Ukraine fears Trump's unilateral peace

Donald Trump's peace enshrines the force of arms. On Friday, after a tense meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, the US president told reporters that it was best to leave the front line where it was and go home. "They should stop where they are. Let both claim victory, and let history decide!" Thus, "it is already divided," he declared. Trump has decided to partition the Donbas by the goat; "otherwise, it's too complicated," he added. Trump's peace is simple. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, ideologue of the Gaza plan, already made it clear to Israelis and Palestinians: "Don't talk to me about history." Peace is imposed by force and the determination of the interests at stake. The British newspaper Financial Times He claims that Trump warned Zelensky during Friday's meeting that Putin would "destroy" Ukraine if he didn't accept the terms of the agreement. The unilateral nature of the force is beginning to show. The longer the war drags on, the more weakened the Ukrainians' options and the will of the European Union become, and the more frustrated Trump, who had promised to end the war in Ukraine in just one day, will soon be a year old.

But, as he has already demonstrated in Gaza, Trump's peace begins with understanding with the aggressor. In August, the US president offered Vladimir Putin a moment of global legitimization, complete with a red carpet and a high-profile reception at the Alaska summit. The ultimatum demanding that he halt the aggression within days instead led to an intensification of the bombing of critical Ukrainian infrastructure. And last Friday, when Zelensky was hoping to strengthen US military support, Trump acknowledged that the Kremlin had presented him with a business proposal for Elon Musk and his tunnel-boring company to build an underwater rail tunnel through the Bering Strait to connect Russia and Alaska.

Trump's agendas are always volatile and transactional. The US president wants a quick solution, and Putin needs an ambitious agreement that justifies three and a half years of war and hundreds of thousands of deaths. Ukraine is beginning to fear the imposition of a unilateral peace, while the European Union—increasingly absent from any negotiations—wants an agreement that won't tear it apart further internally or exacerbate the instability of an unresolved border with Russia.

After months of demanding a seat at the negotiating table between Ukraine and Russia, the announcement of a hypothetical high-level meeting in Budapest, hosted by Viktor Orbán, to discuss a ceasefire, further digs into the European wound. It's a reminder of the humiliation already experienced this summer with the tariff agreement signed with Trump in the middle of August, and it's a gift to an Orbán who is increasingly defiant of his European counterparts. And all this is happening precisely when the European press is publishing a scandal these days about alleged spying by the Hungarian government to infiltrate EU institutions while Olivér Várhelyi, the current European Commissioner, was Hungary's ambassador to the European Union between 2015 and 2017. ~BK_

Trump knows that strengthening Orbán weakens Brussels. Furthermore, the announcement of a supposed sequel to the Alaska summit in Budapest comes precisely as the European Union is trying to find a way to use frozen Russian assets to finance a "reparation loan" for Kiev, after Budapest and Bratislava vetoed his proposed nineteenth sanctions package last week.

But, once again, it's Zelensky who is most afraid of coming off badly. The Ukrainian president assured this Monday that he would be willing to join Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at a summit in Hungary if invited. The pressure to avoid a clampdown between Washington and Moscow that could decide Ukraine's fate is growing increasingly real.

For now, however, nothing is firm. Only more diplomatic noise surrounding possible negotiations that have never materialized. The dividing lines of Trumpist expansionism are not enough for the Kremlin, for now. Its spokesperson asserted, just a few hours ago, that Russia's objectives in Ukraine have not changed, and that there is no reason for a ceasefire.