Donald Trump plans to meet with Putin in Saudi Arabia soon to negotiate a peace deal for Ukraine. Neither Ukraine nor the European Union have been invited to the talks.
It started
with a phone call on February 12. Trump called Putin to say that as two leaders
of two great nations they should decide the fate of Ukraine. Trump agreed that
Russia should keep the territory it has taken to date and that America would
not support NATO membership for Ukraine.
The same
day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the NATO Defense Ministers Conference in
Brussels repeated America’s position. He said it is unrealistic to roll back to
the pre-2014 borders or for Ukraine to join NATO. Hegseth referred to Trump as “the
leader of the free world” and said it’s up to him to decide what’s on the
negotiating table. He described this as “not a concession to Vladimir Putin”
but a recognition of reality. When Trump was questioned about his position he
replied that Russia deserves to keep the territory that they fought hard for
and lost so many lives over.
Thus before
negotiations even started Trump has given away the two most significant
bargaining chips – territory and NATO membership – without getting anything in
return.
Senate
Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker called Hegseth’s comments a “rookie mistake”
and said his speech sounded like it was written by Tucker Carlson.
But the
MAGA spin is hard at work. The evening before the Munich Security Summit Hegseth predicted Trump will be "the perfect dealmaker at the table". Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on Fox
News said “Donald Trump looks more brilliant and genius every single day.”
Apparently spoken without a trace of sarcasm.
Timothy Ash
in the Guardian imagines Trump as president in 1941. Instead of joining the
Allies against the Nazis, Trump would phone up Hitler and agree to help him end
the war with Britain that was causing millions of unnecessary deaths.
Sources
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/13/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-ukraine-us-europe
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/14/donald-trump-ukraine-peace-plan-europe-britain
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/world/europe/putin-trump-call-russia-ukraine.html
https://tcinla757.substack.com/p/poking-around-at-the-end-of-the-fourth
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-16-2025
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