The Trump Administration’s Implications for the Stability of Peace Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in the Light of Recent U.S. – EU Correspondence
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy was supposed to host the officials from the UK, U.S., France, Germany and Ukraine in London on Wednesday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio isn’t going to attend this latest round of talks, but the president’s envoy for Ukraine, retired lieutenant general, is.
Less than a week after Rubio threatened that the U.S. would “move on” from peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine if the Trump administration did not see progress “within days,” signs are that the U.S. is increasingly willing to withdraw from a peace process that has grown more complex in recent months.
The challenge for the ongoing dialogue between American and European leaders is that they have to contend with the U.S. expecting Russia to make major concessions.
Zelenskyy was criticized by Trump in a Truth Social post for refusing to recognize the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimean, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, as part of Russia.
Members of the U.S. administration have floated proposals in recent days that suggest Ukraine should be prepared to recognize Russia as the holder of territory it annexed back in 2014, including the Crimean Peninsula, or that Russia seized in the larger invasion of Ukraine that began in 2022.
The U.K., France and Germany all insist that Russia should be made to negotiate on equal terms for Ukraine in order to ensure that they support the country.
Officials will discuss the areas of common ground. The proposals that would have increased pressure on Moscow by adding more sanctions and military aid to the United States seem to have been discarded for now.
In a sign that the US will continue with efforts to negotiate with Russia, the White House announced that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will be heading back to Moscow this week for a fourth face-to-face meeting with Putin.
Russian strikes and the Russian-Putin agreement on a possible peace deal in London: the outcome of the London-London meetings?
The British Foreign Office has not issued a statement about the changed circumstances of the meeting, and did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment, but this represents an apparent downgrade in the significance of the talks.
The State Department thinks there is little chance of a breakthrough in London and senior French and German ministers won’t be going.
A strike by Russia on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, early Thursday, killed at least nine people and injured more than 70.
On Thursday morning, President Trump turned his attention to Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that he was not happy with the Russian strikes on Kyiv.
“A lot of houses were destroyed in the city of Kyiv,” stated the Kyiv Mayor in a video post. “We are now going through the rubble with our hands, we’re not using machinery. There are people under the rubble.
An NPR bureau in Ukraine heard drones flying over the area in the middle of the night as air defense tried to shoot them down.
The Trump administration hasn’t offered details of a peace plan. Zelenskyy has been pushed to give up territory in exchange for vague security guarantees against future Russian aggression.