Trump Poised to Extort Ukraine in the Name of Peace
Extortion, lies, and capitulation have formed the core of President Donald Trump’s effort to end one of the bloodiest conflicts in modern history, as the White House courts Russia and upends American policy, pressuring beleaguered Ukraine to give up billions of dollars in resources in exchange for U.S. support.
Bad blood between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky exploded into the open over the administration’s effort to force Ukraine to sign a deal giving up economic concessions. Trump has repeatedly said that the U.S. should be paid back for giving Ukraine “$500 billion in aid,” specifically saying he wanted access to rare-earth minerals in eastern Ukraine.
The real amount of aid provided by the U.S. is closer to $115 billion.
“Maybe he [Zelensky] wants to keep the gravy train going,” Trump told the audience at an investment summit in Miami last week.
A draft proposal of the resource deal leaked to Axios on Monday outlines a “Reconstruction Investment Fund” under the control of the United States, to which Ukraine will be required to contribute 50 percent of all revenue earned from Ukrainian “deposits of minerals, hydrocarbons, and other extractable materials,” as well as infrastructure and ports, until it reaches $500 billion.
“This deal, which is an ‘economic partnership,’ will ensure the American people recoup the tens of billions of dollars and military equipment sent to Ukraine,” Trump posted on Truth Social in the wake of a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday.
It is not immediately clear how the reconstruction fund would be used, but it is notable that the agreement does not appear to include any direct security guarantees, and would require Kyiv to add “a sum equal to twice the amount that the United States provides to Ukraine” in the future.
The claim that Ukraine owes the U.S. $500 billion has previously been rejected by Zelensky.
“With all due respect, we do not recognize Ukraine’s $500 billion debt to the U.S.,” Zelensky said over the weekend. “I do not recognize even $100 billion. We agreed with Biden that this was a grant. A grant is not a debt.”
“I am not signing something that will put 10 generations of Ukrainians into debt,” Zelensky said.
Nevertheless, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent – a billionaire former hedge-fund manager who traveled to Kyiv in early February to begin discussions about the resource deal – appears to have made progress. The two sides overcame their impasse on Monday, and are now in final stages of negotiations, according to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna.
The squabble over the resource deal illustrates how calibrated diplomacy to end the conflict between Ukraine and Russia has been overshadowed by a president who views the war in terms of his personal relationships, and America’s interests as primarily economic. Three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion began, America’s policy now is to disregard allies, force Kyiv to pay for protection, and secure a high-profile photo op between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to achieve rapprochement with Moscow.
Trump has also vocally called for “regime change” – not in Russia, but in Ukraine.
This aligns with one of the Kremlin’s central goals in the conflict: installing a pro-Russian puppet government in Kyiv. Administration officials have repeatedly signaled they are willing to accede to Putin’s wishes regarding the war, and that Trump views Zelensky – not Putin – as the aggressor and a bar to peace.
As the fight over resources heated up, the American president attacked Zelensky in an emotionally charged pique, while peddling lies about the conflict – including that Ukraine “started the war.”
“Every time I say, ‘Oh, it’s not Russia’s fault,’ I always get slammed by the fake news. But I’m telling you. [President Joe] Biden said the wrong things,” Trump said last week.
It was Russia that attacked Ukraine, both in 2014 and in 2022.
Zelensky’s open defiance incensed Trump, who has always been thin-skinned and vindictive, and holds little compassion in his heart for Ukraine’s plight.
“A dictator without elections, Zelensky better move fast or he’s not going to have a country left,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week, in a lengthy attack rife with factual errors. “Zelensky has done a terrible job, his country is shattered, and millions have unnecessarily died.”
Zelensky, in turn, replied that Trump was parroting Russian disinformation.
Trump’s longstanding grudge against Zelensky dates from his first term, in which a hamfisted attempt to force the Ukrainian president to fabricate a pretext to investigate the Biden family in exchange for military aid led to Trump’s first impeachment.
