Trump’s art of striking a deal as imagined

It is true that Donald Trump has, for the second time in a few weeks, completely made up an energy truce between Russia and Ukraine out of thin air, and we still have to get used to the idea that the President of the United States of America has not only started distorting alliances but also announcing imaginary agreements; however, the Russian approach should by now be clear to everyone: Vladimir Putin speaks to Trump, a false glimmer of dialogue emerges, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is subjected to pointless and specious pressure, he says what he always says – namely that he is ready to accept any truce provided it is mutual, and even to organise elections if the Russians stop striking the whole country several times a day and night, and then Putin bombs, confirming with missiles and drone jets what the Kremlin keeps explicitly repeating: shortly after the imaginary ceasefire, the Kharkiv power station was hit. Yesterday, Sergei Lavrov confirmed: the objectives of the special military operation remain unchanged.

Zelensky gave interviews and delivered a speech at the Warsaw Security Forum in which he described “Putin’s response to Trump”, namely the attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure: the Russians “always find reasons not to stop this war”, he said. Only the Russian president has found in Trump an ever-widening loophole to dismantle American support for Ukraine. (Peduzzi continues in insert IV)

Yesterday, the Kyiv Independent reported rumours among Ukrainian officials who claim to have received threats from the US regarding the suspension of intelligence-sharing and the supply of weapons via PURL (the mechanism through which Europeans purchase US weapons and ship them to the Ukrainians). Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, told the Financial Times that he had received these threats, which also appear to have been directed at the commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Mykhailo Drapaty. There is an ongoing escalation of US pressure on Ukraine across the board, from the leadership right down to the intelligence services, which comes on top of the escalation of Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, infrastructure and civilians. Just two weeks ago, during the UN General Assembly, Trump and Zelensky met, and the US president confirmed his intention to grant Kyiv licences to produce Patriot interceptors, which are essential for countering the Russians in the air war. What has happened since then? If the answer to this question were found, it would explain why Trump is always willing to place his trust in Putin, both regarding his desire for peace and his alliances, particularly that with Iran: America has always dismissed as irrelevant the intelligence reports demonstrating Russia’s assistance to the Tehran regime in striking American targets in the Persian Gulf; and it is now being claimed that the diesel which Russia is supposed to put on the market to comply with Trump’s request is refined in Iran, as Russian refineries are operating at low capacity and inefficiently because they have been damaged by targeted Ukrainian attacks in recent months (these are the ‘long-range sanctions’ that Kyiv has decided to impose, given that the Americans have not updated theirs for months on end and given that the Europeans continue to purchase Russian resources, albeit to an increasingly negligible extent). Trump trusts Putin more than Zelensky, the West’s enemy more than its best ally: why?

In recent weeks, numerous rumours have confirmed what first became clear around this time last year, when negotiations between the Russians and the Americans became a business matter handled by Trump’s business associates, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and Putin’s business associate Kirill Dmitriev. Essentially, the Russians realised that the Americans’ sole interest is to recoup their investment in Ukraine – which, for the Trump camp, has been a failure and unduly costly – and to make a profit; and so they began to float the possibility of business deals, provided the United States stopped getting in the way by aiding Ukraine. Reports of the meetings between the Russians and the Americans consistently feature money as a constant theme. And since the Russians’ diplomatic skill (a euphemism: it would be better described as deceitful manoeuvring) far exceeds that of the Americans, the result is that the Trump Administration has been outmanoeuvred on other fronts too, first and foremost the very war that the American president is truly interested in: the war against Iran. This has gone hand in hand with the Americans’ total failure to understand the Ukrainians: According to some accounts, the Ukrainian delegates who were in Miami for talks with the Americans, upon learning of the diesel deal between Trump and Putin, said they would continue to target Russian refineries with even greater determination – and the Americans present were left speechless, in silence, even though they must have realised that Ukraine does not ask anyone’s permission to defend itself against Russian aggression. In addition to refineries, the Ukrainians have also targeted data centres, particularly those belonging to Yandex—the Russian equivalent of Google—disrupting digital services across Russia, from taxis to banks, and also curbing some of the Russian propaganda disseminated through bots: not all of it, of course, but enough to underscore that, in defending themselves, the Ukrainians are also defending the West.