Dem
47
GOP
53
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been in Saudi Arabia for the past few days, trying to work out some sort of a deal with the Ukrainian government. And guess what? When immature children like Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are not present, it's possible to conduct actual diplomacy. So, Rubio and his team were able to work something out.
Under the terms of the agreement, which Ukraine has already accepted, there would be a 30-day period in which
all fighting, on all fronts, was halted. The Soviet Union Putin government would enter into negotiations
with the Zelenskyy government, with an eye toward a permanent peace, and the U.S. acting as mediator. Meanwhile,
the U.S. and Ukraine would work on specific terms for an agreement giving access to some of Ukraine's rare earth
deposits.
Readers presumably don't need us to explain why this is not likely to be a "breakthrough," but we'll explain anyway, just in case. The first issue is that the foreign policy of the Trump administration oscillates wildly, such that today's policy may not be tomorrow's policy. And the person who is running the show is most certainly not the Secretary of State. So, at literally any time, Donald Trump could say or do something that completely undermines the agreement.
Beyond that, it takes two to tango (or three, if you include the U.S.), and Russia is not currently interested in dancing. The Putin regime has already announced, via Russian state-run media, that it will not agree to a ceasefire or to negotiations. And even if it did, there is zero chance that Putin is interested in giving back the territory he's taken, or that Zelenskyy is interested in letting him keep it. In other words, it's improbable that negotiations would be fruitful, particularly over such a short timespan. And despite its promises to end the war in one day, the Trump administration can't even get to the point of HAVING negotiations, much less to the point of having those negotiations fail.
That does not mean that the new agreement is a total non-story, however. The Zelenskyy administration knows there's no real downside to agreeing to the American plan (let the Russians be the spoilsports who ruin everything). And in exchange for Ukraine's non-concession concession, the Trump administration has agreed to restore aid to Ukraine, as well as intelligence-sharing. In short, Zelenskyy gave up virtually nothing, and got something. From where we sit, it looks like Trump got played again. (Z)