Ukrainian quagmire: militarily and diplomatically

      Part 2 of the Russo-Ukrainian war started 3 years ago, with no end in sight, despite the claims of a certain American. Russia has managed to gain slightly more territory since last year. However, Ukraine has managed to make gains on the battlefield as slow and costly as possible, given President Vladimir Putin's indifference to casualties. Perhaps because Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky might run out of resources and soldiers earlier, in an interview with the Guardian on February 11, he suggested swapping the Ukrainian-held part of Russia (western Kursk) for the Russian occupied parts of Ukraine.  

      Part 1 took place in 2014: the annexation of Crimea. This was the beginning of Russia's, particularly Putin's, highly suspicious behaviour towards Ukraine, evident elsewhere beforehand and ever since. For several months across Ukraine already, Euromaidan and the Maidan Revolution had been ongoing. These were mainly motivated by the corruption, anti EU association and pro-Russia policies of then Ukrainian President Yanukovych. Very well disguised, he had essentially been a puppet President. Euromaidan was the largest democratic mass movement in Europe since 1989. This was and still is a key motive for Putin to undermine Ukraine and move ahead with his empire rebuilding project which started gestating in that year in his former guise as a KGB administrator.

      Yanukovych was ousted, and the resultant power vacuum led to the Russian invasion of the Crimean Peninsula. Protests and counter-protests arose in Crimea, followed by Russian special forces without insignia seizing strategic sites. Putin later dressed this up as "standing behind Crimea's self-defence forces." Occupying Crimea's parliament and dismissing its government, a referendum under Russian occupation was quickly announced. The result was overwhelmingly in favour of joining Russia. This has been repeated during part 2, in the small areas that Russia has conquered in mainland Ukraine. The ballot papers in both part 1 and part 2 as valuable as used toilet paper. 

          The resulting condemnation by the UN General Assembly of the annexation and referendum were rejected entirely, claimed compliance with the principle of the self-determination of peoples. He has stuck steadfastly to that principle ever since part 2 began. The vassal ex-Soviet republic Belarus was one of the starting points of the military exercise, along with Crimea and Russia itself. Supposedly separatist regions of eastern Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, with puppet governments that were conquered by Russia had their own toilet paper referendums. On the battlefield, there have been pitched battles, stalemates, counteroffensives, and even Ukraine conquering a border area of Russia, western Kursk. What was supposed to take and what many believed would initially take 3 days has lasted 3 years with an unknown end date and result.  

Along came the Yank...

      When campaigning for this second term during his own presidential interval, Trump spoke as outlandishly about Ukraine as he had been about everything else. The isolationist America First policy was promoted with the claim that America's allies "treat us worse than our so-called enemies. We protect them and they screw us on trade. We're not going to let that happen anymore." At least superficially, Trump seems to have something of a Putinesque persecution complex. Presidential lashing out has taken place in the form of import tariffs. 

       Just as during his first term, it is in foreign policy where he has revealed that his knowledge is merely a motley collection of ignorant assumptions. He has incessantly denigrated NATO, in that it has taken advantage of the US which is disproportionately funding it in comparison to the European members. The sabre-wallet rattling has had many of them meet their spending target. The $ has also been a key ingredient of The Donald moping about the war, in that President Zelensky is "maybe the greatest salesman of any politician...walking away with $60 billion." The pre-inauguration claim that he would negotiate an end to the war in a day never came at all close to materializing, leaving open the possible recognition of the annexation of Crimea, and the suggestion that Part 2 could have been prevented by Ukraine giving up parts of itself to Russia. This bizarre paralleling of Putin seems to be implying that Ukraine should have agreed to all demands in the first place.

      In June last year, however, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg presented Trump with a detailed peace plena which could realistically coerce both Russia and Ukraine into peace talks: Ukraine refusal entailed cutting off weapon supplies, whereas Russian refusal entailed and increase in weapon supplies to Ukraine. As long as the recent meeting in Saudi Arabia was only preliminary and this was brought up to Russian foreign minister Sergay Lavrov, this has significant potential to succeed. Otherwise, this meeting from which the Ukrainians were excluded was useless, thereby indicating Trump as being Putin's collaborator and/or useful idiot.

