Donald Trump’s shuttle diplomacy between Russia and Ukraine is sometimes similar to a broken phone game, and the disregard for the US president’s details suggests that the ceasefire he is sought is farther apart than his bullish statement suggests.
Consider last week’s event. After a call with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, Trump said the two men agreed to a partial ceasefire on targeting “energy and infrastructure,” indicating that Russia will not target bridges, hospitals, railways or other civilian structures.
A few hours later, a Russian drone hit a Ukrainian hospital. The Russian phone readout says it agreed to stop the strike of “energy infrastructure” and suggests that everything else is a fair game.
By Wednesday, a White House spokesman dodged the issue of what was being discussed and pointed to the administration’s reading without clarifying whether Trump misunderstood the argument.
That day, Trump surprised the world by announcing that the US was proposing to privatize the US-led Ukrainian power plant to provide new security assurances to Ukrainians. Trump ordered his national security advisers Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to provide “accurate” readouts of the phone (a odd distinction in itself). In it, they said Trump told Zelensky that “American ownership of these plants could be the best protection for its infrastructure.”
It’s not that fast, Zelenskyy said Thursday. Power plants are national assets and “are belonging to all Ukrainians.” Buying revenue bills never occurred.
“If Americans want to take a station from the Russians and they want to invest in it and modernize it, that’s a completely different matter,” he said. “From an ownership perspective (of the nuclear power plant), we definitely didn’t discuss this with President Trump.”
The contradictions are supplemented, and Ukraine aims to protect itself from potentially catastrophic misconceptions. On Thursday, Zelenskyy also announced that it would send a team of negotiators to Riyadh to provide our negotiators with a list of energy infrastructure they would like to include in the partial ceasefire.
“I don’t want there to be another understanding there in terms of what the parties agree to,” Zelensky said.
Trump is a habit of describing complex and sometimes compromised conversations in nutrient-rich, hyperbolic terms. He is famous for describing his 2019 call with Zelenskyy as “perfect.” Meanwhile, he suggested that Ukraine launch an investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter in exchange for future military support.
Trump’s recent calls, particularly with Putin, are being held in similar black boxes. After they spoke this week, the Kremlin said it had requested a halt of foreign military aid with Ukraine as part of a long-term peace. It was never discussed, Trump argued.
“We didn’t talk about aid. In fact, we didn’t talk about aid at all,” Trump said. “We talked about a lot, but the aid was never discussed.”
The US President tried to control the information that emerged from his personal discussions with foreign leaders. And in his recent discussion, particularly with Putin, the White House has not revealed which advisors were present on the phone.
Only real estate mogul and Trump’s friend Steve Witkoff spoke in person about the call, saying he was “magnificent and transformative” and “I’m proud to be an American who hears it.”
Next week’s shuttle diplomacy exercise in Riyadh may prove a moment when Trump can no longer paint the cracks on paper. “There’s a proximity argument that means one group is in this room. In this room, one group sits and talks like diplomacy in a hotel shuttle.” “And that’s how it works, and then everyone will know where they’re standing.”
The US approach has some degree of cheating as you begin to encounter veteran Russian diplomats. When Sergei Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov met with US negotiators at Riyadh, they pointed out the draft agreement to bring decades of experience and help shape the debate. The US negotiators appeared to have taken off.
Witkov said Putin is “acting in good faith” and believes that after Trump Putin’s call to prevent an attack on Ukrainian infrastructure, the Russian troops have fired seven drones. Some members of Russia’s super invasive rights ridiculed him as cheating on the following days.
“Western was nonsense and I believed it was great,” said Mikhail Zubinchuk, a popular Russian military blogger and propaganda fan, during an online stream. “Witkov said he was impressed by Russia’s commitment to peace.”
Riyadh’s President Putin’s negotiation team will be led by former FSB generals who lead the division that gathers information on Ukraine, and former diplomat Grigory Karasin, who negotiated the Minsk agreement between Russia and Ukraine.
These agreements sought to halt conflicts between Ukraine in the country’s southeastern part of the country and Russia-backed proxy forces. However, they were deemed deeply disadvantaged to Ukraine, and were troubled by the details of which side had to provide what order and what order. In the end, they collapsed.
One question from Witkoff, Waltz and Rubio is that they are preparing to travel to Riyadh for their high stakes meeting on Monday. The details of the 11-year-old conflict can be narrowed down the details of Russia’s most experienced negotiators sitting on the table.
