Why Trump is fighting for winning a quick ceasefire in Ukraine

When Donald Trump met with President Zelensky in New York last September, then the US presidential candidate expressed confidence that he could bring the war in Ukraine to the early end. “If we win, I think we will decide very quickly,” he said.

How quickly he meant what was different over time. A few days earlier in TV discussion, Mr. Trump promised that he was “settled before I even became president.” It was an escalation of his previous commitment in May 2023 to stop fighting in the first 24 hours of his presidency.

Mr. Trump holds the position for more than two months, and a penny can go to the White House trying to end the conflict as bitter and complicated as it can take time.

In a television interview last weekend, the US president confessed that when he promised to end the war in the day, he was “a little sarcastic.”

There are many reasons for slow progress than expected Trump Trump.

First, the president’s faith was inappropriate for his personal diplomacy. He has long believed that any international problem could be solved when he sits down with another leader and agreed with the agreement. Mr. Trump He talked to Vladimir Putin for the first time on February 12He called the Talk of the Watch “high -performance”. Two leaders He again performed on March 18.

But it is clear that these phone calls could not provide a direct 30-day temporary ceasefire that Mr Trump wanted. The only significant concession he pushed out For a few hours of call.

Secondly, the Russian president made it clear that he did not intend to hurry. His first public comments on negotiations took place last week at a press conference, which took place a month after his phone call with Mr. Trump.

Mr Putin has shown that he strongly opposed the two-stage US strategy to seek temporary ceasefire before talking about a long-term settlement. Instead, he said that any negotiations should be considered as “the cause of the war”, namely his fears, expanding the NATO alliance and the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state, somehow pose a threat to Russia’s security. He also posted detailed questions and conditions to be answered and fulfilled before you could agree with any transaction.

Third, the US strategy will pay its original attention to Ukraine, perhaps it was incorrectly appreciated. The White House came to the belief that President Zelensky was an obstacle to peace. Western diplomats acknowledge that the Ukrainian government was slowly aware of how much the world had changed with Mr. Trump’s arrival.

But the pressure in the US on Kiev, which led to the infamous confrontation in the oval office -when Mr. Trump and his vice -president, J. D. Vens, took over the Ukrainian leader – consumed time, efforts and political capital.

It also breaks the transatlantic relations by establishing Europe and the US, diverged another diplomatic problem that took time to settle. All this time, Vladimir Putin was sitting and enjoying the show, seeing his time.

Fourth, the great complexity of the conflict complicates any resolution. Initially, the Ukrainian proposal was for the temporary ceasefire in the air and the sea. The idea was that it would be relatively simple for monitoring.

But last week’s conversations in the US Jedde insisted that any direct ceasefire regime should also include more than 1200 km on the front line in the East. It instantly made the logistics check of any ceasefire more complicated. This, of course, was then rejected by Mr. Putin.

But even his agreement to a more modest proposal – to stop the attacks on the energy infrastructure – was not without problems. This is the details of this proposal, which will take most of the technical negotiations, which are expected to take place in Saudi Arabia on Monday. Military and energy experts will make detailed lists of potential power plants – nuclear or others that can be protected.

They will also try to agree which weapons systems cannot be used. But to agree with the difference between energy and other civil infrastructure can take some time. Remember: Ukraine and Russia do not talk to each other; They interact individually and bilaterally with the United States, which promises to overcome both sides. It adds again to the time.

On -fifth, the US focused on the economic preferences of ceasefire, distracting from the priority of the ceasefire. Mr. Trump spent time trying to agree with the framework that gives us access to Ukrainian critical minerals. Some have seen it as American investments in the future of Ukraine – others as the country’s natural resources require.

President Zelensky initially claimed that he could only agree if the US promised to provide Ukraine with security guarantees to restrain the future Russian aggression. The White House refused, saying that the presence of US mining and workers would be enough. In the end, Mr. Zelensky acknowledged the defeat and said he would agree with minerals without security guarantees. But despite this, the US has not yet signed the agreement, hoping to improve the conditions again, possibly incorporating access to access to Ukrainian nuclear settings or even ownership of Ukrainian installations.

The end of wars can be difficult and time consuming. We wouldn’t hit this stage without pressing Trump, but progress was not as fast and simple as he believed. In December 2018, when he campaigned for the presidency, Lodzimir Zelensky proposed the negotiations with Vladimir Putin. “You need to talk very simple”, He told Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Gordon. “” What do you want, what are your conditions? “And I would say to them,” Here are our points. “We would agree somewhere in the middle.”

Well, about the evidence of the last two months, it may be harder.