Russia Ukraine War & Trump
The Russia-Ukraine war is three years old and looks like it may be nearing its end. It shouldn’t have begun in the first place, says Donald Trump. Less than a month after taking charge as U.S. President, his team has held talks with the Russians on ending the war.
Trump has blamed the war on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The latter now finds himself in the lurch. Europe too is feeling the heat. Russia that was called the aggressor by Europe and the earlier U.S. administration led by Joe Biden now finds the burden off its back.
The war is on the cusp of ending, says Pankaj Saran, India’s former Deputy National Security Advisor. Nobody thought it would wind down in such a dramatic manner, he adds.
‘A Ronald Reagan Moment’
One man is all it takes either to invade a country or stop a war, Ambassador Saran told StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale. It’s a lesson on the role people play in international relations and diplomacy. He looks back at the Cold War and the role then U.S. President Ronald Reagan played.
“Reagan was a conservative, diehard Republican, who called the Soviet Union the evil empire. And he was the man who actually started the initiative of peace with then USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev.”
For over two years now, Trump has been saying the Russia-Ukraine war should never have happened if he was President. And now he’s becoming even more articulate, saying Ukraine is losing and it’s a matter of time before it collapses on the battlefield. It’s about one man and his vision of what is in America’s interest.
“What he is doing is simply walking the talk but at fast forward speed. So this is not a negotiation for the fainthearted. What we are seeing is remarkable. It is a very profound moment.”
Victory For Putin?
Would Putin see this as his victory? I think so but he’s clever, so he’s not going to tom-tom his victory, says Ambassador Saran. Russia was isolated, made a pariah state and that was not a good situation.
But there have been strategic gains for Russia and Putin other than those in the battlefield. Like the disarray within the European Union and the near rupture in the trans-Atlantic alliance, he adds.
As for the peace talks with the U.S., maybe Putin understands that if he doesn’t do it now, it may never happen. So it’s a pivotal moment for him and for the country.
Ukraine War: What Trump Is Out To Do
Ambassador Saran doesn’t think the issue is the complexity of the negotiation on the Ukraine front in terms of territory or security guarantees.
“The grand bargain which Trump is trying to achieve is to change Russia’s geostrategic behaviour. And I think he understood that the Biden administration and the Europeans collectively had pushed Russia into the Chinese fold.”
Trump doesn’t take the Russia-China relationship as an unbreakable fact of life, he adds. “He wants to address the big problem. He wants to get in where no one else wants to get in. And the more complex the problem, the greater he enjoys.”
