The 90-minute phone call between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 6, 2025, was the official initiation of return to diplomacy to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict with ‘immediacy’.
Trump had made ending the Ukraine war a campaign issue and dubbed it as former President Joe Biden’s war.
The reality on the ground is that Ukraine is losing and Russia is gaining more ground every passing day. And that despite the narrative this has been a proxy war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine.
The Joe Biden and neocon strategy to weaken Russia, effect regime change, destroy its economy, and isolate it from the Global South has clearly failed.
Now Trump is left to ‘manage’ this Western defeat. He would like to make it look like his personal victory.
No wonder then that Zelensky was ‘informed’ about the phone call afterwards, while Europe was not mentioned in this phone call, making the Europeans sore.
The European leaders were stunned and literally pleading that they and Ukraine be included in the peace talks. Clearly, Trump does not respect losers. And he wants to extract more from Europe.
It was left to Trump’s defense secretary Pete Hegseth to explain to NATO’s Ukraine Defense Contact Group on February 12 what to expect in the peace negotiations that will follow soon.
Hegseth said: “The war must end; it was unrealistic to expect any return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders; Nato membership for Ukraine is not a realistic goal; security guarantees must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. These peace-keepers will be part of a non-Nato mission, which will not be covered by Article 5; there would be robust international oversight of the line of contact; no US troops will be deployed.”
Trump’s plan was furthered by US Vice President J.D. Vance during the Munich Security Conference on February 15, where he emphasized that the Europeans must both pay and play a bigger role in European security.
Just as the American defence secretary had stated that the US priority was to focus on deterring war with China in the Pacific, Vance said that America now “focuses on areas of the world that are in great danger” -- meaning that Europe can look after Ukraine and their own security, while the US will concentrate on the Asia Pacific, and the Arctic region. That is why perhaps Trump raised Canada as the 51st state of the US and Greenland as a possible colony.
Vance also chastised the Europeans for being too ‘woke’, not holding on to their values by clamping down on free speech, and taking delight in the cancelation of the elections in Romania where an anti-Ukraine war pro-Russian party had won.
Interestingly, Indian external affairs minister S. Jaishankar similarly rebuked the Europeans for critiquing Indian democracy, which he claimed was an exemplary one.
Meanwhile, Trump has already announced his rather high-profile negotiation team which will consist of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of CIA John Ratcliff, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and special envoy Steve Witkoff.
Trump has dropped General (Retd) Keith Kellogg, US Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, who is known to be a Moscow hawk. Trump’s words that he wants to “work together, very closely” with Putin to end the war in Ukraine and he would love to have Russia back in G7 are meant to soften up Putin. The US has also asked that gas prices be lowered so that Russia comes to the negotiating table.
Much of this is music to Putin’s ears, but he can nonetheless be expected to drive a hard bargain during negotiations.
At the same time, Moscow is not taking either peace or any welcome back to the Western world for granted. The Russians know that they have been repeatedly betrayed by the West on NATO expansion, starting with a warning from US Ambassador William Burns who informed his government back in 2008 that the Russians had warned against Ukraine’s entry into NATO.
Moreover, the US and the European dream of weakening Russia after Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin President Viktor Yanukovich fled the country following massive street protests has made the Russians wary. Then, when the Russian Special Military Operations began in February 2022, the Russians and Ukrainians were willing for a peace deal, but the US and UK blocked the peace agreements, as shown by the former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet.
The Biden administration had a role in repeatedly rejecting peace agreements from Putin. This forced the Russians to change their supply lines to the East while the US isolated them, froze their strategic reserves of US$300 billion, and placed their country under maximum sanctions as it tried to bring Russia to its knees.
Therefore, now Putin will have his own red line. He has always said a neutral Ukraine is essential for peace. There will be hard bargaining for how much territory he will return, which is likely to be minimal.
Some things important for Moscow have not been mentioned by the Trump team. For example, removing sanctions, allowing Russia back into the SWIFT inter-bank messaging system, unfreezing their strategic reserves and re-constructing some kind of long-term European security architecture so that there is no return to war.
All these issues will be part of the negotiations that Putin hopes will end in a summit for which he has invited Trump to Moscow during the Russian Victory Day celebrations in May that mark the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
The site for the crucial meetings between US and Russia peace negotiations will be Riyadh and the first meeting has been announced. This cartographic shift indicates the neutral role that Saudi Arabia now plays -- a role earlier played by Brussels or Geneva.
It is clear that if peace does come about, then the US will concentrate on the re-colonization of new regions around the Arctic, focus on building deterrence against China, re-organize the US military-industrial complex as an even bigger arms seller, and corner new oil and gas deals.
Russia will assert its position as a military superpower but continue to strengthen the partnerships with allies that have shown loyalty in the last few difficult years, such as China, India and the Global South.
It is here that India which has already gained from cheap Russian oil over the last three years can reap major new benefits.
Russia has repeatedly stated that India has been a consistent friend and this relationship can only get stronger. However, India too will have to play it right, take advantage of a favorable geo-strategic situation, and hope that some years of peace between these great powers remains a possibility.
All this, however, is yet to come to fruition. Any reversal and return to war will be a disaster for all.
(The author is Adjunct Professor, at O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana. This article was originally published under Creative Commons by 360info)
