Trump Bends The Knee To Putin
By US President Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin today.
The United States has had a policy of “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” It looks like that is now at an end. Putin has wanted to negotiate spheres of interest with the United States, without Ukraine. It looks like that will go forward with Trump.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group:
A durable peace for Ukraine must include robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again.
This must not be Minsk 3.0.
That said, the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.
Instead any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops.
I’m not sure what event this is from. It’s not in the Contact Group transcript:
Earlier, Hegseth said that Ukraine cannot expect to get all its land back.
Nate Schenkkan, Senior Director of Research for Freedom House, put it well:
NATO and the Marshall Plan, following World War II, were as much about keeping peace within Europe as protection against the Soviet Union. The previous century had been little but war in Europe. Now Russia threatens a weakened Europe. Putin has made known his intention to return to the Russian Empire. The United States is wealthy, with the world’s largest military. There is no reason for us to walk away.