Why Russia and Ukraine Keep Resisting Trump’s Art of the Deal

ملخص مفصل

The White House is leading a new round of negotiations this week to end the war, but all sides remain deeply at odds.

On November 10th, in Abu Dhabi, a familiar set piece will resume after a nine-month hiatus: direct, three-way talks between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine. The U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said that the meeting would cover “post-war security arrangements, de-escalation, humanitarian efforts, and next steps toward peace.” The agenda sounds awfully similar to previous efforts made by the Trump Administration during the past two years. Is there any reason to think that this round of diplomacy could produce a different result?

Under Donald Trump, the U.S. approach toward the war has appeared to swing wildly—for example, sanctioning Russian oil companies, only to ease restrictions on Russian fuel exports; or encouraging Ukrainian deep strikes inside Russia and later condemning them. These inconsistencies mask a set of remarkably durable assumptions. Above all, Trump wants to end the war quickly, an achievement in itself: a demonstration of his singular powers as a peacemaker and a means of unlocking what he imagines as a fruitful and profitable relationship with Russia.

That is, he is less concerned with the how than with the what. One doesn’t have to believe in kompromat to understand why Trump, time and again, ends up favoring Vladimir Putin’s position and interests. He believes that Russia, with its larger economy, population, and Army, is destined to prevail—“At some point, size will win,” Trump said last year—and so applying pressure to the weaker party can seem like the quickest path to a settlement. Moreover, as Trump sees it, relations with Russia, given its oil and gas and valuable mineral reserves, offer more economic upside than relations with Ukraine would, both for the U.S. and for Trump’s own family members and associates.

From the outset, Witkoff and his partner in the Russia-Ukraine talks, Jared Kushner, have projected a similar set of motives onto Putin.

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