Trump\u2019s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, finally made it to Kyiv. After more than a year and a half of failed peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, this was their first visit to the Ukrainian capital. President Trump seems to want to resurrect his peace-making efforts in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The Envoys\u2019 say that they have new proposals and want to convene a new trilateral meeting between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States. So far, reports from the meetings in Moscow and Kyiv suggest there is not much new on the table. In fact, President Zelensky said after meeting the envoys that the war would continue into the winter.<\/p>\n
Could Trump\u2019s new efforts succeed this time? Perhaps. But they are doomed to fail unless he corrects three mistakes.<\/p>\n
First, Trump and his envoys see Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine as real estate developers. To them, this is about real estate and assets. It is about who \u201cowns\u201d the Donbas and who \u201cowns\u201d the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.<\/p>\n
They do not grasp the fundamentals about Russia\u2019s imperial great power ambitions in the neighbourhood and beyond. They do not understand the widespread view in Russia that Ukraine is not a real country and that Ukrainians are not a real people. They do not realise that Putin truly believes that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 21st century.<\/p>\n
But why does this matter? Isn\u2019t it enough to be great at making real estate deals? It matters because if you don\u2019t understand the drivers of the conflict, you will never understand how to resolve the conflict.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not about control of Donbas; it is about whether Ukraine exists or not. It is about Ukraine wanting to be part of the West and its institutions: EU and NATO. Putin believes that Russia can never be a Great Power if it doesn\u2019t control Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Putin\u2019s war was never about real estate and assets; it\u2019s about empire and domination.<\/p>\n
The second mistake is that Trump overestimates Russian power and underestimates Ukrainian strength.<\/p>\n
Trump believes that it is inevitable that Russia will win over Ukraine. Russia is larger, has more people, and nuclear weapons. How can it not win?<\/p>\n
Ukraine is smaller, with a smaller population, and no nuclear weapons. According to Trump, the Ukrainians have no cards to play. Its defeat is inevitable. Better just to accept draconian demands and end the war on Russian terms than let the war continue.<\/p>\n
This misperception has coloured the Trump Administration\u2019s approach to peace-making since the outset. It was made painfully evident in the meeting between Trump and Zelensky in the White House in February last year. The US negotiators have taken the Russian positions at face value and then presented them as theirs to the Ukrainians and Europeans.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainians have skilfully showed how a smaller state can successfully defend itself against a bigger one with asymmetric means. (Incidentally, something Trump has learned in Iran). Ukraine\u2019s response to Russia\u2019s war of attrition has been a war of technology. Drones have stopped Russian advances along the frontline and hit critical military infrastructure deep inside Russia. Ukraine has shown that it has cards to play.<\/p>\n
The third mistake is that Trump believes that he can get a deal without putting pressure on Russia. For a highly inconsistent and erratic man, his only consistent trait is his reluctance to say something critical of Putin or put pressure on Russia. If anything, Trump has tried to strongarm the Ukrainians and Europeans to accept Russia\u2019s demands \u2013 but never Putin.<\/p>\n
Much has been written about why this is so. Is Trump a Russian asset? Is he being blackmailed with \u201ckompromat\u201d? Does he want to make money from deals with Russia when the war is over? We may never know the reason.<\/p>\n
But Trump\u2019s reluctance to put pressure on Russia has been well-noted in Moscow. Putin sees that he can escalate against Ukraine without any consequences or costs. Without pressure, Putin has no incentive to negotiate in good faith or make any concessions necessary for a peace agreement or ceasefire.<\/p>\n
In fact, the lack of pressure has opened for more escalation. Putin sees that he can escalate, as we have witnessed during the past few weeks with non-stop air strikes against Kyiv, without any retaliation from Washington.<\/p>\n
Putin plays along with Trump\u2019s negotiation theatre to avoid completely alienating him and making him look weak. But Putin will never negotiate in good faith as long as there is no pressure \u2013 or the threat of increased pressure \u2013 from the United States.<\/p>\n
It is not impossible that Trump\u2019s peace-making efforts will succeed. But it is highly unlikely. So far there is nothing to suggest that he has understood any of the above or is making a course correction.<\/p>\n
Europeans have a role to play here. They need to temper Trump\u2019s worst instincts, help him see who the real spoiler is, and nudge him to impose real costs on Putin. But he best that can realistically be expected from Trump\u2019s renewed interest in making peace is that the United States continues selling weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, including Patriot interceptors, continues sharing intelligence, and keeps existing sanctions on Russia. Little more can be hoped for with Trump in the White House.<\/p>\n
Fredrik Wesslau is a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Trump\u2019s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, finally made it to Kyiv. After more than a year and a half of failed peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, this was their first visit to the Ukrainian capital. President Trump seems to want to resurrect his peace-making efforts in Ukraine. The Envoys\u2019 say that they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":40,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8194"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8296,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8194\/revisions\/8296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foglioeuropeo.ilfoglio.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}