        Furthermore, it is essential for Trump to be made aware of the facts of this war, of Ukraine, of the USSR, and of Putin himself. Hopefully, Trump would actually and actively listen. It would serve him well to know that Ukraine and the other republics of the former Soviet Union were mistreated (except by Gorbachev) before the USSR dissolved in 1991. What former President Reagan termed as the "Evil Empire" is what Russia and Putin in particular are trying to rebuild, evident in the farcical referendums in Crimea in 2014 and those in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia in 2022. While Vladimir Putin may be a "strong man", the historic and current reality flies in the face of any thinking that he is that way because of being conventional and honorable. His career in the KGB and the events of 1989 in East Germany where he was based (Dresden) are the foundation of everything he has done ever since. His wishes and reality both contradict and conflict with each other. The Soviet Union destroyed itself, and while NATO may have helped, it was doomed from its advent, Red October 1917. Groundless loathing of NATO is the motivation for reconstructing a Russia that never really existed. During and before the Russo-Ukrainian war, Putin has been and still is a global sociopath. 

The Ukrainian President with 2 presidential problems 

      This is a sizable contradiction to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that US President Donald Trump has failed to realize. The former entertainer has been president of Ukraine since 2019, becoming internationally famous after the Russian invasion. He was born into a Ukrainian Jewish family, grew up as a native Russian speaker, and has a degree in law. Despite never having practiced law, his pre-presidential career has been in comedy and entertainment, creating his own production company Kvartal 95. Its most notable production is the TV series Servant of the People in which Zelensky played a (fictional) Ukrainian president. 

    An eponymous political party was founded in 2018, under which he won the 2019 presidential election in a 73.23% landslide. The political outsider who became an anti-establishment and anti-corruption figure, once on office he has been a proponent of e-government. Conveniently forgotten by Putin, Zelensky has also been a proponent of unity between Ukrainian and Russian speakers. 

     In the build-up to his presidency, interaction between Putin and Trump was decidedly curious. US intelligence had found that there had been Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, about which at a 2018 US-Russia summit in Helsinki, the Trumpster said he didn't doubt Putin's insistent denials. In the first year of Zelensky's presidency, Trump was impeached for withholding arms shipments to Ukraine as a means of applying pressure to open an investigation into rival Joe Biden. This was during the runup to the election which served as an interval between Trump Act I and Act II. 

     During that interval, Putin was the sole trouble maker, even with Zelensky's accusation at the Munich Security Conference in February 2022 that many western countries were appeasing Russia. The build up to the Russo-Ukrainian war was already active when on the 24th, there were 2 very telling statements. Hours before the Russian bombardments began, Zelensky said on social media that when he had tried to call Vladimir Putin to advert a war, he had been met by silence. Putin spoke up on Russian media that the aim of the 'special military operation' was to "demilitarize and de-nazify" the pro-western government of Ukraine and prevent it from joining NATO. The highly personal and entirely groundless labelling was met with Ukraine immediately severing of diplomatic relations with Russia.

     Days thereafter and halfway through his self-imposed interval, Trump said that Putin was a "genius." The newly reminted president, within less than 2 months of the commencement of Act II has gone off the rails even further, even by his own standards. Aside from existing and implementing forthcoming policies, he is still in a habit that begun on the first day of his political career: Blathering complete bollocks. This centers around what seems to be an attempted character assassination of President Zelensky. 

      The "dictator without elections" was elected in 2019, and the scheduled election in May last year didn't take place because the invasion led to imposition of martial law since the February 2022 invasion. Coincidentally, the Kremlin questioned Zelensky's legitimacy a few hours beforehand. 

         An election now would bring a crushing defeat, as "he's down at 4% approval rating." It's unclear what the source is, even if it's vaguely possible at wartime. Russian media made use of this claim by citing a similar poll by Ukrainian MP and Zelensky critic, Oleksandr Dubinsky. Dubinsky was charged with treason in Ukraine in November 2023, specifically because of "operating at the behest of Russian intelligence." 

       Most extraordinarily of all, at recent talks in Riyadh, President Trump's comments about Ukraine in particular seemed to mirror those of President Putin. First dismissing Ukrainian concerns about not being part of those talks, Trump told reporters that not only had they had 3 years to end the war, but also Ukraine "should never have started it." Last year, Putin told US talk show host Tucker Carlson, "it was they who started the war in 2014. Our goal is to stop this war, and we did not start this war in 2022." Nothing could be further from the truth. The overwhelming record demonstrates that Putin started both, having conjured up a pretext for them which too many failed to notice, especially we-all-know-who. 

