The newspaper The New York Times, ahead of a phone conversation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, reported that the talks «will focus on what Ukraine will lose» during the peaceful settlement of the war.
In essence, Trump will negotiate what reward Russia will receive for 11 years of open aggression against Ukraine, starting with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the publication writes. White House aides have made it clear that Russia will certainly retain Crimea and strongly suggested that it will receive almost all the territory it holds.
«I think we will talk about land, it's a lot of land, — Trump said on Sunday. — It's very different from what it was before the war, as you know. We will talk about land. We will talk about power plants». The Trump administration has already indicated that it expects Russia to control about 20% of the captured territory of Ukraine. But aides to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are concerned that Trump may support other of Putin's desires, including the critically important port — Odessa.
In his television appearances in recent weeks, US National Security Advisor Michael Waltz has taken the position that the most important outcome of the negotiations should be the cessation of killings after three years of brutal trench and drone warfare, without mentioning who started this war.
As NYT writes, he and other Trump aides say little about the conditions accompanying the ceasefire, but suggest that they are secondary to this larger mission. «We can talk about what's right and what's wrong, and we also have to talk about the real situation on the ground», — Waltz said.
There are other signs that Trump is preparing to make concessions to Putin. The Department of Justice has informed European officials that the United States is withdrawing from a multinational group investigating the actions of those responsible for the invasion of Ukraine, including Putin.
The administration is also reducing the work done by the Department of Justice's War Crimes Accountability Group, created in 2022 by the attorney general under Biden to hold Russians accountable for war crimes.
Photo: Reuters