(From Washington, United States) In the distancethrough informal contacts, Donald Trump y Volodimir Zelensky they negotiate a political agreement that allows dictation the ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. The conversations They are preliminary and the differences between both parties remain deep, however, they share a common goal: to end the conflict that has devastated Europe.
Vladimir Putin knows the terms of the debate between the president-elect of the United States and the Ukrainian leader, and chose to take a backseat until the conversations find a formal setting. Putin has just been granted a military budget without precedent in modern Russian historyand assumes that the geopolitical logic of the conflict will rotate when Joe Biden leaves the Oval Office.
in inertia of his last weeks in the White House, Biden ordered the Pentagon to send $725 million to Ukraine in anti-personnel land mines, drones, man-portable anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank missiles. A final war effort, which will not change the dynamic that Putin wants to impose on the war between Ukraine and Russia.
Trump’s initiative that reached kyiv is based on a proposal that Keith Kellogg y Fred Fleitz They wrote eight months ago. Kellogg is a retired lieutenant general and Trump was appointed as his special envoy to Ukraine and Russia. Fleitz was chief of staff of the National Security Council during the first Trump administration and acted as CIA analyst.
He paper Kellogg-Fleitz claims:
- “A formal United States policy aimed at seeking a ceasefire and a negotiated solution to the conflict in Ukraine. The United States would continue arming Ukraine and strengthening its defenses to ensure that Russia makes no further advances and attacks again after a ceasefire or peace agreement. However, Future US military aid will require Ukraine to engage in peace talks with Russia.
- “To convince Putin to join the peace negotiations (…) should offer to postpone Ukraine’s membership in NATO for an extended period, in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace agreement with security guarantees.”
Zelensky rejects the basic conditions of Trump’s informal proposal. The president of Ukraine agrees to negotiate if his entry into NATO, and if it recovers the territory lost to the Red Army.
The two demands are discarded in Mar -a- Lago. Trump – as they maintain Emmanuel Macron y Olaf Scholz– consider that It is not the time to add Ukraine to NATO, and he thinks that Moscow will not return the entire territory conquered in almost three years of conflict.
Likewise, the president-elect of the United States proposes that the Pentagon continue sending weapons to kyiv, but everything in lower intensity and subordinated to a truce without delay with Russia. Trump wants to end the conflict in Europe once “one day after taking office,” on January 21, 2025.
Zelensky he is not alone in front of Trump. The European Union and NATO maintain that a truce should not imply a tactical victory for Putin. And for these key organizations in the conflict, this occurred If Russia maintains the occupied territories and Ukraine loses the flow of arms supply which – until now – is provided by the Pentagon and NATO.
The problem is visible: Trump succeeds Biden and will give orders to the Pentagon, and NATO has a historical economic dependence with the White House.
In this context, Zelensky and his European allies They will have limited room for maneuver to appease the plans of the future president of the United States.
