If one were to believe much of the Ukraine skeptic and/or Trump friendly commentary since Trump called Putin on February 12, Trump and Putin were going to in short order negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine and make Ukraine, the EU, and NATO swallow it. That was to be accompanied by normalization of commercial dealings between the US and Russia, which would seem to mean the lifting of some or even pretty much all of the US sanctions against Russia.
We’ll explain below how this plan for Trump as master-dealmaker going mano-a-mano with Putin and emerging victorious, or at least with a reasonably-face-saving agreement, has gone pear-shaped. And we have to say that we have been telling you so for quite a while.1
The short version of what happened in Saudi Arabia is Ukraine made the non-concession of agreeing to a one month ceasefire in turn for resuming weapons deliveries and intel support.2. Keep in mind that a ceasefire is to Ukraine’s benefit, since it can give its troops a rest, dragoon more, get a month of additional weapons supplies. That is why the Russians have been in “No ceasefire, no how, no way until we have a complete deal” mode back to the first talks, in Istanbul in March-April 2022.
So this fiction that a ceasefire is a real option for advancing a settlement has the effect of making sure the war continues with US backing, which is what Zelensky & Co. want. And the predictable rejection by Russia will sour the prospect of a meaningful warming of relations, another outcome Ukraine keenly desires.
In other words, The Ukrainians got the US to throw them into the briar patch…and think that that was the US idea!
We said the prospects of a settlement of the war, absent a regime change in Kiev, Ukraine capitulation, or Russia otherwise forcing Ukraine to accept its terms, were nada. There is no overlap between their positions. Russia has no reason to make anything more than trivial or cosmetic concessions because it will win and its momentum is accelerating. But the Ukraine side is dug in because its government is in the control of hard-core Banderites. A combination of an eschatological bent and the recognition that they’d be high on the list of Russian war criminals means many would rather ride on a white horse into a Wagnerian pyre rather than wind up in a gulag or worse.3
Many commentators relied on the notion that the US, as Ukraine’s big sponsor, could nevertheless bring the Ukraine government to heel by, as Trump threatened to do, cut off arms supplies and intel (there is debate over the degree to which that actually happened). However, as we pointed out, as weak as Ukraine appears to be, it still has agency. It still holds most of Ukraine.
And Ukraine made clear that its intent is to hold out and punish Russia as much as it can. The big drone attacks on Moscow and other parts of Russia, launched on the very eve of the US-Ukraine talks in Jeddah, was a very clear raised middle finger to Russia and the US peace scheme. The Moscow strikes were pure terrorism, on civilian apartment buildings. Aside from being an unmistakable statement of Ukraine hostility to a settlement, they will increase popular support in Russia for continuing to prosecute the war.
The even weaker and embarrassingly behind-the-plot Europeans also have agency. Even though they cannot influence Trump or Russia, they have been noisily and enthusiastically showing their support for Zelensky. Those scenes will extend his sell-by date in Ukraine, particularly since the controlled Ukrainian press may be able to do a pretty good job of keeping up the pretense that the Europeans can do more than send a pathetically small amount of weapons.
So let’s return to the plot: remember that the view that Zelensky and the Ukraine leadership were goners hardened after the unprecedented, on camera Oval Office row. That event had been planned to show Zelensky largely on the same page as Trump before they had lunch and signed the infamous minerals deal. Although the session started out on a friendly footing, Zelensky persisted in pressing Trump for security guarantees and insisted it would be unwise to agree on a ceasefire with Russia, since Putin was untrustworthy, with Zelensky serving up wildly misrepresented history to support his claims. Effectively telling Trump that Putin would outmaneuver him (true independent of Zelensky’s revisionism) looked to have really gotten Trump’s dander up.
He apparently persisted after the cameras stopped rolling, rather than backing down or apologizing for his part in the heated exchange, which got him and his team expelled from the White House. That is before getting to the elephant in the room, that for Lord only knows how long, every time the topic of a Ukraine agreement has come up, the Russians top to bottom have felt compelled to say “No cessation in hostilities until the roots of the conflict have been addressed.” Lavrov has also taken to adding that, as the Minsk Accords demonstrated, a ceasefire merely gives Ukraine the opportunity to rearm and resume the war.
So what does the Trump Administration think it is doing by retying the Ukraine millstone to its neck? This isn’t Trump’s war. The Oval Office row provided him with the perfect excuse to cut Zelensky loose, even put new elections as the condition for providing much help, and provide only bare bones support (not that the US could do more than that on the weapons front) so as to blunt criticism that the US was abandoning Ukraine, as opposed to getting them to sober up about their true condition.
One possibility is that the US really believes that Russia is faring badly economically and is taking high enough manpower losses so as to make the war hard to sustain, and so all the Putin/Lavrov talk about “no ceasefire” is posturing and they will accept the ceasefire to start talks.
A variant of this line of thinking is the profit rather than cost side: that Russia stands to benefit so much from economic relief and resumed trade with West that it will get over itself and start negotiating with Ukraine. Recall that Rubio has said there would be no sanctions relief before an agreement was reached to end the war.
Another option is that the neocons (and recall Rubio is a neocon) have successfully played on Trump’s fixation with ceasefires, knowing that Russia won’t play ball. So Trump will look foolish (of course assuming Trump does not find some way to fabricate what happened to present himself as driving events). And he’ll get angry at Putin and the Russians, which will either stop or greatly reduce the possibility of better relations.