Meanwhile, Trump unabashedly gushes with admiration for Putin, describing the dictator’s invasion of Ukraine as “very smart.”
The American president vowed to end the war in Ukraine in “24 hours.” Although that clearly did not happen, a rehabilitation of Washington’s relations with Russia is well underway. Steve Witkoff – a billionaire New York real-estate lawyer Trump has known since the 1980s – was dispatched to Moscow in early February to jumpstart negotiations with a personal message from Trump to Putin.
“I think they had a great friendship, and I think now it’s going to continue, and it’s a really good thing for the world,” Witkoff said, after overseeing a prisoner exchange that freed an American schoolteacher who had been arrested for carrying CBD-laced edibles into Russia.
Once Witkoff successfully started the ball moving, Trump’s next move was to call Putin.
“We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s nations,” Trump said after a call with Putin on Feb. 12, announcing that Washington was working out the details for a summit in Saudi Arabia. Ukraine was not invited to be a part of the discussions.
To secure negotiations, the White House made a number of concessions – including returning Russian embassy staffing in Washington to pre-war levels, and publicly saying NATO membership for Ukraine was almost certainly off the table.
Regardless of whether Trump successfully forces Ukraine to ink the resource deal, anyone hoping for a swift end to the conflict is likely to be disappointed.
“There are still many positions that are not compatible between Moscow and Kyiv, which will force the Trump admin to choose sides,” says Volodymyr Dubovyk, an expert in international relations at Odesa I.I. Mechnikov National University, and a visiting professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “It’s easier to pressure Kyiv than Moscow.”
Putin asserts he will only accept a ceasefire in exchange for his maximalist objectives: seizure of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, in addition to recognition of its annexation of Crimea; removal of the Ukrainian military from the line of contact and disarmament; a ban on Ukraine joining NATO; and the installment of a “neutral” regime in Kyiv.
Zelensky, meanwhile, says Kyiv may be willing to cede ground to stop the fighting. But he also says security guarantees are central to any deal, and that Ukraine still holds out hope of joining NATO – after all, Russia hasn’t honored any previous treaties or ceasefires to which it agreed regarding Ukraine. He has also floated the idea of bringing foreign troops into Ukraine to keep the peace, if a deal is reached.
Fundamentally, the war in Ukraine is not going well for either of the warring parties. Three years into the conflict, there have been nearly a million casualties, according to estimates by U.S. officials.
Ukraine’s military situation is dire. It doesn’t have enough soldiers to hold the line. The only thing preventing a collapse of defenses is that Russia, too, has been sapped of strength. More than 1,000 Russian soldiers are killed or wounded every day, eking out incremental gains. But tens of thousands more are sent to the front each month, to fight and die in Ukraine. Russia continues to advance.
“The war was supposed to take three days,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in an end-of-year press conference in Rome in January. “As of February 24, it will be three years. These will be the longest ‘three days’ that will be remembered in Russian history.”
Throughout 2024, Russian forces advanced in key areas in the east of Ukraine, notably around the road-and-rail hub of Pokrovsk. Nevertheless, at the current rate of advance, it will take Russia years to achieve its stated military goals.
“As of December 2022, Russia controlled 17.4 percent of Ukraine’s territory. After two years, with extremely heavy losses, Russia now controls 18 percent of Ukraine’s territory,” Meloni observed, adding: “I also say this to dismantle the narrative that I continually read, about Russia having already won.”
Putin has fed nearly 600,000 men – drawn mostly from poor, rural, and ethnic minority populations – into the meat-grinder, and every indication is that he is perfectly willing to keep doing so. The Russian military says it is adding 30,000 recruits per month, to replace the 30,000 it loses, but some independent analysts question whether it can sustain that. The Kremlin’s strategy is attrition, victory predicated only on its certainty that Ukraine will run out of resources first.
“Russia openly says their understanding is that Ukraine is on the ropes, and if they just push a little bit they can achieve their maximalist goals,” says Dubovyk. “They say they are confident with their offensive, they are confident in their economy, and that they can sustain this thing longer than Ukraine.”
