February 11, 2025
When Donald Trump got re-elected the leadership of Ukraine was elated (archived):
[I]t comes as quite a surprise—and as an indication of just how bad things have become in the country in recent months—to learn that many senior officials [in Ukraine] were hoping for a Donald Trump victory. Faced with the choice of continued bare life-support or a wildcard president who would rip up the rules and almost certainly cut aid, they were prepared to gamble.President Volodymyr Zelensky was quick to endorse the victory, and in fulsome terms. “We look forward to an era of a strong United States of America under President Trump’s decisive leadership,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter, and now run by the pro-Trump billionaire Elon Musk). This was not just spin. In private, his staff have become increasingly frustrated by what they describe as the Biden administration’s “self-deterrence”, the habit of fearing escalation with Russia to the point of paralysis, and a growing gap between the rhetoric of “standing with Ukraine for as long as it takes” and actions that suggest the opposite.
Zelenski thought that he could make deals with Trump:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals during an interview with Reuters on Friday, part of a push to appeal to Donald Trump's penchant for a deal.The U.S. president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine's war with Russia, said on Monday he wanted Ukraine to supply the U.S. with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort.
"If we are talking about a deal, then let's do a deal, we are only for it," Zelenskiy said, emphasising Ukraine's need for security guarantees from its allies as part of any settlement.
Trump agreed to take the offer but in return of nothing for it:
Trump, 78, insisted that the US should have access to Ukraine’s natural resources regardless of whether a peace deal between Russia and the former Soviet state can be successfully negotiated, arguing that the “more than $300 billion” the US has provided Ukraine dwarfs what other nations have contributed to the war effort.“They may make a deal. They may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday. But we’re going to have all this money in [Ukraine] and I say, I want it back,” the president said.
“I told them that I want the equivalent of like $500 billion worth of rare earth [minerals], and they’ve essentially agreed to do that,” Trump revealed.
There are many delusions in all of this. Those rare earth and other valuable deposits in Ukraine which are economically viable to explore have already been sold to various businessmen and international companies (machine translation):
In order for the United States to work with Ukrainian minerals, permits for the operation of deposits must be withdrawn from the current owners, in particular from the former Minister of Ecology and president of Burisma Mykola Zlochevsky.This was stated in his Telegram channel by the head of the committee. The Supreme Court Minister of Finance, Tax and Customs Policy Daniil Hetmantsev.
Before giving them to the U.S. Ukraine would have to steal those back:
"For 30 years, all permits for commercially interesting deposits have already been distributed to "respectable" people. That is, we have nothing or almost nothing to offer our partners," Hetmantsev wrote.He added that the priority issue now is to audit all mineral deposits and return them to the people. Moreover, this issue, according to Hetmantsev, should be "resolved regardless of the interests of the United States or other partners."
The whole argument from either side is thus a scam. There are no minerals for Ukraine to hand over to Trump. There is no price Trump will accept to further support Ukraine or hand it some guarantees.
U.S. attempts to get to some ceasefire are stillborn. Trump is unwilling to give Russia what it has demanded. Knowing that the U.S. can not to be trusted Russia is not willing to accept anything less than that:
The very short version of the argument is that top Russian officials, most visibly Putin, have taken to regularly and in very long form describing the US and Western record of duplicity, not just with Ukraine but on other fronts. This line of commentary has only become more pointed and the bill of particulars of Western treachery, longer.This means the Russians are clearly, repeatedly, and consistently saying any agreement with the West would be worthless. The obvious implication isn’t simply that there would be nothing to gain in signing one, but that it would be self-destructive to do so, since it would give Russia a false sense of security that the West would exploit, as it has again and again and again.
In other words, all of the focus on the content of a potential agreement misses the elephant in the room: the content is almost irrelevant. Russians cannot get to a process by which the perfidious West can be made trustworthy.
With talks going nowhere Trump may try to delay a Russian victory. Or he may want to dump the whole issue to Europe.
[T]hinking that Ukraine can hold out as long as early 2026 seems charitable. And given the Trump team’s apparent complete misreading of Russia’s cards, they seem vanishingly unlikely to believe how Russia can and will simply proceed to roll over Ukraine and not even break all that much of a sweat in the process.
And that’s before Trump’s outsized ego getting in the way. I don’t think he is constitutionally able to deal with Putin from a position of real weakness, which will result in further delay in setting up a meeting, and that eventual session resulting in Putin and Trump talking past each other.
There will be no peace deal.
This outcome of this war will have to be decided on the battlefield.
Posted by b on February 11, 2025 at 16:34 UTC | Permalink