When US President Donald Trump took office for a second time, it was widely known that his policies would cause a stir on the world stage. A few weeks in, the shocks and reverberations are far larger than expected.
While campaigning, he said his four-year absence from the White House had been a disastrous time for the country. Russia would not have invaded Ukraine on his watch, he said, nor would there have been a war in Gaza. We will never know.
Trump’s policies are unorthodox, he throws everyone off balance, and his manner is raw, but there is no denying that he gets things moving. The focus this week is Ukraine. Trump wants to end the war that began in February 2022 with Russia’s invasion.
For Trump, this war will come to an end around a table, not on the battlefield. He also assumes, as do many, that it is unrealistic for Ukraine to demand a return to the 2014 borders. Russia has taken land at a huge cost, both financially and in terms of lives.
This means that Crimea and eastern Ukraine (the Donbas) are likely to remain in Russian hands under any settlement. The key issue for both the Ukrainians and the Russians is what security guarantees the rest of Ukraine will have when the guns fall silent. Kyiv wants NATO membership. For Moscow, that crosses a red line.
First contacts
In Saudi Arabia this week, a US delegation met a Russian delegation to begin discussions in a meeting hosted by Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and State Minister Mousaid al-Ayban.
Present were US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov, US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
After nearly five hours of discussions, the US and Russian representatives agreed to restore the normal functioning of each other’s diplomatic missions for the first time in three years. Trump will know that American companies have lost tens of billions of dollars by pulling out of the Russian market and wants to initiate a thaw.
For Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, these were two countries meeting to decide the fate of his country without having invited it to attend. Europe’s nations also felt left out. Yet this does not seem to bother Trump, who brushed concerns aside, saying: “Russia wants to do something.”
Rubio said that he and Lavrov agreed to appoint a high-level team to help negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine and explore possibilities for geopolitical and economic cooperation after the war.
On the same day, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hosted Zelenskyy in Ankara. Türkiye hosted direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in March 2022, which led to the Black Sea grain initiative.
Erdogan said Trump’s diplomatic initiative to end the war was in line with Türkiye’s policy and offered to host talks between Russia, Ukraine, and the US. Zelenskyy warned that no decisions could be taken behind Ukraine’s back, and it would not legally cede its territories occupied by Russia.
Transactional Trump
For Trump, foreign policy is transactional, and he wants something for his endeavours. Knowing this, the Ukrainians dangled a carrot: Ukraine’s rare earths, used by big tech companies and typically sourced from China.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump said he wanted rare earths worth $500bn in return for all the support America had extended to Ukraine since the Russians invaded. Most of Ukraine’s precious minerals are to be found in the territories now occupied by Russia. Trump suggested that Ukraine had agreed; Ukraine later poured water on it.
Read more: Ukraine's coveted rare earths catch Trump's eye
When Russia invaded, Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, was in the White House. He agreed with European states that Russia could not be allowed to win because if it did, Moscow would simply regroup and come back for more— possibly the Baltic states.
Together, Europe and America sent arms. Ukrainian soldiers used the weapons provided. Vast resources were levied. Europe provided tens of billions of euros, while the US provided tens of billions of dollars, approved by both Biden and Congress. This kept the Ukrainians in the fight against Russia’s much larger military.
European scramble
If the US pulls its support, as is expected, the Europeans have a problem. Neither the European Union collectively nor the individual European nations can provide enough military support to Ukraine to allow it to continue fighting.
When the leaders of the UK, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark met in Paris, they agreed to continue to support Ukraine but came up with no concrete plan on how to do that. British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer offered to put British troops on the ground in Ukraine, but only if there was a US security guarantee.
This does not appear to be forthcoming. Indeed, it has already been ruled out by Trump’s team, as has Ukraine’s membership of NATO. Exasperated Europeans accused the Americans of removing their best negotiating leverage before the negotiations had begun.
