A Bad Deal for Ukraine

The Coming Fumble of the Trump-Putin Talks

According to recent reporting, Donald Trump will be speaking with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, March 18th on the topic of a potential ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. This conversation would be the first official high-level bilateral engagement between the presidents of Russia and the United States since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine (outside of a series of phone calls between Trump and Putin previously unknown to the public).

I think this is going to be a disaster.

More specifically, I think this meeting is going to be a disaster for Ukraine and security in Europe. Whatever agreement comes from this meeting will not lead to lasting peace in the region. The terms of this ceasefire will likely serve as a means for the Russians to rebuild their capabilities and reconstitute their military.

Let’s review Trump’s approach to “peace talks” - or as I would call it, his path to Ukrainian surrender. After publicly attacking Ukrainian president Zelenskyy and calling him a “dictator”, Trump and Vance responded to Zelenskyy’s offer of access to rare earth minerals by demanding back-payment for previous security aid. Zelenskyy’s visit to the White House was then cut-short by a tantrum from Trump and Vance over Zelenskyy’s supposed ingratitude for American support. The subsequent freeze in military aid and intelligence sharing allowed the Russian military to make advances in Eastern Ukraine. Having lost targeting abilities for HIMARS and being left blind to threats from Russian aviation and missiles, the Ukrainians began a gradual retreat from Kursk. Despite all of this, Kyiv still agreed to the terms laid out by the United States in Riyadh - only for Putin to leave Special Envoy Wickoff waiting for hours while he gloated on television alongside Belarusian Dictator Lukashenko. From all available information, the Russians are uninterested in the current peace proposal laid out by the United States and are seeking to extract more concessions.

It looks like the starting point of Trump’s negotiation process with Russia is to immediately make several major concessions without any guarantee that they will be reciprocated. When we consider Moscow’s repeated bad-faith approach towards upholding agreements with Ukraine, Europe, and the United States, this should been seen as an immediatley flawed strategy. Given that the last person to speak to Donald Trump always has the greatest impact on his decision making, it’s possible that the Russian government has framed accepting Russia’s demands as the quickest and surest path to peace. It’s possible that Trump is likely aiming to use the coming negotiation process as a start for a potential “reset” in relations with Russia - a disastrous prospect considering that Russia has no interest in peace and will improve relations with the United States on turns unacceptable to Ukraine and our other allies.

None of this looks like a good negotiating strategy. Rather than showing solidarity with Ukraine or positioning itself as a neutral third party, the United States has managed to simultaneously become an active party in the negotiation process and openly hostile towards Ukraine’s interests. Trump has already shown himself to be forgiving of Putin’s open disrespect towards American negotiators and willing to cut Ukraine aid - why wouldn’t the Russians push for more concessions? Why would they view the United States as being a counterweight to their interests, rather than being completely complacent to their demands? The reality is that Donald Trump’s frantic push for “peace” will lead to more instability and violence in the near future. For an administration that views itself as focused on negotiations, this is looking like a bad deal for Ukraine.