Ukraine War Peace Talks

Hey all Peter Zeihan here coming from Colorado. And today we’re going to talk about the status of the peace talks with Ukraine and the Russians to end the Ukraine war. We’ve we’ve had really two big problems with any meaningful negotiations so far. Number one, Donald Trump really wants a peace deal, but he really doesn’t care at all about the details. 

So whatever the peace deal of the moment is, it’s on his desk. He’s like, this is wonderful. This is the best deal ever. Let’s do this. And when countries push back, he screams at them and starts to threaten them. Until this point, the country that he’s been screaming at and threatening has usually been Ukraine. And that is because of the second problem, and that is the US chief negotiator, who’s a guy by the name of Steve Wyckoff, would cough, is a real estate mogul from New York, old buddies of Donald Trump. 

And he has said on a number of occasions in a number of venues that he knows nothing about negotiation and nothing about foreign affairs, and he’s proud of that. He has no intention to ever learn anything. So I and others have always thought that Wyckoff was just rabidly pro-Russian because he doesn’t meet with Ukraine. He’s never met with Zelensky, who’s the Ukrainian president. 

Just goes to Moscow, sits down, tilts his head back, and the Russians pour a few gallons of Russian propaganda into him. He comes back to the white House, vomits it forth. Trump says, oh, this is wonderful peace idea. Let’s do this. And when the Ukrainians refuse to agree to demands in from the Russians to basically withdraw their troops and shut down their army and never seek a defensive alliance, the Ukrainians say no. And then Trump goes off the handle. That’s basically been the pattern for this year to this point. 

What changed in the last week is that Steve Wyckoff met with Zelensky for the first time, and guess what happened? He tilted his head back, and Zelensky poured a few gallons of Ukrainian propaganda down his throat. Witcoff came to the white House and vomit it forward. All of a sudden we have a Ukrainian peace plan that ignores all of the Russian demands. Specifically, would allow for an article five style security guarantee with the United States. One of the things that the Russians have refused to even negotiate on is Ukraine ever joining NATO, because they don’t want the other countries, most notably the United States, to get involved in the conflict? 

Remember that for the Russians, it’s not just about Ukraine. It’s about pushing their Western periphery back to an area that they find more defensible, so that that periphery actually matches geography, so that they can use mountains and seas to defend themselves. That means not just conquering all of Ukraine, but also all of Finland and Latvia and Estonia and Lithuania and Moldova and big chunks of Poland and Romania as well. 

So anything that involves foreign troops, the Russians will generally reject. But Trump, having not done the homework, think that’s just means NATO. So the new plan by the Ukrainians is for a NATO style guarantee to not be with the alliance, but be with the United States and Germany and Poland and France and basically every NATO countries signed a bilateral deal instead. 

And Trump, this is the last deal in front of us. Like this is a wonderful idea. And so this is the peace plan. It is still a stupid peace plan. It’s just meets one side’s point as opposed to the other side’s point. What that means for me is I am now gone from thinking that would cause is just rabidly pro-Russian to realizing the word cost is just really fucking stupid and Trump can’t tell. 

So why would an alliance of the structure with Ukraine be as horrible of an idea as every plan that’s come forward to this point? That’s been from the Russian point of view? Well, remember, for the Russians, Ukraine is not the end of the story. It’s the beginning of the story. And so if we are now directly involved in the third Ukraine war, because that was what the next one would be, then the Russians would use all the weapons systems that they have available, including their nukes and their intercontinental ballistic missiles, because all of a sudden they are in a multi theater war. 

And that means that this deal in its current form, pretty much guarantees in exchange, it’s going to sound horrible. But for the United States, the best outcome of these talks is something that fails and continues with NATO and the United States supporting Ukraine and helping them build up an independent defense capacity so they can stand up to the Russians on their own. 

And that means ongoing weapons transfers and ongoing assistance. The alternative is to leave the Ukrainians out to dry, in which case the Russians don’t stop at Ukraine and come right into NATO countries, or to put American troops on the ground to defend the Ukrainians against the next Russian assault, in which case we get that exchange. So this deal is just as bad as everything that has come before. 

What I do find really interesting is we actually have some talk on the specifics, not just in the white House in Congress, but because a bilateral security alliance requires Senate approval and ratification. And we’re already starting that process now, I don’t think that this will happen. I don’t think this should happen. But, you know, Steve, what comes next stop is in Moscow. 

So I’m sure he’s going to change his mind again and come up with a new plan that will go before Trump, and then he will change his mind again and we’ll get back to this cycle. But the real thing that has changed in just the last few days is now an understanding that the details don’t matter to this administration at all. 

And unless and until we get, at a minimum, a new chief negotiator for Ukraine, this is just the cycle that we’re in. A lot of screaming and no real change.