https://www.theatlantic.com/national-se ... pe/684034/
Trump vowed on the campaign trail to resolve the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office. As the months pass, his administration is learning that Russia’s deep-rooted territorial claims, which in Putin’s mind date back centuries, can’t be settled overnight. But Trump sees a peace deal as central to his legacy as president—and his possible ticket to a Nobel Peace Prize. Efforts are still under way to find venues for a Putin-Zelensky summit, though many believe that the chances of the two leaders meeting without Trump are remote. Options for host cities include Geneva, Ankara, and Riyadh, U.S. officials said.
Trump has privately fumed in recent days that his high-profile attempts at diplomacy have yielded nothing, one senior administration official and one former official who stays in close touch with the White House told us. That irritation has been reinforced by some Russia hawks in the GOP, including Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump confidant who has urged the president to threaten Russia again with sanctions if it won’t come to the negotiating table. The shape of a possible peace deal, if and when it materializes, remains unclear: The United States has not firmly committed to offering security guarantees for Ukraine, but the Trump administration is considering continuing to share intelligence with the Ukrainians and potentially offering assistance with air defense.
Trump also has directed some frustration at Zelensky and Europe, believing that they are being unrealistic in their demands and need to accept that Ukraine has to lose some territory to end the conflict, the current and ex-officials told us. He is hesitant to commit more U.S. involvement, wary of alienating his MAGA base, and he has ratcheted up his efforts to blame the war on his predecessor, Joe Biden, even seven months into his own presidency.
“He just wants this over,” the senior official told us. “It almost doesn’t matter how.”
While talking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump said, “I’m not happy about anything about that war. Nothing.” He suggested that he would decide on a course of action in two weeks—a favorite crutch when he wants to postpone a decision—and has said that there would be “very severe consequences” if Zelensky and Putin did not soon meet. But on Monday he conceded that he did not know if they would, and suggested that he might be ready to walk away from the conflict if it drags on.
“Maybe they will, maybe they won’t,” he said of Putin and Zelensky. “They’d like me to be at the meeting. I said, ‘You guys ought to work it out. It’s between you. It’s not us.
If this is to be believed, Trump is on the verge of deciding that there's nothing more to be milked out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Neither side will concede anything beyond their stated and irreconcilable positions, and the two leaders are unwilling even to meet for a staged summit that could provide Trump with a much-desired photo opportunity.
In fact, Trump is even getting upset at the continued calls from dedicated anti-Russia players like Lindsey Graham to levy more sanctions against Russia. Meanwhile, the EU leaders seem to have convinced him that they won't back any sort of solution that Putin might have proposed in Alaska.
It's possible this has taxed Trump to the point where he is ready to play up some other story (National Guard deployment in US cities, perhaps?) to distract the public from whatever he is hoping to distract them from. Peace between Ukraine and Russia just doesn't have the same ring of prime-time appeal anymore, and next week's episode of The Circus will probably switch to a different theme altogether.
The important thing is to see what happens when this entire Nobel Prize-Ukraine-Russia story has dropped out of the headlines, which it soon will. My bet is that it will change nothing in terms of continuing sanctions/tariffs against India.
Though with a subtle propaganda of U.S is pushing India towards China narrative.