In the Donald Trump world, everything has a price.
There is no place for emotions in his politics. General value cannot be secured for military aid. And the US President doesn’t care who controls the blood-soaked soil of Eastern Ukraine, as long as he has access to the rare earth minerals below him.
The peace Trump negotiates is not about justice. There is no deeper morality or morality here except who “made it.” Trump shows he is ready to put pressure on Ukraine and Europe to make concessions to sign the dotted line.
All that remains for him is hashing the price.
“I’m just here to get peace,” Trump said in his oval office. “I don’t really care much other than wanting to stop millions of people being killed.”
We will not win the war, but we will put it into words that this has been built for years and years for our support to Ukraine. It’s difficult.
The Biden administration helped manage symptoms of Russian invasion. Now Trump says he intends to provide a cure. But it’s something that’s not welcome: stop resistance.
Since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, the saying in the oval office was “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” Biden officials regularly say that Ukraine itself will decide that it is ready for negotiations.
But that was before the US election. It was not the issue of Ukrainian talent and weapons supply that ultimately brought us to this point. The price was Pennsylvania eggs. Ukraine’s biggest betrayal in the Biden administration may have been to lose the US election and effectively abandon Ukraine’s second front to “America First.”
“We’re holding it down and frankly, we’ll go as long as we have to go, because we won’t let other people wake up,” Trump said. Of his remarks on Monday, he shows that he will not allow Ukraine to collapse completely. “But now, President Putin wants that peace. That’s a good thing, and he didn’t want to have peace with Biden.”
Some Ukrainians and Russian observers may believe that the US president has a deeper plan here. But judging from his actions in Gaza and in the US, there may be no deeper plans.
Assigning Hawkish’s general Keith Kellogg, his go-to deal maker Steve Witkoff, who negotiated the Gaza ceasefire and Hostage deal, shows that the process will be affected to the fullest extent. Just another real estate transaction.
Now, much of Europe wonders if Trump is trying to bring their benevolent Acom to them on the east side.
“What do you want to negotiate?” Read one text message from a European official. He calls it “Subaku.”
In fact, it was just a Trump opening offer.
Russia shows he hopes to go further. In the communique, Russian President Vladimir Putin was to address the “origins of conflict” that he previously said would include the Western attitude of Ukraine and the NATO expansion of the 2000s and 1990s. He said he wanted a deal.
He may try to pull the clock back, another European official said, and the US troops stationed in the Baltics, Poland and other ex-communist countries will return to defend them. raise concerns about further Russian land grabs without US troops to guarantee.
Such results have been announced by Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses to his NATO counterpart that cuts at the US level in Europe could become part of any deal. When that was the case, such a result seemed even more possible.
In effect, Trump is negotiating with Europe, not with Russia. Europe issued a counter offer. Treat us as partners and give us a seat at the table.
“We shouldn’t remove anything from the table before negotiations begin,” said Kaja Kallas, head of foreign policy for the EU, before Thursday’s NATO meeting. “It’s clear that the back of your back trade won’t work. You need Europeans, you need Ukrainians.”
That depends on what Trump does next, as Hegses revealed. “It’s all on the table,” he said. “In conversations with Vladimir Putin and Zelensky, it is the scope of the leaders of the free world that decided whether or not he would allow it: President Trump.”
The question is who is in that free world now, and what is the price of the entry?
