were on the sides of Zelensky not so long ago.
Rubio was to attend the next series of peace talks with the versatile emissary of Trump and his real estate colleague, Steve Witkoff. But when Zelensky rejected the offer immediately, they broke out. There would always be an American delegation, but that made up of intermediate level officials who would have – and would have been considered to have – without influence on the procedure.
This is what Rubio meant when he said earlier this week that, if one side or the other rejected peace talks, the United States “would pass for something else”. Two things are distinguished in this comment as an ambiguous comment. First, Trump invited that Zelensky only for rejecting the specific agreement. (In Putin, who not only rejected him but killed dozens of Ukrainian civilians as a sign of showing what he thought, Trump only sent him a beggar – “Vladimir, stop!”)
Second, Trump will now “move on to something else” taking a simply passive position towards war, turning his attention to diplomatic possibilities elsewhere? Or will he take other measures towards a geostrategic alliance with Moscow, during which he will probably interrupt military assistance and intelligence to Ukraine, perhaps allowing kyiv to fall and the American-European alliance-which is most focused on the fate of Ukraine-?
It is probably a distinction without difference. Trump’s favoritism towards Russia has been clear for a long time. His hostility towards Ukraine has taken on a darker intensity. The events of the last 48 hours may have hardened these trends irreversibly, which makes the days of brilliant – a little less a return to the alliance with Ukraine – Impossible.
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