Trump-Putin call puts Ukraine in unfavorable position ahead of peace talks
It finally happened: US president Donald Trump held his first official phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin after re-entering office, and as many feared for months, things look bad for Ukraine. Having run his campaign on the promise to end Russia's war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office, Trump instead waited over 9,300 hours to take the first steps towards peace talks, reaching out to Putin without Ukraine's involvement and under conditions that all but explicitly cater to Moscow, according to Kremlin spokesperson Dimitri pcov.
Trump and Putin spoke for an hour and a half, and the main takeaway from the meeting, expressed by Trump himself via social media post afterwards, was that peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine must start immediately, and a ceasefire in Ukraine is in the not too distant future. Trump then called Ukrainian President Vladimir zalinski to discuss the matter. Andre yac, head of the president office, said that zalinsky and Trump agreed that teams would immediately Begin work to end the war.
Earlier that same day, new US defense secretary Pete hegseth addressed the Ukraine defense contact group at NATO headquarters in Brussels and made several assertions that raised alarm bells in Ukraine and Europe. Hegseth claimed that it is unreasonable to expect that Ukrainian territory can be restored to its pre-24 borders before Russia's initial invasion, a goal that he called illusionary. He also noted that, in the eyes of the United States, NATO membership for Ukraine is off the table. He further implied that it is Europe, not the United States, that will bear the brunt of the responsibility for Ukraine's further defense, stating unequivocally that as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine.
Trump's tactics on Wednesday sent clear signals about his approach to peace talks. He called Putin before he called zalinsky, without consulting keeve first. He demonstrated a deferential enough attitude towards Putin that the two spoke at length, extended invitations to visit each other's countries, and ended the call in reported mutual agreement to work closely together. At the same time, his defense secretary all but promised that Ukraine will enter peace negotiations at a disadvantage, with even a best case scenario rejecting Ukraine's territorial integrity and throwing its future security into question.
With such decisive statements from Heth and decisive actions from Trump, we can understand perhaps more clearly than ever before that the administration will not consider Ukraine's integrity and security, or that of Europe, as primary American interests and will act or fail to act accordingly.
Historian Timothy Ash (role-playing speech): "Look, it's difficult for the ukrainians right because because Trump is such a difficult character to negotiate with right so you've also you've always got to massage his ego, um I mean it's worrying that Ukraine's not even at the table, it's woring that Europe's not even at the table right. I mean again Putin got exactly what he wanted; he wanted a Yola to, he wanted a great power Summit, you know, the US and Russia to, to divide and carve up the world and he kind of got that already from Trump, again is another concession right, it's Putin 101 right. I mean it's like does the do the Trump guys have no clue what Putin is like, I mean it's like it's it's a novice rooky kind of error in terms of trump respects power, uh and and brutal power right. I mean that's you know he is he has been scared of NATO but now you know I think I think NATO has been massively undermined by what happened yesterday, um should they be worried?"
So what does Russia think about Trump's and heg Seth's comments? Former Trump adviser John Bolton told CNN that Putin probably couldn't be happier. He said, "Today in the Kremlin, they're drinking vodka straight from the bottle." Russian State television presenter yeni papov said on air yesterday that Trump is doing Russia's work for it, ripping apart the West so that Russia doesn't have to.
We took to the streets of keev to hear the thoughts of the one group of people that Trump's team is leaving out of the Ukraine conversation: the actual people who live in Ukraine a for e [Music].
To, in the three weeks since he re-entered office, it's been a race to unpack Trump's every hint and stray word in an attempt to Divine his true opinions, true intentions, true plans for Ukraine. We can now confirm, with unfortunate certainty, an accusation that has been leveled not just against Trump but against the entire United States government, regardless of administration: it is not committed to supporting Ukraine to Victory or giving guarantees to ensure that it holds a secure future.
Experts say that Ukraine is highly unlikely to recognize any of its occupied territories as legally belonging to Russia, to reduce its Army, to allow for openly pro-russian actors in its political landscape, or to officially renounce its ambition to join NATO. It may be more inclined to agree to delay NATO membership, to freeze the conflict along its current lines, to hold presidential elections, or to exchange occupied parts of Russian territory for Ukrainian ones, but none of these hypothetical concessions get to the heart of the issue. Without Ukrainian Victory or security guarantees, there's no guarantee that Russia won't reinvade in the future, but it doesn't seem like Trump and his team are bothered with preventing that.