Trump’s peace initiative relies on the idea that Moscow wants a way out of the conflict; it is also based on the belief that the United States can unilaterally pressure Kyiv to stop defending its territory. Neither of these assumptions may actually be true.
Few on the Trump foreign policy team have expertise in the region. With multiple Trump insiders directly engaged in negotiations and public messaging about the administration’s strategy toward the war, Cabinet officials have made a number of conflicting statements about U.S. aims.
But the first rule of the Trump administration is: Never disagree with the boss.
The handful of Cabinet members who had previously made statements critical of Russia’s war – such as National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio – have been effectively brought to heel. They now join in on Trump’s attacks on Zelensky.
“I think President Trump is very upset at President Zelensky and rightfully so,” Rubio told CBS News last week. “We’re trying to help these guys … There should be some level of gratitude here about this.”
Glaringly absent from the peace process is Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg.
Kellogg’s appointment was viewed positively in Kyiv. Kellogg, a Vietnam veteran and former U.S. Army lieutenant general who briefly served as National Security Adviser in the first Trump administration, has a reputation as an effective bureaucrat and sophisticated strategist who knows Ukraine well. The hope among Ukraine’s supporters was that Kellogg would have Trump’s ear.
But administration insiders say Kellogg is viewed as “too pro-Ukraine.” In the midst of Kellogg’s first official trip to Kyiv as envoy, he had his wings clipped by the commander-in-chief, being ordered to cancel a press conference with Zelensky as relations between the two presidents deteriorated.
Ukrainians, in general, are sick of the war they never asked for in the first place. An effort to reform and expand mobilization last year angered both those unwilling to fight and those already in uniform, who see no daylight at the end of the tunnel after three years of continuous combat. AWOL numbers have skyrocketed, and few want to serve in the infantry – the area in which units are most critically short of experienced soldiery.
Internal dissatisfaction with Zelensky’s conduct of the war, coupled with pre-existing political tensions and an inability to solve deep systemic issues with military organization, have only been exacerbated by martial law. There has never been a shortage of critics of Zelensky inside Ukraine. But while Trump and his allies claim Zelensky’s approval rating is only 4 percent, independent polls in Ukraine say it is actually 57 percent.
Some of the public anger over the failures of the war has been deflected onto the Biden administration – and, more generally, “the West” – which critics say slow-rolled aid to Ukraine amid fears of escalation, making victory impossible.
Prior to Trump’s inauguration, the view of many Ukrainians were reflected in the source who texted me: “I would never say this publicly, but I’m wondering if Trump might not bring anything positive?”
Given the despair many Ukrainians feel as their cities are bombed nightly and the casualty lists grow ever longer even as their armies are forced back, the overall sense one has when speaking to Ukrainians was the hope that something, anything, in the war’s dynamic might change.
Those hopes are being dashed.
“Many people thought the incrementalism of Biden was terrible, and that Trump’s ‘unpredictability’ would be good,” Dubovyk says. “I don’t see him as unpredictable, I think he has been very clear in his previous statements. He likes dictatorships. He hates the European Union. He thinks NATO is useless. Add it all together, and it equals cutting aid for Ukraine.”
“Everything he’s said and done about Ukraine makes me believe he will push Ukraine under the bus,” he adds.
Washington may indeed succeed in pressuring Zelensky to give up economic concessions, and even eventually to agree to a ceasefire. But surrendering to Russia is a non-starter for most Ukrainians – especially diehard nationalists, who are overrepresented in many of Ukraine’s most capable military brigades. When faced with the reality of a bad deal being forced down their throats by the Trump administration, Ukraine may choose to keep fighting – with or without American support.
This is something American strategists have long misunderstood about the conflict in Ukraine, making the same fundamental error which informed Putin’s decision to invade the country in the first place: Ukrainians don’t view the war as a choice. They view it as a fight for survival.
From this perspective, regardless of who controls what percentage of territory, every day Ukrainians stay alive and continue to resist is a victory.
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