The Trump-Putin call made it clear that the Trump administration has begun negotiations with Russia over the Ukraine crisis without consulting or informing the EU, NATO, or Kiev in advance. While it was predictable that the EU, NATO, and Ukraine would be left out of the talks, the way the Trump administration proceeded was tangible proof that allies in the EU and NATO are no longer taken seriously in Washington. And it was clear anyway that Kiev would not be consulted.
The call was followed by a statement from US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who described Ukraine’s return to its 2014 borders, including Crimea, as unrealistic and that Europe must provide “the lion’s share of lethal and non-lethal assistance to Ukraine in the future, because the US faces an equal competitor in communist China that demands the full attention of the US.” Hegseth also made a clear joke about EU states, saying that “they are welcome to send troops to Ukraine, but Article 5 of the NATO Treaty will not be triggered if they come under fire.”
After Hegseth’s announcements, there was suddenly no more talk of Ukraine joining NATO, with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stating that “we must ensure that Ukraine is in the best possible position when negotiations on the future of the conflict begin. The outcome of these negotiations and the peace agreement will be strong and concrete, and it will be clear that Russia will never try to attack even one square kilometer of Ukraine.” This is the first time that Rutte has no longer promised NATO membership. And there was no more talk of a “position of strength,” but only of a “best possible position,” whatever that might be in the context of the military defeat that Ukraine is currently suffering.
At the Munich Security Conference, US Vice President J.D. Vance, in the presence of von der Leyen and Kaia Kalas, fiercely attacked the EU, saying: “The threat to Europe is not Russia, it is not China, it is not some other external factor. Of all the challenges facing the nations of Europe, I believe there is none more urgent than mass migration. No voter went to the polls to open the gates to millions of uncontrolled migrants.”
Zelensky made an effort to stay in the conversation, saying that if Trump manages to bring Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table, “we will exchange one territory for another.” However, this attempt to bring the few villages that Kiev currently holds in the Russian Kursk region, with huge losses, as a bargaining chip in the talks with Russia was useless, it was just another stupidity by Zelensky. We recall that the area of the territories that Kiev holds in Kursk is approximately equal to the area of a small island, while Russia holds an area in Eastern Ukraine that is approximately equal to the area of Greece.
On the same wavelength as Zelensky is the arrogant and very young Kaia Kallas, who is allowed to play the role of “foreign affairs representative” in the Brussels bureaucracy (her entire country has only half the GDP of Monaco), with the deranged von der Leyen declaring that “the war will continue as long as necessary”, while German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, protesting like a schoolboy, declares that the US government “is making public concessions before negotiations begin”.
Of course, the plans with which Trump and Putin will begin negotiations are not yet known, but many things have become clearer after the phone call and the statements of officials, mainly from the US side.
1. Trump seems to want to leave Russia its new territories, the question will be whether and who will recognize the new Russian borders. International recognition is likely to be a Russian demand for a definitive end to the territorial dispute.
2. Trump does not give a damn what Kiev and Brussels (NATO and EU) think. And Moscow has also stated quite often that it no longer sees the EU as an interlocutor. So the EU can continue to organize its anti-Russian hysteria, which no one has been interested in for a long time.
3. Ukraine will capitulate de facto, even if this word is avoided. But Kiev will not receive any of its demands, namely no NATO membership, no return to the former borders and no longer has to dream of financial compensation from Russia.
4. Τhe US and EU should lift sanctions and release Russian funds that are locked up in Western banks.
The big question is whether a deal between Trump and Putin will move beyond Ukraine, into a new security architecture for Europe or even Eurasia.
Trump, in a recent statement, recognizes the status of equal superpowers in Russia and China, officially calling for their cooperation to restore to the planet “the prosperity and stability that was lost due to the choices of the Biden administration and European governments.” But this is likely to be difficult, because Trump’s strategy could be to demand a reduction in Russian-Chinese cooperation in exchange for a concession to Russia, to which Putin will certainly not agree, because this would be just another attempt by the US to distance Russia and China from each other in order to weaken them individually.
So, there are still many question marks, but it is obvious that the EU countries, NATO and the regime in Kiev will be the political losers, they will be the ones (with a few exceptions) who allowed themselves to be led into a suicidal enterprise due to their faith in the Biden administration and in dark-behind-the-scenes centers of power.
NOTE:
The core feature of delusional disorder is the presence of one or more persistently held false beliefs. These beliefs persist despite evidence to the contrary. Such delusions can consume the person’s thinking and make it difficult for them to accept any form of reasoning that contradicts their beliefs.
