Donald Trump said that Vladimir Putin wants to meet. Whatever is decided in that meeting, the consequences are going to reverberate not just across Ukraine, but the CEE region and the world.
Trump has nominated Keith Kellogg, a former national security adviser and retired lieutenant-general in the US military, to be special envoy to Ukraine and Russia for his second administration.
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Kellogg set out his ideas for how the US could bring about an end to the war in a research paper published by the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank, in April last year.
He proposed that Ukraine should only get further US aid if it agreed to participate in peace talks with Moscow. The paper also suggested, however, that if Moscow refused to take part, then the US should continue its aid to Ukraine.
“People need to understand that [Donald Trump] is not trying to give something to Putin or the Russians; he is genuinely trying to save Ukraine’s sovereignty,” Kellogg said.
Kellogg made the statement during an interview with Fox News on Jan. 8, adding that both he and Trump are aware that they have limited time to find a solution to the war.
With that in mind, we likely have three scenarios to look at.
Trump blames Putin for the war – least likely (Russia as the aggressor responsible for carrying out unprovoked genocide and the only guilty party).
Trump blames Zelensky and Biden administrations for the war and not Putin – more likely (NATO expansion propaganda, the unwillingness to negotiate earlier, and so on).
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Blames both sides for the war – the most likely scenario in which Trump plays the role of a punitive judge who sees flaws on both sides and has arrived to end the war by bringing the two warring sides together. Given his background as a TV star, that’s likely the role he is going to love, with all the attention and power to decide the fate of millions, if not billions.
It appears that the most likely outcome is a Korean scenario of a demilitarized zone on the Ukrainian side with European peacekeepers tasked with ensuring no ceasefire violations.
Russia is never going to agree to the demilitarized zone on its side, and it’s going to be interesting how both the Kursk offensive and the Free Russian Legion leader’s plans to get all the way to Moscow, possibly in 2025, factor into the negotiations.
We also seem to have forgotten about the Russian ultimatum to the West from December 2021. Putin is surely going to bring it up during negotiations and it won’t matter that realities on the ground differ vastly from December 2021.
Removing all NATO troops and infrastructure from the CEE region was the original Russian demand before the start of the full-scale invasion.
While geopolitical realities are different in 2025, Vladimir Putin’s demands don’t appear to have changed. In exchange for what would amount to the demilitarization of Ukraine and the CEE region, Vladimir Putin is going to state that Russian troops are returning home. If Vladimir Putin breaks the deal and attacks again, Trump is either going to arm Ukraine to the teeth or, less likely, make the US intervene directly to stop and punish Russia. There’s also the possibility of ignoring Russian actions and blaming Ukraine.
Trump doesn’t want to appear weak, sure, but ending the war by agreeing to stop all aid to Ukraine and withdrawing all US troops and dismantling US infrastructure in the CEE region seems like the kind of deal he can accept.
Of course, there’s no guarantee Vladimir Putin isn’t going to attack anyway. But that could happen after Trump is out of office and there’s no telling what the next POTUS is going to do. Vladimir Putin might settle for keeping Ukraine and the CEE region in the Russian sphere of influence.
The situation in Poland with the recent comments of the opposition presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki shows the danger of a Polish president who plays right into Putin’s plan of keeping Ukraine out of the EU and NATO. Putin has useful idiots and paid puppet politicians in Europe and the US he can use to his advantage.
Trump likes big and bold moves. Vladimir Putin knows that and is likely to play to his ego. Trump talks about annexing Greenland and Panama. He posts maps with Canada as part of the US. We laughed at first, thought – it’s just typical Trump boasting, but now we know it’s not all jokes and Trump could well be serious. To what extent serious, remains to be seen. In a surreal scenario, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump could become ‘’imperial-brothers-in-arms.’’
Vladimir Putin is likely going to present Ukrainians as Nazis (the so-called Kyiv Regime) in need of denazification (even Carlson said it’s a dumb and illogical concept) and terrorists responsible for the killings of public Russian figures on Russian soil.
He’s going to pander to millions in the US who are already prejudiced against Ukraine. Trump’s advisors, Musk, JD Vance, Trump jr., and others, are already anti-Ukraine, so selling Trump on that is going to be easy, and likely has already been done. Then again, Trump prides himself on being his own man who makes his own decisions and Ukraine could use it to its advantage, regardless of the background noise.
The Ukrainian side ought to bring up the topic of abducted adults, Azov fighters, and children who are held in Russia. Better yet, bring the victims of these atrocities to tell their stories right there in the presence of Trump and Putin. Vladimir Putin denies Bucha is real. It’s easy to show he’s a liar and a criminal by giving Ukrainian people a voice. These propagandistic points Russia uses to portray itself as the victim must be demolished.
Russia is seen as too big to fail by way too many US officials and the concept of imperial innocence, i.e. Russia can do no wrong and all the accusations are Ukrainian propaganda, is entrenched in their minds. Russia relies on illusions of power (maskirovka) and nuclear blackmail. Sadly, it seems to work in DC. It doesn’t matter if Putin wants to use nukes or not. Anthony Blinken said that China convinced Putin not to use nuclear weapons. We don’t know how close, if at all, Putin is to using nuclear weapons.
What matters is that American policymakers behave as though they believe making Russia mad is going to set off World War III. And as we know, Trump believes we’re close to World War III and negotiations are critical. Vladimir Putin is likely going to use nuclear blackmail to convince Trump to let Russia expand its sphere of influence not just in Ukraine, but possibly in the CEE region (the ultimatum) and even in Europe as a whole.
I don’t mean a military invasion. The promise of limited to no US interference in Europe would be more than enough to make Putin a happy man. He can keep resorting to hybrid warfare, such as migration waves from Belarus, arson, espionage and attacks on prominent activists.
A recent assault of a Polish professor in Warsaw could be just one recent example. Then again, it all could be Putin using Trump as he prepares for the next invasion.
Poland and other nations in the region could be given security assurances similar to the Budapest Memorandum by Trump.
Vladimir Putin is unlikely to respect such assurances, as Ukraine knows all too well, and Donald Trump is acutely aware Putin’s word means nothing. But these assurances are going to be used as an excuse for Trump to withdraw from Ukraine, the CEE region, and possibly Europe, while knowing full well he’s leaving Ukraine, and beyond, for Putin to devour.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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