President Donald J. Trump certainly talked a big game about ending the Ukraine war. Nonetheless, he hasn’t been able to find the winning formula for getting Moscow or Kyiv to the bargaining table.
Forget talk of a ceasefire, armistice, or end of hostilities anytime soon.
I estimate that the war could drag on for years for a simple reason: both sides don’t like the terms that seem to be in the offing to end the conflict for good.
Both Russia and Ukraine would rather take their chances and keep fighting. And that means likely hundreds of thousands more dead.
According to a former senior Trump Administration foreign policy official I recently spoke with, someone who served close to Trump, there might be only one path for Washington: the president is destined to walk away from trying to get a Ukraine deal and focus on other parts of the world.
Trump ‘Won’t Stick Around the Ukraine Issues for Much Longer”
“Trump understands that both sides, Russia and Ukraine, don’t really seem to be in the mood to bargain with one another, and now might not be the best time to try and achieve peace,” explained the official, someone with decades of foreign policy and and national security experience I have known personally for years and trust.
“At the moment, Trump likely feels he has a few more weeks to craft a ceasefire and get the sides into serious discussions. Nonetheless, he won’t stick his neck out for Ukraine forever. He knows he is expending political capital every time he makes a phone call to Putin and allows Democrats to call him soft, weak, or ineffective. Most likely, Trump sees the lines of conflict freezing where they are, both sides de facto, but maybe not officially, recognizing who has control of what land they have now, and ensuring Ukraine builds its defenses for the future and joins the EU, but not NATO. Trump also wants a better relationship with Russia as he fears China. But how do we get there? Right now, both sides are dug in.”
When I asked the former Trump official if there was anything else that could be done to forge an agreement, he responded with one word: “time.”
“The only way to end this war is for both sides to get so exhausted that peace looks better than a deal they perceive as bad. For the moment, we aren’t there. However, maybe in a few months, if, say, the Russian economy teeters or Ukraine can’t hold the line, there could be a deal. But, at least for now, peace is not at hand in Eastern Europe.”
What a shame. And that means, at least to this senior offical, Trump seems likely to walk from the Ukraine war. Stay tuned…
About the Author: Harry J. Kazianis
Harry J. Kazianis recently served as Senior Director of National Security Affairs at the Center for the National Interest. He also served as Executive Editor of its publishing arm, The National Interest. Kazianis has held various roles at The National Interest, including Senior Editor and Managing Editor over the last decade. Harry is a recognized expert on national security issues involving North & South Korea, China, the Asia-Pacific, Europe, and general U.S. foreign policy and national security challenges. Kazianis previously served as part of the foreign policy team for the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Ted Cruz. Kazianis also managed the foreign policy communications efforts of the Heritage Foundation, served as Editor-In-Chief of the Tokyo-based The Diplomat magazine, Editor of RealClearDefense, and as a WSD-Handa Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS): PACNET. Kazianis has also held foreign policy fellowships at the Potomac Foundation and the University of Nottingham.
Swamplaw Yankee
May 21, 2025 at 2:45 am
The MAGA elite cabal need to take stock. The careless, negligent blab that Trump made his trademark has been exposed internationally! The 24 hour con Blab that was a pr asset is suddenly a tattoo visible all over his forehead.
The negligent, yet so easy, pre-election blather is now a heavy weight around his neck for his whole second term.
The huge majority of voting Americans know that Trump took a gamble, a cheap throw and on borrowed cash. Trump lost and now, the Yankee voter wants the money that Trump lost at cards.
The Question is where is MAGA elite? Or, does the MAGA elite a figment only existing as long as Trump can deflect and denigrate on major issues.
The Obama Democrat cabal, unilaterally made the covert scam to gift in 2014 the advantage the WEST had in geopolitics in the middle east to the prime, most vile cold war enemy of the WEST: Putin the orc.
Instead of taking responsibility for this Obama Democrat greenlighting of a free, no-cost, giveaway of ancient Ukrainian Crimean soil and families in 2014, the Democrat elite facilitated the vile Putin regime. The Democrat cabal refused to listen to the voters in 2014/15/16 and help the Ukraine with military hardware to fight the war of genocide that Obama god fathered. Obama self-slithered in his own ideological slime as the vile military actions of Putin became clear.
