It may have been more than 20 days since Trump declared that he would end the war in Ukraine, but today more than ever, the evidence shows that the great victim of the last three years will once again be called upon to pay the heavy "bill."
Donald Trump had made it clear, and there is no one now who does not take what the US President says at face value, that the war in Ukraine will end. Trump and his staff are planning to promote their own proposal by making a key opening towards Moscow for the way the US President sees things. For Trump, a solution without direct communication with the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin cannot lead to any significant development and so he has activated the "red" phone again after four years. Russia is also responding very quickly to American moves, showing that for itself it is an opportunity under the current circumstances, on the one hand, to win multiple times on the Ukrainian front and on the other hand, to bring Moscow back to the fore as a powerful center.
Yesterday's telephone conversation between the two counterparts, in addition to the fact that it includes an announcement of mutual visits to Washington and Moscow, also contains an element that probably indicates the intentions of the US regarding Ukraine. Trump in his post emphasizes that the President of Ukraine "will be informed in detail about the communication with Putin". Trump, in all likelihood, having decided and announced that he would send his Minister of Finance to Kiev, did not inform Volodymyr Zelensky of his intentions. The way in which the US is choosing to act today has at the end of the road the end of the war between Russia and Ukraine, but it puts in second or even third place what is going to happen with the occupied territories of Ukraine and the defense guarantees that Kiev logically requests in order to sit at the dialogue table.
The Trump plan has in the foreground the economic assurance from Kiev that it will provide a consideration of 500 billion, even in kind, so that the White House can continue to support its efforts and it seems to base all the other key elements for the balance not only in the region but also in Europe on the personal relationship and appreciation that Trump has for Putin... The case of Ukraine seems to have many elements in common with the case of Gaza, only that Trump does not ask for ownership of yet another country in order to protect it, safeguard the interests of the West and promote justice. Trump wants to immediately, in his own way, directly and physically involve Europe in Ukraine and seems to be indifferent to whether such a thing under the current circumstances is feasible and will be accepted by Moscow.
The US President is very likely to end the war in Eastern Europe and rightfully take credit for it. The difference is that the end he is attempting to bring about has no basis to guarantee that what the planet and Ukraine have been experiencing since February 2022 is not yet another “frozen” conflict or another chapter in the long list of tensions that have governed Kiev-Moscow relations from 2014 to the present. On the contrary, through Ukraine, Trump will attempt and possibly reap the greatest possible benefits, only these will be short-term.
The "ball" falls today, apart from Europe, also on the side of NATO, which will have to decide whether to continue to accept as its de facto policy the moves of the powerful but still illegible policy of the US. If the North Atlantic alliance aligns itself behind the American positions and the door to Kiev is officially and definitively closed, then the possibility of Ukraine soon turning into a region with a "guardianship" vacuum that Beijing will have absolutely no problem filling - sweepingly so. In such a development, the problem will change from a Ukrainian one to a Russian-American one, directly and reciprocally...
Source: protothema
