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XPost: or.politics, sci.physics

First Trump surrendered to the Taliban and now he's surrendered to Russia
as his DEI hire and world's worst negotiator lets the cat out of the bag
and hands away the deal. This is to be expected with a lunatic for
president and a two bit marine grunt as defence secretary.

Trump’s just sabotaged Ukraine’s bargaining power with Russia - whose
side is he on?

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The Trump administration has just sliced away key negotiating options for Ukraine, giving the invading Russians a catastrophic advantage even
before any so-called peace talks can begin.

Now, in any future negotiations, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky’s position will be weaker.

On Wednesday, Ukraine’s military capacity was immediately undermined in
the medium term by Pete Hegseth telling his fellow Nato defence ministers
that "Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and non-lethal aid to Ukraine”.

Shortly after Hesgeth’s press conference, President Donald Trump said he
had spoken to the Russian president Vladimir Putin about starting
negotiations to end the war and would “inform” Zelensky about the
conversation.

The US has provided about $120 billion to Ukraine, about half of that
military aid, and the rest of Nato has matched that military spend too.
But in ruling out any future funding increase from the US for Ukraine,
Hegseth is sending a signal to the Kremlin that the US is backing away.

Zelensky has argued that any future settlement with Russia, which
currently controls about 22 per cent of his country, would depend on 150,000-200,000 foreign troops as a guarantee against another invasion.

He recently insisted that this could only be achieved with American involvement.

Hegseth has ruled that out.
Pete Hegseth has said there will be no American boots on the ground in
Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force
Pete Hegseth has said there will be no American boots on the ground in
Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force (AP)

There would be no American boots on the ground in Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force. “To be clear, as part of any security guarantee,
there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine,” he said.

There was no need to spell this out before talks with Russia. Part of Zelensky’s negotiating tactic would have been the mere suggestion that US troops could be on Ukrainian soil. That would have given the Russians
pause for thought.

But if foreign troops from Europe, Canada, and other Ukraine-supporting
nations were deployed they would have brought the full weight of the Nato alliance with them.

Not any more.

"If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point,
they should be deployed as part of a non-Nato mission and they should not
be covered under Article 5," Hegseth said.

Article 5 is the all for one and one for all clause in the Nato
foundation document that says that an attack on a Nato member is an
attack on all of them. It has only been invoked once, when the US was
attacked by al-Qaeda on 9/11.

Now, Putin need no longer fear that Nato’s full might will be brought to
bear against him if he bombs British troops in Ukraine.

That fear was a key part of Zelensky’s future platform. It was also a profoundly important part of the power of Nato as an alliance. And now
that power has evaporated.

Mark Rutte, the Kremlin will already have noted, ducked the question
entirely when he was asked by Sky News, before the Hegseth statements,
whether the US could be counted upon to come to the aid of a Nato ally if
it was attacked.

The Nato secretary general waffled about the need for more defence
spending across Nato but didn’t once say what would have once been
automatic: that the US would always come to the aid of a Nato member
under attack.
Donald Trump with Volodymyr Zelensky in New York in September 2024
Donald Trump with Volodymyr Zelensky in New York in September 2024 (AP)

That’s a further boost to the Russian position in future negotiations.

Part of Zelensky’s platform for peace has been that Ukraine should,
eventually, get Nato membership. That way, in his view, Russia would
think twice about invading again.

That’s gone too now.

And so has Ukraine’s demand that Russia, which invaded in 2014 and seized
some of the eastern Donbas region as well as Crimea, withdraw back to its
own borders.

That demand, which has the backing of the international community and is demanded by international law, is an “illusory” position, the US defence secretary said.

“We hear your concerns on stepping up for Ukraine, and we hear your
concerns on stepping up for European security,” the UK’s defence
secretary John Healey said in response.

But so far none of the Nato defence ministers appear to have grasped the
major strategic shift that the Trump administration has now embarked
upon.

This week Trump said that Ukraine “may be Russian some day”. That begs
the question: whose side is he really on?

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