Trump Pushes for Putin and Zelensky Meeting in Bid to End Ukraine War

Trump said in a social-media post late Monday that the White House talks had included discussion of security assurances that European countries would provide Ukraine, with the U.S. playing a “coordination” role. 

Trump and European leaders agreed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead a task force of national security advisers and NATO officials to draft security assurances for Ukraine, European officials briefed on the talks said. The White House declined to comment. Spokesmen for Rubio didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The security assurances will have four components: a military presence, air defenses, armaments and monitoring a cessation of hostilities, according to the European officials. There are a number of ways the U.S. might provide indirect military support to the European peacekeepers that stop short of putting American boots on the ground, officials said.

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During the closed-door meeting, Finnish President Alexander Stubb called the eastern Ukrainian cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk “a bastion against the Huns,” a description that appeared to impress Trump, according to the officials. 

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Trump asked Zelensky for a $50 billion stake in the Ukrainian drone industry that would ensure some gains for the U.S., according to the officials. Kyiv has built a large drone industry since the war began. 

Zelensky offered to purchase $100 billion worth of American weapons and equipment, with financing help from European partners, according to the European officials, who said Trump appeared to have a favorable response. Zelensky’s spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

Trump emphasized that the U.S. will supply Ukraine with weapons as long as the costs are paid for by NATO members, the officials said.

H/T: Bastiones «contra los hunos» y otros resultados de la cumbre de Washington (English)

Once again confident in its ability to gain a presence on the ground with an armed mission that, according to Donald Trump, would be coordinated by the United States, which would offer the air cover, surveillance, and intelligence that Biden was reluctant to offer, the EU now seeks to protect Ukraine from territorial losses. By flatly refusing territorial concessions beyond what is currently under Russian control, European countries are also showing their weakness, as they legitimize what was unacceptable a few months ago: admitting that Ukraine will not regain its territorial integrity, not even the territories lost since the Russian invasion. In 2022, when the West refused to offer security guarantees and opted for war to regain territory, Moscow, which controlled a much smaller part of Donbass, pledged in Istanbul to return the territories of Zaporozhye and Kherson to Ukraine, even renouncing the land corridor to Crimea.

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After obtaining for Kyiv what Russia offered in 2022 in terms of security guarantees and less territory than the enemy was willing to give up, European countries are now seeking to prevent Donald Trump from forcing Ukraine to give up more territory in Donbass. “I suppose you’ve all seen the map. You know, a large part of the territory has been taken, and that territory has been taken. Now they’re talking about Donbass, but Donbass, as you know, is currently 79% in the hands and under Russian control,” Donald Trump stated yesterday. Ukraine’s partners, who for seven years never pressured kyiv to implement the Minsk agreements, which would have seen it regain 100% of Donetsk and Luhansk, are seeking to prevent the loss of the 24% of Donetsk still under Ukrainian control. Aware that the idea that controlling Donbass would give Russia a better position to invade Ukraine again—something Trump is unlikely to believe—Stubb, a Finn, used an argument that European countries have historically used to demonstrate the supremacy of their civilization against the barbarism of others. “Slavyansk and Kramatorsk are a fortress against the Huns,” Stubb said, according to The Wall Street Journal, which claims that the argument impressed Donald Trump.

The comment, which implicitly calls Russia barbaric, is reminiscent of others made throughout history, which is not repeated, but rhymes. “The Huns, those barbarous tribes of the north, joined other savage peoples to hasten the ruin of the Roman Empire, with customs devoid of the civility found in sedentary nations,” wrote Montesquieu. “The ferocious and turbulent Huns, together with other barbarous nations, ravaged the Roman provinces, with their savage customs totally incompatible with the order of civilized society,” Hume added. The jungle had invaded the garden.

However, coming from a country that collaborated with Nazism in, for example, the siege of Leningrad, one of the greatest crimes in history, which starved hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens to death until the Red Army managed to break the siege, Stubb’s comment inevitably brings to mind a somewhat more recent one. “You know our allies, starting in the north: the brave and heroic Finnish people, who have once again proven their worth beyond all measure. But they are joined by: Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, and finally, allies from all over Europe: Italians, Spanish, Croatians, Dutch, Danish volunteers, even French and Belgian volunteers. I can say with all sincerity that, in the East, perhaps for the first time, all of Europe is fighting with a common goal: just as once against the Huns, this time against this Mongol state of a second Genghis Khan,” declared Adolf Hitler on November 8, 1941, who had invaded the Soviet Union five months earlier. With Finnish help, Nazi Germany was already besieging Leningrad.