This year, Russia has made slow but significant advances, which Ukraine struggled to fend off because of manpower and equipment struggles, exacerbated by the delays in U.S. assistance. Ukraine still controls a piece of Russian territory in Kursk, which Ukrainian troops captured in a summer offensive. Russia clawed back a lot of the area, including with the help of North Korean troops. But lately, Russian advances in Ukraine have slowed, in part because Ukraine can better target Russian troops and assets with its home-grown aerial drones in winter with less tree cover, and also because Russian troops are still poorly trained and equipped. It’s so bad that a nuclear superpower is reportedly using donkeys to transport ammunition to the front, but Russia is still bombarding Ukrainian cities with missile and drone strikes and the battlefield is still the brutal mile by mile grind it has long been.
But the geopolitics around the conflict have shifted dramatically, starting with a 90-minute chat earlier this month between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, where they agreed to start talks “immediately.” The Trump administration then spent a week making Europe anxious with mixed messages about its position on Russia, Ukraine and Europe, eventually culminating in Vance’s address in Munich, which Europe basically understood to mean the continent, and the transatlantic alliance, could go to hell. European leaders scrambled to respond, as the U.S. prepared to meet with Russian delegates in Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. said these Riyadh sessions were just preliminary talks, although Russia sold this as a “restoring” of the complex U.S.-Russia relationship. The meeting yielded some U.S.-Russia rapprochement, with the two agreeing to restaff embassies and appoint envoys for the peace talks.
Both Europe and Ukraine objected to unilateral talks between Russia and the U.S., but Trump bristled at the request, accusing Zelenskyy of starting the war and failing to make a deal sooner. This is a pretty well-documented Russian talking point – Putin blames NATO, and the West, for provoking him. After Zelenskyy pushed back, Trump unleashed, calling him a dictator for postponing elections.
Ukraine’s constitution bars the country from holding elections while at war. Even if it were legally possible, the challenges would have been extraordinary – Russian forces occupying and contesting territory, soldiers away on remote battlefields, millions displaced inside and outside Ukraine, and the possibility of Russian air strikes interrupting or potentially targeting election infrastructure. According to polls, the Ukrainian public supports waiting until the end of the war to hold elections. Russia does not, because it would love a more pliant leader. Ukraine’s turn away from Russia is decisive – a brutal invasion will have that effect – but the Kremlin sees the election as an opening for influence and disruption, which it can’t have as long as Zelenskyy remains in power. Over the weekend, Zelenskyy offered a creative compromise, saying he would step down in exchange for NATO membership and peace.
Despite these realities, Trump is siding with Russia in public, against Ukraine, and against Europe, while officials like Rubio are trying to reassure allies that the U.S. is not moving to align with Russia. General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and Russia, is subtweeting his boss by calling Zelenskyy “the embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war” after meetings with Zelenskyy last week. European leaders are desperately trying to flatter Trump into an alternate reality – with little to show for it. This is Trump’s show right now.
What Does Russia Want?
Well, Moscow certainly wanted, but maybe didn’t expect, truly how easy it was to get Trump to repeat Russian propaganda about Ukraine. Putin believes Ukraine belongs to Russia, a claim he’s manufactured based on ahistorical arguments. Putin also seeks to weaken and fracture the Western alliance, sowing chaos and testing its pressure points to expand Russian influence. Moscow has been engaged in sabotage and disinformation campaigns across Europe to weaken resolve and sow transatlantic divisions, although all Putin really needed to do was wait for Vance to get a speaking slot at an international conference.
To the Russian public, Putin has framed the Ukraine war as a larger battle against enemies in the West. Prior to his invasion, Putin demanded NATO end its “open door” policy for Ukraine – essentially asking the alliance to affirm that Ukraine would and could never join. He also sought rollbacks on NATO’s presence on its eastern flank. The administration is sending chaotic messages on this, too, with Kellogg denying reports that the U.S. will withdraw troops from Europe, while Vance is saying that America could consider moving troops from Germany over free speech concerns.