     Many Republicans are also dismayed about Trump's seemingly willful blindness about the only individual who is solely responsible. "I would certainly not call President Zelensky a dictator," said Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski with which many Senators agreed. Thom Tillis of North Carolina explained it precisely, as the Russo-Ukrainian war was "the responsibility of one human being on the face of the planet: Vladimir Putin." Even Mike Pence, former vice-president of Trump Act I was critical, as per a posting on X: "Mr. President, Ukraine did not 'start' this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives."

      Another motive has its roots in Donald Trump's pre-presidential career. In addition to seemingly echoing Putinesque talking points about the war and the Ukrainian president, he said that Zelensky wanted to "keep the gravy train" of foreign aid running. This came shortly after president Zelensky had publicly rejected an American bid to gain access to (and profit from) Ukrainian minerals. Plainly, Zelensky's response must have hurt: "That's not a serious conversation. I can't sell our state." Reacting strongly to such statements is easier now than it was during Trump Act I, with even his Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg being sidelined from negotiations with Moscow to be replaced by Middle East representative and trusted friend Steve Witkoff. Trump Act II has him surrounded with 'yes men'. 

      The European continent's political leaders are not like that at all to the extent that many of them have spoken up. Sweden's prime minister Ulf Kristersson criticised the "dictator" label levelled at President Zelensky, while the German foreign minister Annalena called it "absurd", comprehensively justifying herself on TV: "If you look at the real world instead of just firing off a tweet, then you know who in Europe has to live in the conditions of a dictatorship: people in Russia, people in Belarus." The former prime minister of Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, responded with a thinly veiled accusation that Russia was "popping champagne right now."

    Personally, President Zelensky is not taking it lying down either: "We are seeing a lot of disinformation and it's coming from Russia. With all due respect to President Trump as a leader, he is living in this disinformation space. The United States helped Putin break out of years of isolation." He later expanded in saying that the world's choice is "with Putin or with peace." Concurrently, all of this was confirmed when President Putin told reporters that he would meet Trump "with pleasure." 

      Much of this displeasure could become omnipresent across all of Europe. Before he lost the election with his party finishing in third place, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's view were that Trump's comments were "simply wrong and dangerous." His successor, Friedrich Merz, is also skeptical of Trump's approach to Russia. Germany's post-war development leaves it in something of a conundrum: Barely able to take part in a European force (peace keeping or otherwise) even as Europe's largest military and financial supporter of Ukraine which may have to further increase. Economic challenges arisen from Russian energy supply after the war began, its security and strategic reliance on the United States could become shaky this year.  

       Germany is a founding member state of the European Union. The EU has less to worry about that could motivate it into decreasing its diplomatic volume. Once it became known that there had been a phone call between Trump and Putin, the EU's chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said that the US initiative amounted to "appeasement." With it was condemnation of Europe and Ukraine having been excluded from the negotiations with Russia. Previous doubts were solidly confirmed by this, along with a the potential for the prime minister of member state Hungary, Trump ally Viktor Orbán, to play spoiler. 

     A fellow founding EU member state, France, is somewhat more forthcoming than Germany, although Trump has turned a deaf ear to the view of président de la République française, Emmanuel Macron of Russia being an "existential threat." He refuses to endorse an unjust and fragile deal that could undermine European and Ukrainian security, having been negotiated without them.

        The American Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and vice-president Vance ruffled a lot of feathers at the recent NATO Defence Ministerial and Munich Security Conference. This includes British feathers, especially VP Vance's assertion of them backtracking on freedom of speech being a greater threat to their security than any posed by Russia. This blatant hypocrisy was aggravated by the negotiations excluding every non-American and non-Russian and the false accusation that Ukraine started the war. As expressed by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, security for Ukraine is also security for Europe.

       The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are all member states of the EU and NATO. Just like Ukraine, they are former republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They were actually the first to leave, and them joining NATO probably still annoys Putin, who doesn't want to 'lose' any more of them. Their collectively long memories are the primary motivation against the kind of Europe that Putin envisions. Where the US is increasingly reluctant about NATO overall, the Baltics' aim is to strengthen it as a whole. Lithuania's minister for foreign affairs, Kęstutis Budrys, has spoken about an urgent need to develop a framework of combining Ukraine's defense with that of the rest of Europe. All of them are calling for accelerating Ukraine's accession to the EU, and increasing defense spending. They are openly willing to spend up to 5% of GDP on defense, while also advocating for relaxing EU spending rules regarding member states' budget deficit levels. They are all highly proactive in this and in their desire to persuade the US to remain a defensive backstop. 