Finally, Trump may, even more than before, be in “All tactics and no strategy is the noise before the defeat” mode. It is becoming more and more apparent that his top priority is dominating any interaction, no matter whether that advances any long term aim. Trump and his allies derived pleasure from beating up on Zelensky during and after the White House row. Even though Zelensky asked for it (at a minimum by not donning a suit), what did the US gain? Zelensky ran around Europe, getting support that bolstered him at home. The US, despite holding the cards, got bupkis in Jeddah aside from some optics.4
Mind you, this does not necessarily mean Russia will not deign to sit down with Ukraine. Putin (without parsing it quite so crisply) has repeatedly said he is willing to meet. But he and his officials have also consistently said a whole bunch of things need to be in place before actual negotiations start, like Ukraine withdrawing from the four oblasts and revoking the various decrees and Constitutional terms that bar negotiations. Oh, and clarifying who could actually sign a deal were one to be agreed.
So Russia may come up with a device to look minimally cooperative, like say an initial tea and cookies chat, with either then or shortly thereafter some process requirements before the ceasefire could be entertained. To put it another way, the only question seems to be how Russia decides to play appearances while not accepting this offer.
For more a more in-depth account, Simplicius has done a great job of one-stop shopping in US and Ukraine Hatch ‘Ceasefire’ Travesty which I urge you to read in full. Simplicius’ posts tend to be a mix of well-documented finds and more speculative ones, with him not often well flagging that some of his tidbits are iffier than others. So a quick discussion of his noteworthy items:
The scheme as an insult. Simplicius is contemptuous, as we are, and he invokes Scott Ritter:
I’ve lost faith in the good faith of the Trump negotiating team. A 30-day ceasefire would be a boon to Ukraine. A chance to stabilize the frontlines. To strip all tactical and operational advantages Russia has accrued through the blood and sacrifice of their soldiers. And once Ukraine recovers, then to sit at a table where a rejuvenated Ukraine rejects Russia’s conditions for peace.
Trump’s team has not negotiated in good faith. And the fact that this proposal is offered after Ukraine carries out a massive strike against Moscow? Russia will reject this ridiculous proposal.
Lockstep messaging, that “No peace” will now be Putin’s fault. Wellie, technically that is true regardless. The Russians could elect to stop fighting at any time. So the idea that coordinated whinging will move the Russians is yet more Western obsession with messaging over real world outcomes. But it’s getting a bit too obvious:
Doubts as to whether the US really did cut off arms and intel. One could imagine, given logistics, that it might be hard to stop arms supplies quickly (where do you put weapons already en route?). The theory is it’s easier to halt SIGINT, such as satellite images and real-time information. But Starlink stayed on, when that being one company, would presumably be easy to switch off and on (although Twitter’s terrible performance this week might suggest otherwise). Again courtesy Simplicius:
One could further argue that the US saying it has halted supplies was more important than that actually happening right away, given that the big objective were to impress US taxpayers that Trump was a tough guy and beating Ukraine into line, and to cow the Europeans and the Ukraine government.
I must have heard one of the YouTubers incorrectly because I though a Trump-Putin phone call was set for this Friday. Instead, the Kremlin has cleverly said a call could be organized quickly, putting the onus on the White House to ask for it. This also may be intended to make the point that Russia does not accept negotiation via press release, that someone needs to make a formal approach to Russia with whatever this proposal amounts to before anyone on the Russian side gets out of bed.
But in case you harbor any doubts, Lavrov has been relentlessly on message about a ceasefire being a non-starter:
❗️Lavrov on Russia’s attitude to a ceasefire without resolving the causes of the conflict:
What is important to us is not a ceasefire that will allow Ukraine to be armed once again and again directed at our country, but a long-term sustainable peace based on the elimination of… pic.twitter.com/S7IW1dtLdL
— Sunt Förnuft (@mr__quake) March 11, 2025
So are Trump and State Department as dumb as they look? There’s no clever plot here, just hubris and unwillingness to listen. We’ll see soon enough what shakes out.
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1 To keep this post focused, we will spare you a recitation of how Russian officials, from Putin on down, have given extensive, and over time more detailed, accounts of what lying sacks of shit we Americans are. They have told Russian citizens and its allies that we are utterly untrustworthy….including that if the US ever got an honorable leadership group, that could all be unwound after a change in the White House. The implication is that Russia would need extremely strict and extensive guarantees of performance by the West, ones they’d be likely to balk at for (correctly) impugning US/NATO reliability.
2 If you read the Joint Statement, the only other Ukraine obligation is agreeing consummate the minerals deal and the naming of Ukraine members of a negotiating team. But Zelensky immediately offered that as soon as he was tossed out of the White House. So this was not a concession extracted during the negotiations, merely a confirmation of an existing commitment. Rubio reaffirmed that the minerals pact would not include a security guarantee.
And as for the negotiating team….Ukraine knows, even if the US does not, that Russia will not accept this proposal, so naming a team is just a PR gesture.
It also appears that some of the meeting was devoted to coming up with initial demands for Russia:
The delegations also discussed the importance of humanitarian relief efforts as part of the peace process, particularly during the above-mentioned ceasefire, including the exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civilian detainees, and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children.
3 In fairness, some may hope they can make a late-in-game run to a safe haven like Canada and get enough plastic surgery to enable them to live a quiet life.
4 I don’t buy the notion that not allowing Zelensky a seat at the table was a monster put down. If it does not lead to concessions (and is seems not even to have led to Zelensky being markedly more worried about his job security), what’s the point? And as a negotiator, you NEVER want a principal (Zelensky) facing off with agents (US officials who are not final decision-makers). It can be exploited in what I call double-brokering: the agents on one side get the principal on the other to agree to something. Then the agents go back and their principal says no to something, which usually succeeds in getting the principal on the other side to give more ground.