Whatever the actual U.S. policy is right now, Putin’s pre-invasion ultimatum included NATO pullbacks.
Those asks likely still stand in any peace talks: Putin sees NATO expansion as a threat to Russia, and Ukraine’s membership as unacceptable. Russia’s security concerns are not completely unserious – this is an alliance to counter Russia that continues to expand, even if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine proved why countries sought out NATO protection in the first place.
Russia has already made clear that Ukrainian membership in NATO is unacceptable to it, though Putin has also said “demilitarization and de-Nazification” were goals of the special military operation – and Russia may seek some sort of disarmament for Kyiv.
Putin is also likely going to lay claim to Ukrainian territory. Putin illegally annexed four oblasts (provinces) in Ukraine’s east and south in 2022, and held a sham referendum to try to legitimize it (Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014). Even though Russia doesn’t fully control all these areas, it is already signaling that it believes Kyiv should hand them over, with a top Russian official saying these oblasts are “irrevocably lost.”
And really, there is a question if Russia even wants a peace deal. Putin, ultimately, does not see Ukraine as an independent country; he believes it is part of Russia, and he accuses the West, specifically NATO, of drawing Kyiv away from Moscow. He may be just trying to stall for time – and reap the benefits of Trump’s malleability to drive a deeper wedge between Washington and Brussels, or use it as propaganda for his domestic audience.
But just getting Trump to adopt the Russian narrative is a win for Putin. “I think the Russians want to see the war end, I really do. I think they have the cards a little bit, because they’ve taken a lot of territory. They have the cards,” Trump said this week.
What Does Ukraine Want?
Ukraine wants to restore all the territory within its internationally recognized borders, and it wants to preserve its sovereignty, including deciding whether to join the European Union and NATO.
Ukraine will likely end up ceding some territory to Russia, at least in the short-term. But Ukraine is holding fast to its key bargaining chip: territory it still controls in Russia’s Kursk region. Russia has rejected Ukraine’s proposal of a swap for territory, but Kyiv is maintaining some of its most elite forces in the region, an effort to protect this leverage.
The sovereignty question is ultimately linked to the question of security guarantees – which may be the biggest knot of any deal, because it ultimately depends on outside actors. Ukraine would like that security guarantor to be NATO, with Ukraine as a full member. Ukraine argues that its membership in the alliance would deter Russia from attacking again, as Ukraine would now have the ability to invoke the collective defense clause, thus bringing the full might of the U.S. military to its defense. (Assuming, of course, the U.S. remains fully in NATO.)
But NATO membership as part of a settlement seems extraordinarily unlikely – and always has.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said as much in Europe last week, then walked it back under pressure. But the key difference between the Trump and Biden administrations is that Hegseth said the quiet part out loud. Former president Joe Biden, along with others, such as Germany, were reluctant to extend NATO membership to Ukraine because they feared having to defend Ukraine in the wake of another Russian attack, and having to put U.S. and NATO boots directly on the ground. If NATO allies didn’t, well so much for the alliance everyone is fighting about.
But Ukraine needs security guarantees, legitimate ones, if it is going to reach a truce with Putin – especially if Putin seeks to disarm or scale back Ukraine’s military which is now one of the strongest, largest and most experienced in Europe. Ukraine could only accept limits on its defense if it has ironclad guarantees from other military powers. Otherwise, little prevents Russia from regrouping and rolling back into Kyiv.
“We have to have support from our partners, from the EU and from the U.S., even after because we understand that we cannot build a strong army, which is probably the main security guarantee for Ukraine, for now,” said Yehor Chernev, a Ukrainian parliament member who works on defense issues.
Yet who will provide these guarantees? The United States is the only real guarantor here, and it is not clear this is something the Trump administration (or any U.S. administration) would eagerly provide. The previous Biden strategy of supporting Ukraine “for as long as it takes” circumvented these fraught questions for both Washington and Brussels, allowing the West to weaken an adversary at a relatively low political and military cost. That approach may not have served Ukraine in the long-run, but it did help its backers.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have now proposed a European peacekeeping force to help enforce a ceasefire, but other countries, including Germany, balked. Europe may still pitch such a force, but it is likely going to need a “U.S. backstop,” as Starmer put it. That is, U.S. back-up. According to Reuters, Washington is at least asking Europe what it might need, and Starmer is visiting the White House this week, with the hope of pitching Trump on such a plan.
