UKRAINE: Trump Moves One Step Closer To Keeping That Peace Deal Promise

Despite what the kinetic side of the conflict might tell us, it looks like Trump finally has prep for the peace negotiations back on track.

Anyone looking at the war reports in the Ukraine/Russia conflict will see they are still trading punches. That’s PART of the story, but not the whole story. Opportunities for peace — however unlikely they might seem to the casual observer, are budding like the first crocus of spring.

Where we WERE…

Most media types failed to understand the real reason Zelensky’s failed Oval Office visit bothered Trump so much. They chalked it up to ego and personality, when their ‘yass Queen’ hero Zelensky told the big bad Orange bully to pound sand right in his own house.

That wasn’t even CLOSE to what was eating at Trump. He has one goal and one goal only: use the tools at his disposal to keep the Ukraine conflict from spiraling out of control to become the next Archduke Ferdinand scenario, dragging the entire world into a nuclear-enabled Great Powers free-for-all.

We know that’s Trump’s concern. How do we know it? Because he keeps talking about how important it is that we avert WWIII. This is, in all probability, an even higher priority to him than any one preferred resolution of the current conflict.

Trump and Zelensky were SUPPOSED to come out of that meeting as the united voice calling for a path to peace, so that America’s energies could be spent on bringing Putin to the negotiating table.

The fact that Trump has done some very public arm-twisting policy announcements affecting both Zelensky AND Putin has shown that his first loyalty is not to one side or the other, so much as a path forward to peace.

With US military support on hold until Trump is convinced Zelensky is willing to negotiate peace in good faith, it wasn’t very long before Ukraine realized this isn’t a fight they can win without America in their corner.

Where we ARE

That was the old story. Now, we’re turning the page to open up new possiblities.

Zelensky has not only sent a written letter of apology for how things played out in the Oval Office (a mistake many still lay at the feet of Democrats who had been quietly urging him to be hostile to Trump), but he has shown himself open to a period of ceasefire while negotiators from both sides look for some kind of an off-ramp from the conflict.

After the fallout and reconciliation, Ukrainian diplomats signaled their willingness to agree to a 30-day preliminary ceasefire with Russia as part of their negotiations with American officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
“Ukraine expressed readiness to accept the U.S. proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire, which can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties, and which is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation,” the U.S. State Department said in a joint statement with Ukrainian officials.
After the negotiations, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the effort a “concrete step” from Ukraine and expressed “hope that the Russians will reciprocate.” “We hope that they’ll say yes, that they’ll say yes to peace. The ball is now in their court,” Rubio said.–JustTheNews

What that means going forward

For anyone with the kind of Pollyanna thinking that Russia will just agree go back to pre-war borders, the burden of proof is on them to show how a plan like that would possibly be enforced short of America putting boots on the ground to personally drive Russia out of the land they now occupy.

But a combination of carrots and sticks, including relaxing some of the punitive trade sanctions that have been in place, might help Russian leaders agree to some kind of a middle ground.

With the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that has guided Trump’s foreign policy thus far, who knows what might come out of it? We might even end up entertaining a creative solution that nobody has been talking about yet, like he did when he mentioned the minerals deal as a way to tie US interests to the region without ramping up the Russian anxieties that claim to see the forward march of NATO as an encroaching empire.