     Another highly motivated neighbour to the trouble and the trouble maker is Poland, a NATO member since 1999. Poland has a traumatic history in terms mistreatment by both Nazi Germany and the USSR. Statements about Russia and no demands of them by the US are doubtlessly viewed with significant distaste. The pointed criticism of Ukraine and President Zelensky in particular has made them wonder why Trump is doing the unthinkable. Another Donald is Poland's prime minister. Donald Tusk's Civic Coalition party is in a bit of a tough spot, given the potential for Trump to use the 10,000 US troops stationed in Poland as leverage if they disagree too strongly. However, with what the American Donald considers to be a "model European" which spends almost 5% of its GDP on defense and cut off imports of Russian LNG in favour of importing from the US, there is potential for a good partnership. However, the comments about Russia and coziness with Putin mean that there is now a trust deficit. 

        Overall, it remains to be seen what will transpire on the ground. Could the negotiations with some old school and slightly surreal real estate also have the desired effect for the Ukrainians which Putin will not try to sabotage?

Mixed Bizness

      Ukraine has significant natural resources, in particular 5% of global reserves of critical raw minerals all in a country which makes up 0.4% of the world's surface. Of the 34 minerals identified by the European Union as being critical, Ukraine has deposits of 22 of them. This includes 1/3 of all of Europe's lithium, 7% global production of titanium (pre-invasion), 19m tons of graphite (used to make EV batteries), beryllium and uranium (critical for nuclear weapons and reactors), manganese, gallium, zirconium, apatite, fluorite and nickel. Further to this are billions worth of deposits of coal, gas and oil. 

      Of the approximately 20,000 of mineral deposits, only 15% of them were being actively exploited at the time of the Russian invasion. Many deposits are untapped, and many that are known have yet to mined due to lack of investment as according to experts, developing them is extremely difficult and expensive. In the meantime, demand for them is growing and predicted to grow to greater extent. 

      The business deal about critical raw minerals between the US and Ukraine, so Trump and Zelensky, had to be thrashed out as given how a firm security guarantee from the US was repeatedly requested. Having brought up the concept of potential access to some of Ukraine's mineral wealth when presenting a victory plan to western partners last year, he was steadfastly adamant: "If we don't get security guarantees, we won't have a ceasefire, nothing will work, nothing." The initial demand from the US for the right to $500 billion in potential revenue without firm security guarantees was rejected to start with, however the US has apparently dropped this demand. According to Ukraine's prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, the subsequent preliminary agreement could only be signed once Zelensky and Trump "agree on security guarantees", thereby tying them both together. 

      While the actual fine print hasn't been made public yet, there is a business case for getting the deal finalized, one of the very few things about which Trump has expertise. It can't have escaped his attention that significant expansion in production is needed to meet forthcoming demand for essential minerals by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. That also applies to global net-zero carbon emissions, in that an additional 50 lithium, 60 nickel and 17 cobalt mines would need to become operational by the end of this decade. 

        Joint exploration of Ukraine's resources would significantly achieve much of this, hence attracting American investors and the potential subsequent multiplier effect on the country's economy. Thereby, Zelensky became prepared to deal with Trump while conveniently sidestepping the "dictator" blather, in that it could bankroll much of the financial and military support. The US would earn half of the revenue and have veto rights over licensing and provide security guarantees when/if there's a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv. 

         The US and Ukraine are supposed to end up forming a joint investment fund in order to ensure that "hostile parties to the conflict do not benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine." That should tick most of the metaphoric boxes, as long as it is properly enforced so that Putin's greedy fingers are slapped away. The joint investment fund "shall have the exclusive right to establish the method, selection criteria, terms and conditions" of all future licenses and projects. More than being 'words on paper' would be ideal if signing during the odyssey Mr. Zelensky goes to Washington. Ukraine would "get the right to fight on", according to Trump who was pleased with the price paid for this deal, even though many of the terms are not bog-standard old fashioned business terms with which he is most familiar. Zelensky has recently said that is was "too early to talk about money", as it is undoubtedly his aim that the US having a financial stake in Ukraine's critical raw minerals would give the White House a reason to protect Ukraine if this war restarted after a ceasefire was signed. 