What Does the U.S. Want?
The Ukrainian and Russian demands are far from an exhaustive list of items that will be dealt with in any peace deal. There’s the question of $300 billion in frozen Russian assets, which U.S. lawmakers and some European leaders are pushing to seize now to fund Ukraine. Most experts I spoke to think it is very unlikely Russia recovers these funds, and even Russia seems ready to propose that some of these assets go to rebuilding Ukraine, although it would want to use some for Russian-occupied territories. There’s the question of how to return Ukrainian children who have been abducted by Russia – and whether Putin and any of his officials will actually face accountability for the war crimes they’ve been charged with during the conflict.
But Trump wants a deal, and he seems to want one quickly, and almost certainly all the pageantry that comes with it – including a photo op with Putin. In a lot of ways, Putin’s framing of his invasion allows for a much simpler deal: Ukraine is actually ours, they started it, leave us alone, and everything will be fine, war over! A just deal for Ukraine requires long-term commitments from its partners, more engagement, and sustained support and resources. That doubles as a list of all the things Trumps disdains about alliances.
One thing the United States says it wants is Ukraine’s critical minerals. This has become a big sticking point, with the U.S. demanding Ukraine share its resources. Ukraine is very rich in critical and rare earth minerals, which is a subset of critical minerals that has comparatively limited processing and refinement capabilities, said Robert Muggah, of the Igarapé Institute. Ukraine is believed to have as many as 20,000 deposits (with 8,700 proven) of these minerals, which are used for things like semiconductors, advanced weapons, and batteries in electric vehicles. Specifically, Ukraine has 23 of the 50 minerals the U.S. lists as critical. Altogether, Ukraine’s mineral deposits could be valued at as much as $26 trillion.
Zelenskyy initially rejected a deal from the U.S. to hand over 50 percent of Ukraine’s minerals, reportedly because it did not include security guarantees. The U.S. is framing this deal as a kind of payback for the billions in Ukraine aid it has allocated, with Trump making up an amount of $300 billion for aid the U.S. has given Ukraine.
None of this is true: the U.S. has allocated about $175 billion toward Ukraine aid, though only about $106 billion directly went to Ukraine. All of that money was approved by Congress and a very significant portion – nearly 70 percent, according to the American Enterprise Institute – is actually spent in America, including to manufacture new weapons to replenish the old stocks donated by the U.S. and its allies in Ukraine. Also, though the administration keeps saying Europe has to step up, the bloc has already given more than the U.S. has.
But there are a few problems with the U.S.’s plan, besides the extortion vibes. For one, it’s not like these minerals are some secret – both the U.S. and Europe were trying to build ties in this area before the invasion, seeing, like everyone else, how important these minerals are to the green transition and advanced defense capabilities. As Muggah said, critical and rare earth minerals were a factor, but not the main cause of Russia’s 2022 invasion. Estimates are imperfect, but it is likely that about 40 percent of all of Ukraine’s deposits may be in areas that Russia controls. Right now, Russia is advancing toward Shevchenko, close to one Ukraine’s largest lithium deposits. Beyond the obvious, which is that Russia will want these minerals for itself and isn’t likely to just hand them over, access to them will require serious investments, as most of these sites are not fully developed. And an already arduous process will be made even trickier and require things like intensive mine-clearing after the war.
In conservations with Ukrainian officials, most didn’t object to a deal with the U.S. – indeed, many saw it as beneficial to develop closer economic ties with the U.S. and the West more broadly. But the deal needs to deliver for Ukraine, economically and politically. “The fact that we are not producing these minerals now in big quantities shows that it’s not an easy thing, and it’s not something you know, lying on the ground,” said Oleksiy Honcharenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker. “We can do this together absolutely. But it still isn’t clear, exactly, what Zelenskyy is getting in return.”