Obama knew that Putin would revert to his ancient genetic ethnic needs. Putin was ecstatic to get Obama’s green light so as to become a hero, the love of the peasant russian, who had an ancient ethnic need to refresh their tortured deviancy in.
Putin immediately ordered his “little green groomers” to work with russian traitors so as to kidnap and air lift little Ukrainian girls and boys back into the “fatherland”. The orc muscovites were breathlessly awaited the “Free” of any moral cost victims of the Obama Democrats.
Deviant needy russians were deprived for decades of their urgent need to give free language lessons in russian and free russian dancing lessons on their old dusty table tops that had not seen kiddie “action” for decades. Who in the orc muscovite realm could not love and adore Putin.
Even the Obama Democrats were onboard in 14-15 as they kept very mum about their own Yankee groomer, the much adored Epstein.
The data shows that no POTUS did anything to stop or hinder this peasant russian human trafficking in children for 11 years now. Biden could have objected in 2014-15 when the claim that Biden was cognitive might not be debated. The USA MSM knew that this genocide was underway for the “Lolita” factors that the ancient ethnic need desired. The kidnapped children were not sent to the captive slave nations enslaved by the orc muscovite elite. Those etnic might have desired negro, arab or oriental children for their language lesson pedophile cover.
Naturally, this is a burden for the Chief Magistrate of the WEST. The WEST demands a USA constitution legal approach by the POTUS! But, illogically, the 2025 POTUS dithers, deflects, denies the existence of this vile genocide, initiated by a former POTUS, Obama, in 2014, a POTUS who still dances about the realm, recalcitrant to any legal, moral or ethical concerns. Obama knows nothing so the MSM, et al, refuse to question the god father of this PUTIN run genocide.
Yes, the war in 2925 is identical to the war in 1616. In 2025 Ukrainian fathers go out daily to fight deviant russian peasants who push enslaved captive groups in front of themselves to be shot first. In fact, the North Korean state sent thousands of child molesters to learn how to kidnap little girls and boys. Or do these North Korean invaders deny that they happily get cash, collude and assist in the death of Ukrainian fathers that try to rescue their kidnapped child.
The point is that Ukrainian fathers in 1616 had to fight the same peasant russian child kidnappers. Putin’s great, great grand pappy bi-annually set out into the Ukrainian hinterland in sex trade caravans. Yes, this was a russian orc tradition to butcher Ukrainian families, diddle the children and caravan the kiddie victims down to their bosum sex trade buddies in Caffa in the Crimea. The old fort was full of dungeons where the muslim soldiers awaited the huge muslim black sea sex trade fleets to transport the Ukrainian Christian children into sexual servitude in the Ottoman slaveries.
In 1616 the Ukrainian fathers built little boats, faced the huge muslim black sea sex trade fleet and defeated the Ottoman human traffickers. The Ukrainian fathers then attacked Caffa successfully and liberated tens of thousands of sexually abused Ukrainian children. The Ukrainian fathers then chased after the gold laden caravans of deviant russian peasants slithering back into their wealthy lair of Moscow.
The American reader just seems to forget that the russian Putin of 2014 was the very same russian Putin of 1616 and way beyond. The American must force themselves to accept that the ethnic russian breed killed millions of Ukrainians over thousands of years for the purpose of ethnic greed and genetic deviancy. “Lolita” did not evoke herself out of the mind of a Mayflower Puritan, but an ancient ethnic russian sex trade family called Nabokov.
Today, the MAGA elite have a problem. Can the MAGA elite accept the reality of the Obama Democrat start of this russian ethnic human trafficking freebie?
Can the POTUS state in public that the WEST has to have a victory right NOW and that means the return of every inch of illegally occupied Ukrainian land and each and every Ukrainian child abused for the last 11 years.
The MAGA POTUS, Trump, has to demand in front of the world the pre-payment from Putin of $10,000,000 in gold bullion for each and every kidnapped child as compensation and reparation before any negotiation and peace blather continues. Once the russian peasant pays for the first 100,000 ( of over a half million) human trafficking victims the reality of this free 11 year criminal spree might hit the russian deep wallets + will force the muscovites to stop the war and their deep adoration of their Putin, the sex trader. -30-
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