LOS ANGELES (OC).–Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said peace talks for the time being are on hold with Ukraine until both peace delegations can work out a time and place to start negotiations on a political settlement. Hampering any settlement is Ukraine’s 47-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky’s refusal to cede any land in any kind of peace deal. Russian President Vladimir Putin controls some 25% of Ukrainian sovereign territory after three-and-a-half years of war. President Donald Trump has begged Zelensky to cut his losses, end the war and start the costly process of rebuilding. But Zelensky has gone to the European Union that agrees that any peace deal cannot surrender any sovereign territory to Russia. EU officials expressed their own concerns about security with Putin flying drones into Polish airspace and conduction joint military exercise with Belarus.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the 19 drones that crossed into Polish territory was no a mistake, posing the biggest risk to armed conflict with Russia since WW II. Tusk’s views mirror those of the Baltic States, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, all fear that Russia seeks to take more sovereign territory. President Donald Trump is at his wit’s end with Putin about not making any gesture to show that he’s willing to scale down his offensive in Ukraine to create a better atmosphere for possible peace talks. Trump knows that Zelensky is no angel, refusing to discus trading land-for-peace, a key part of any possibility of peace with Moscow. Zelensky and EU officials have ruled out ceding Putin even the land in Ukraine her currently controls, leaving the prospects for peace, as Peskov says, slim-and-none. Yet for some reason, Trump puts the blame primarily on Putin.
Trump knows that there can be no peace talks until Zelensky agrees to negotiate land swaps with the Russian Federation. Yet he holds Putin to a higher standard because they met for a summit in Anchorage, Alaska Aug. 15, looking for a breaktrough of some kind, maybe a pause in the air war. When Putin saw Zelensky and the EU refusing to cede any land to the Kremlin in peace talks, he continue the war with renewed ferocity, actually bombing Ukraine’s parliament building in Kiev. Trump has been reluctant to join the EU in slapping new sanctions on the Russia Federation, knowing it would only delay peace talks further. EU officials led by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer have become more concerned about EU security. Poland and the Baltic States worry about a future Russian land grab.
So Trump rides the horns of a dilemma, unable to bring about a peace he once thought would be easy to get. But Trump major premise for security a peace was having two cooperative partners in any peace talks. Trump knows that the Zelensky and the EU want no part of any political settlement where Ukraine surrenders sovereign land to Putin. Trump said recently that maybe he should back off the peace efforts, knowing that Russia and Ukraine want to keep fighting. But now that the EU has become involved, any peace settlement is more about future EU security, with Poland the Baltic States worrying about Putin seizing more land. Whether there’s any factual basis to the worry is anyone’s guess. Putin has said repeatedly that he’s not trying to pick a fight with NATO seeking any EU land. Putin wants to settle the score with Ukraine but has been hampered by the EU.
Trump’s personal envoy Steve Witkoff has met with Putin five times in the last few months to get a clear read on what it could take for peace talks. Now that Wtikoff knows what Putin wants, Zelensky and the EU refuse to play ball. Without negotiations there’s little prospect of making headway on a political settlement. “Our negotiations have the opportunity to communicate through channels. But for now, it is probably more accurate to tal about a pause in the talks with Kiev, said Peskov. “You can’t wear rose-tinted glasses and expect that the negotiation process will yield immediate results,” Peskov said. With Zelensky and the EU saying they won’t cede any land in Ukraine for a settlement, the prospects of continued war are inevitable. Brussels seems poised, at least for now, to fund the proxy war with the Kremlin for the foreseeable future.
Trump should avoid the temptation to join the EU hysteria in blaming Putin for the sluggish pace of peace talks in Ukraine. If you listen to Merz and von der Leyen, it’s clear the EU is not looking to make peace with the Kremlin. Trump knows what happened when Biden funded proxy war with the Kremlin, how it destroyed U.S.-Russian relations. If Trump wants to preserve the progress made toward normalizing U.S.-Russian relations, he’d avoid the sanctions bandwagon that will only delay peace talks indefinitely. When it comes to NATO getting a grip on Russian war games with Belarus or the drone flyover Poland, NATO said they “did not see any immediate military threat agains any NATO ally,” setting the record straight. Poland and the Baltic States need to stop hyping the Russian threat to their countries. When it comes to peace in Ukraine, it doesn’t help things.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
