The special envoy of the United States to, Keith Kellogg, compared the country invaded with a stubborn acémila last Thursday. The is “how to hit a mule with a stick in the snout,” he explained in a talk at the Foreign Relations Council Analysis Center, in Washington. “We have captured his attention,” said the retired general, according to which kyiv had “won” that punishment.
The stick, it seems, has achieved the objective that Washington, the main assistance provider so that kyiv can defend himself against the aggression of Russia, wanted: sitting Ukraine to the negotiating table to deal with the fire and a future peace agreement with Moscow. This week, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and the National Security Minister of the White House, Mike Waltz, after the president of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, has gathered in Riyadh with the Saudi heir prince, Mohamed Bin Salmán, this Monday. It will be the first face to face from the televised anger of the US president, Donald Trump, and his number two, JD Vance, to the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office on February 28.
The Ukraine mission will be headed, as Zelenski announced, by Andrii Yermak, his right hand, and will be attended by the Foreign and Defense Ministers, Andrii Sibiga and Rustem Uumerov. The newspaper Pravda He has reported that there will also be the viceprimera minister Yuliia Sviridenko, although Zelenski did not give her name. Sviridenko was key in the negotiations of the agreement for joint exploitation with the US of the Ukrainian minerals, which remained without signing since the tarascated in the White House.
It is a decisive encounter. The next steps depend on the conflict and, with them, such transcendental issues as the transatlantic relationship, where. Zelenski stressed on Saturday that the dialogue in Saudi Arabia with the US will focus “on trying to agree on the necessary decisions and the steps” to end the war. “Ukraine has sought peace since the first second of this war. There are realistic proposals on the table. The key is to move quickly and efficiently, ”said the Ukrainian president.
At the meeting, the accumulated requisters in the relationship between the two countries will have to be aside. Address if you are going to resume, and under what conditions, suspended military assistance. The agreement on minerals will also be discussed, which Trump has indicated that he wants to take up. The agreement for the joint exploitation of 50% of minerals, oil and Ukrainian gas is one of the demands raised by the Republican leader to talk about continuing with US assistance to kyiv.
Above all, at this meeting, the US will have to put on the table what kind of peace in Ukraine is the one who wants. Let it clear if you want a quick solution and all costs, in which kyiv should give in everything and the Kremlin in nothing: loss of territories, definitive renunciation of Ukraine integration into NATO, resignation of a Zelenski to which the Republican hates personally, and scarce or no protection against a possible repetition of the Russian aggression once Moscow has replaced forces. It is something that allies do not consider discharge, seen and their admission, last Friday, that it is easier to understand Russia than with the alleged ally. This Sunday, in an interview broadcast on the television channel Fox Business, the Republican threw a new jug of cold water at kyiv’s expectations: “Ukraine could not survive, anyway.”
In his speech at the analysis center, Kellogg assured that the failed peace proposal addressed in March 2022 in Istanbul is not the framework for an agreement that has in mind Washington. But it is “a starting point, at least.” That plan forced Ukraine to renounce NATO, to convert the Russian into an official language and to limit the size of his armed forces, something that would prevent him from stopping future invasion attempts. He was abandoned in a hurry after the Russian slaughter of Ukrainic civilians in IRPIN.
It could also be that Trump has something more balanced in mind, which does not suppose an unconditional capitulation of Ukraine and throw three years of war sacrifices. The US president says that he is not on the Russian side, but neither of the Ukraine. On Friday, he was surprised to launch a “of great draft” and tariffs against Russia on social networks if this country does not access the negotiating table. It was his first critical message to Moscow in public since last month he spoke on the phone with the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, in a conversation that opened the principle of the process of thawing between the two governments and began to move the wheels for a peace negotiation in Ukraine. But after the grandiloquence of its statement, the threat was quite relative: Moscow is already subject to sanctions and commercial exchange between the two countries is tiny.
And Trump alluded to his text to something Ukraine questions, but what he insists again and again, generally to support Moscow’s thesis and ensure that Kremlin has those of winning: that Russia “is massacing” the country invaded on the battlefield.
the Zelenski that last month refused to sign the economic agreement with the USA because he did not want to mortgage “ten generations of Ukrainians” and that arrived in Washington to demand security guarantees has had to give in to Trump. In his speech before the two Congress cameras last Tuesday, Trump announced that he had received a letter from his counterpart in which he declared himself “willing to sit at the negotiating table as soon as possible.”
Zelenski has recovered this Sunday in his social networks his fundamental claim for the White House and the rest of the allies, who assure him resources to defend himself and to dissuade Russia again to attack in case an end of the hostilities. “We need a fair and lasting peace. A peace with true security guarantees, ”he said. Trump has so far refused to address this issue and demands from Zelenski to assume fire, even if he does not have these defense guarantees.
The sample of the Russian threat and its lack of predisposition towards peace, has emphasized the Ukrainian head of state, are those that his country has suffered in the last week, in which the invader has shot at the Ukrainian territory 80 long -range missiles, 1,200 guided air pumps and 870 drones long -range bomb.
Since Trump has increased the pressure on Zelenski, accusing him of sabotaging a potential peace agreement – unlike Vladimir Putin, who does wish, according to the US president -, the Ukrainian president does not lose opportunity to emphasize that he does want to negotiate the end of the war. He even affirmed last week that the peace process must be “under the strong leadership of President Trump.”
The US president declares himself optimistic. “I think what is going to happen is that Ukraine wants to close an agreement, because I don’t think they have a choice,” he said in statements to the press on Thursday. Or according to Kellogg’s simile: if the mule is shown again, you can receive another stick in the snout.