       Restarting the Russo-Ukrainian war is certainly plausible, given behaviour during Part 1 and Part 2, as well as long beforehand. Over the past 3 years, there has been widespread damage across Ukraine, with Russia now controlling 1/5 of its territory. Most of Ukraine's coal deposits are in the east and have been lost. According to Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine's economy minister, $350 billion of resources are in occupied territories, which includes 40% of metal resources. There are some resources close to battlefields, such as 2 lithium sites in Donetsk (Shevchenkivske) and Zaporiyia (Kruta Balka).  

        Further to Putin's psychological/psychotic reasons for his own brand of imperialism, minerals also have an economic, therefore strategic, element to them. Those that have been seized (an accurate term would be stolen) cut off a revenue source for Ukraine while adding to theirs and could influence global supply chains. He has even publicly brought this up, with the inevitable linguistic cosmetic gamesmanship with the term "new territories", rather than 'invaded, overrun and occupied'. He is not concerned about the US-Ukraine deal, because Russia "undoubtedly has, I want to emphasize, significantly more resources of this kind than Ukraine." Combined with Russia itself, that's probably true, even though he's trying to pimp out occupied parts of Ukraine at the same time as dressing it up with a deluded description of the invasion and hopes for no more sanctions: "As for the new territories, it's the same. We are ready to attract foreign partners to the so-called new, to our historical territories, which have returned to the Russian Federation." 

        Most of the official statements do not attempt to disguise reality, which most will hopefully to continue to see through. The critical raw minerals deal was a demonstration that the US no longer helps Ukraine for nothing. Occasionally, the Kremlin even extended to the honest truth (!) in that it was against Trump giving any help to Ukraine whatsoever. When President Trump said that Russia is open to accepting European peacekeepers in Ukraine, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wouldn't take the bait when he bluntly answered that the Kremlin would not even consider it. 

       Even so, equipment and ammunition to Ukraine won't stop, as Trump himself said when asked if they would continue: "Maybe until we have a deal with Russia. We need to have a deal, otherwise it's going to continue." 

Deal or no deal, and what kind of peace is on the horizon?

What this business deal regarding Ukraine's critical minerals consists of precisely and thereby what chance it has of achieving genuine peace and the nature of what that would entail is best established through rhetorical questions:

• Is it really more than just business for the former realtor?
• Was it an act all along from Donald Trump? 
• Was calling Zelensky a dictator a means to make him more pliable, or has it backfired? 
• Was cozying up to Putin to make him slightly flexible through massaging his ego, or does he genuinely and foolishly admire him?

• Is Putin yet again engaging in underhand tactics so he can engineer a tactical advantage? 
• Will Russia end up holding on to its "new territories", to make it 'version 2' of Crimea? 
• Is this just another stage in the plot to reassemble the Russian empire, so will it merely sit and continue waiting? 

    The revenue from the joint investment fund could secure funding for Ukraine, and help develop its economy. It could also bring some longer term economic/financial benefit to the US, rather than the Biden method of just throwing money at Kyiv. 

    President Trump has long claimed, and still claims that the war would never have started if he had been in the White House at the time. Given Putin's record during and also before his presidency, this was always going to happen, so this line of thinking of Trump's misjudges his own capabilities. Furthermore, he severely misjudges those of Putin who also has the propensity to stoop down to the gutter of morality.

    President Trump's attempted to make his second term consecutive to his first by encouraging a riot and storming the US Capitol to stop formal vote-counting and overturn his defeat in the 2020 election. Despite this, he has proven to be more reasonable and practical than many believed. It is incumbent on Trump to avoid the 'peace at any price' approach, and realize that Putin is entirely untrustworthy.  

    While Putin sits on his hands, general funding to Ukraine is scheduled to continue. Playing the long game is how he has usually prevailed, so the solutions must have longevity built into them. "All warfare is based on deception." This proverb from The Art of War applies to that other skill of Putin's, devious deception. Therefore, every single aspect of every single course of action both in negotiations and on the ground will have to be double checked, triple checked, and quadruple checked at all times. Apart from annihilation of the Russian army, this is the only means to stop this war, as unpalatable as the current status quo may be.