Donald Trump’s envoy, real estate developer Steve Witkoff (Getty)
EA-CAI VideoCast: Watching Russia Fail in Ukraine
EA-War and Politics 24: What Next for Ukraine-Russia-US Talks?
I joined Ukraine’s War and Politics 24 on Thursday for a 35-minute examination of uncertainty and confusion after the first Ukraine-Russia-US talks seeking to end Moscow’s 47-month full-scale invasion.
Speaking with hosts Daniel Tkiie and Sofia Nazarenko, I admit the struggle to analyze developments with few details from last weekend’s first round in Abu Dhabi.
There is no indication of advance on the issues of territory and security guarantees for Kyiv. Instead, reports indicate Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have demanded that Ukraine give up the rest of the strategic Donetsk region in return for any guarantees from the US.
Multiple officials and journalists have testified about Witkoff’s naïveté and incompetence, less than three months after he and Kushner colluded with the Kremlin on a 28-point ultimatum to Ukraine.
And there is further confusion over a proposed temporary ceasefire of attacks on energy infrastructure: the Kremlin is backing away from acceptance despite Donald Trump’s declaration that he obtained Vladimir Putin’s acceptance of a week-long pause.
I am a bit passionate about this.
We are talking about an invasion which may be the most serious in Europe since 1945. We had a report this week of almost 2 million military casualties. There are ten of thousands of civilian casualties.
The US does not have diplomats here. It does not have people trained in mediation or negotiation. It has a real estate developer and Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
That is not a recipe to end this invasion, especially when the Kremlin knows how they can manipulate that real estate developer and Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
The Orange Revolution and the Rose Revolution produced similar if not the same results… In the Georgian case, Russia fought a NATO trained, NATO supplied and NATO financed military, as it pushed back against US global strategy in 2008. Professor Lucas spoke about this in a podcast. The history speaks for itself. In the case of Maidan, it was rinse and repeat.
Perhaps a new and viable security framework for Europe will be the outcome of this war. The war itself resulted from a European security framework that had crumbled for a long time. We can recall Russian Foreign Minister Primakov turning his plane around mid-flight to Washington when NATO attacked Yugoslavia in April 1999. The NATO-Russia standoff at Pristina Airport, the physical confrontations (fights) in the Duma, and Finnish President Martti Ahtissari’s mediation efforts (if they can be called that) proved that the old security order for the region had run its course. Why nothing was done about it then is beyond me. The invasion of Ukraine — believed by Professor Lucas to be the most serious since 1945 — is the end result of a European security framework that, for 30+ years, wasn’t working. Again, the history speaks for itself. I don’t know why Professor Lucas didn’t see this coming.
[Editor’s Note: The standard recitation, put out and exploited by the Kremlin, from defenders of Russia’s full-scale invasion to conquer Ukraine….]
Re: 27 minute mark —
But Russia sees this conflict as an existential threat because it sees it as a Russia vs NATO war. Ukraine is seen by the Russians as the tool, the proxy force (and sacrificial lamb) used by NATO to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. Lucas may not agree with this, but that appears to be how the Russians see it. All of these revolutions lead to the same thing: a government that is either hostile to Moscow or insensitive to Russia’s security concerns. And you end up with a NATO base/post somewhere in the country, like the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan and the US military presence/base there.
“The US does not have diplomats here. It does not have people trained in mediation or negotiation. It has a real estate developer and Donald Trump’s son-in-law.”
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The reason for this is obvious. Trump doesn’t trust Rubio and thinks he leaked the 28 point peace plan to the Europeans.