National Security Advisor Mike Walz said at CPAC that Zelenskyy will sign the agreement shortly, and some U.S. lawmakers have reportedly pressured Zelenskyy to do this if he wants to keep Trump on side. “I will not sign what ten generations of Ukrainians will have to pay back,” Zelenskyy said Sunday. But, on Monday, Politico reported that even Ukrainian officials see the two countries closer to a deal. Bloomberg reports a recent draft includes language that says the U.S. will commit to a “free, sovereign and secure” Ukraine.
The risk of this kind of mineral deal is Washington and Moscow each carving up the country for their interests, with Ukraine no longer having leverage. While it makes sense that the U.S. might want these critical minerals, it is not entirely clear why this is the way – squeezing Ukraine, while being gross and obsequious to Russia. This is true for the entire peace “process” so far. The Trump administration probably will have to be nicer to Russia, and might have to offer signals of cooperation and goodwill to get them to buy into the process. That is uncomfortable, but perhaps not quite surprising. But it can still do that without entirely abandoning – and publicly shaking down – Ukraine.
Although maybe none of this is exactly a surprise. Some tried to sell a story on how actually Trump was going to be tougher on Putin. This was always a delusion, even if it felt nice for supporters of Ukraine to have something to cling to ahead of any negotiations. America has already seen Trump fawning over Putin, and appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to do a whole investigation into it. Officials in the first Trump administration said Trump wanted to pull out of NATO, and Trump got impeached for trying to extort Ukraine, making military aid contingent on Zelenskyy digging up dirt on Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. Zelesnkyy, and Ukraine by extension, is probably collateral because of an Rudy Guiliani conspiracy theory.
What is less clear is what this means for America’s interests, at least as they were once defined. Kellogg has spoken about trying to break up what’s been called this “axis of upheaval“ between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. “You have to think of this as a global fight,” said Kellogg. “We’re facing an issue that we didn’t face four years ago. Now you’ve got the four combined, and they’ve all got economic or military links.”
The U.S. may want to peel Russia away from its “no limits“ partnership with China in what is unfortunately being called the “reverse Nixon,” a nod to Richard Nixon’s opening to China in the 1970s to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow during the Cold War. But Russia and China have deepened military and economic ties, and there is little indication that Russia would abandon that to grow closer to the U.S. What’s more, the U.S.’s stance on Ukraine is driving a potentially irreversible wedge between its allies in Europe – to say nothing of tariff trade wars and Musk election meddling. Both Russia and China want a more isolated America, and now they’re getting it at a bargain.
Jim Townsend, a fellow at CNAS and former NATO and Pentagon official, said the U.S. is shaking up the Russia-China relationship – though he said “yes” when I asked if the U.S. was actually part of the “axis of upheaval” now. Under Trump, America is embracing a worldview of deals and spheres of influences that is much more closely aligned with China and Russia than the rules-based system that Europe still values.
The full consequences of this upheaval are unclear, as is the ultimate future of these Ukraine talks. Nothing is agreed to yet – and it might never really be. Still, Trump’s rhetoric on Russia has done real damage among allies and partners. Germany’s soon-to-be new chancellor, Freidrich Merz, was considered a diehard for the U.S.-Germany partnership. He is now talking about “independence” from the United States.
Trump’s Russia stance has shaken some Republicans out of their stupor, and even the New York Post has called him out. This is a notable development, especially if Trump’s actions on the home front become more unpopular and lawmakers start pushing back on the administration. Democrats favor Ukraine aid slightly more than Republicans, but only 30 percent of all adults say the U.S. is giving too much aid to Ukraine, though that figure is 47 percent among Republicans and Republican leaners, according to a recent Pew Survey. But support for NATO is still pretty high, with around 63 percent. Even 47 percent of Republicans believe it helps U.S. national security.
“Trump is predictable in his unpredictability,” said Honcharenko, the Ukrainian lawmaker. “Maybe the wind will change completely.”
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