Trump team in talks with Biden and Ukrainian officials about ending war with Russia

[applegrove]

Trump team in talks with Biden and Ukrainian officials about ending war with Russia
Trump’s advisers and Cabinet nominees have yet to present any specifics of a plan to Ukraine, sources said.

Dec. 13, 2024, 1:11 PM EST
By Dan De Luce, Courtney Kube, Peter Nicholas and Garrett Haake

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-team-talks-biden-ukrainian-officials-ending-war-russia-rcna184145

"SNIP..........

President-elect Donald Trump’s national security team has held discussions with the White House and Ukrainian leaders as part of a concerted effort to find a way to end the war with Russia, multiple sources with knowledge of the matter told NBC News.

Trump's advisers and Cabinet nominees, who hold a range of views on Ukraine, have yet to present a conceptual or specific peace plan to Kyiv, the sources said.

The president-elect has vowed to end the conflict even before he is inaugurated next month, calling the casualties suffered on both sides “a tragedy.” But he has sent mixed signals in his public comments, urging Russia to make peace but also suggesting he might scale back U.S. military aid to Ukraine or reimpose limits on Kyiv’s use of American-made long-range missiles against targets inside Russia.

Despite Trump’s promises to end the war quickly, it remains unclear whether he can persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt the fighting as Moscow’s forces gain ground in eastern Ukraine. It is also not clear if Trump's team has communicated with Putin’s government about Ukraine, and if so, what has been conveyed by either side.

...........SNIP"

[doc03]

1. Sounds like it will take more than a phone call. nt

[BOSSHOG]

2. YET TO PRESENT ANY SPECIFICS OF A PLAN, CONCEPTUAL OR OTHERWISE

It sounds like what I did with a College Chemistry Assignment in 1977. The Prof was very specific about me having to retake the class. But I was a powerful college sophomore juggling my many important and varied priorities. Not some yahoo wanting to be POTUS. Who apparently has zero responsibilities.

[applegrove]

3. Looks like Trump should have kept his powder dry about

Trump planning to not support Ukraine when he takes the Presidency. If he had someone who knew diplomacy advising him they could have explained soft power to him.

[Irish_Dem]

4. Trump has only two settings: 1. Totally ignore 2. Smash mouth power.

[Johonny]

17. Candidate Trump talks tough

President Trump waffles like the White House is IHOP.

[Irish_Dem]

22. He lies a lot. Especially on the campaign trail.

[BOSSHOG]

5. Imagine knowing Stuff

And trying to expand it to HIM. In the next four years we may be at war with NATO.

[Emrys]

6. Keith Kellogg, Trump's nominee for Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia,

has in the past outlined what he'd see as a dual-channel carrot-and-stick strategy for getting peace talks started between the two parties. If Ukraine refused to enter negotiations, the US would threaten to withdraw aid and support. If Russia refused, the US would threaten to arm Ukraine to the hilt. How much of that plan (and Kellogg's reputation) will survive into the cold reality after the inauguration, we'll have to wait and see. Kellogg stated the other day that he felt the conflict could be over in a couple of months, but that timeable is probably based more on Trump's wishful thinking than any sensible estimate. The US is obviously an influential and key parner in NATO, but many of the European powers that support Ukraine don't want it to capitulate (especially in a way that will favour Russia and store up problems for them all in the not-too-distant future). They've been preparing, and if Trump follows past form and threatens to leave NATO if he doesn't get his own way, he might be in for a nasty surprise.

Ukraine has never refused to join in any serious negotiations (in fact, it's held a series of summits in the last year to prepare the way), unlike Russia, with Putin airily waving away the prospects of peace talks earlier in the year because he felt Russia had the upper hand and could improve its bargaining position by "taking" more territory, so it would be stupid to negotiate at that point.

Recently, the Russians have sent mixed messages depending on which apparatchik was being quoted at the time, from a flat refusal to enter any negotiations that involved the US to a grudging and unenthusiastic willingness to hear what might be on offer.

Russia's case for being taken seriously as a negotiating partner isn't helped by the daily bloodthirsty imperialistic tosh that its state-sponsored pundits rant about on Russian media, nor by the starkly genocidal declaration yesterday by ex-Russian President and now Deputy Head of the Russian Security Council Dmitri Medvedev:

Today, Ukraine faces a choice – to be with Russia or to disappear from the world map altogether.

At the same time, Ukrainians are not required to lay down “neither soul nor body” for their freedom. They should humble the pride of “otherness”, refuse to oppose themselves to the all-Russian project and cast out the demons of political Ukrainianism.

Our task is to help the residents of Little Russia and New Russia build Ukraine without the hassle of “Ukrainianism”. To consolidate in the public consciousness that Russia is irreplaceable for Ukraine in cultural, linguistic and political terms.

If the so-called Ukraine continues to follow an aggressive Russophobic course, it will disappear from the world map forever, just as the puppet entity of Manchukuo, artificially created by militaristic Japan as a proxy force on the territory ofChina, once evaporated.

https://interaffairs.ru/news/show/49351

[applegrove]

7. OMG it does not look good.

[Emrys]

8. Well, if you listen to Kellogg in interviews he's given Fox News etc. in recent months (before Trump nominated him),

it actually sounded less bad than it might have, and certainly less bad than anything Trump's burbled about in public - and here I'm partly reflecting the opinions of some of the Ukrainian figures I read, who are trying to remain, on the face of it optimistic. I'm not in their shoes, so I have to hold out a glimmer of hope on their behalf, much as my personal inclination is to distrust implicitly anything that comes from near Trump.

What Trump and Kellogg have to get through their heads is that the US doesn't get to call all the shots now. There are other parties involved (not least the Ukrainians, of course, who seem to be trying to pander to Trump's ego), and other go-betweens who might be acceptable to both parties (some Middle Eastern powers have been constructive in negotiating prisoner exchanges, for instance). Europe might struggle to fill the gap if the US did abandon NATO (I suspect that's an idle bluff as it would be giving up real and soft power in an arena that's long been part of the US's sense of identity, but who knows with Trump?), but the "coalition of the willing" that's developed is at least talking a good game at the moment, and time is of the essence for Russia. Growing numbers of economists feel that next year will bring a major crash for Putin, and no amount of fiddling the books (as its central bank has been doing for a few years now - let's be polite and call it creative accounting) will be able to cover it up this time.

Kellogg has a least spent some time in Ukraine, which has won him some degree of trust from the Ukrainians, and has recently expressed his intent to spend some time listening to both parties as a first course of action. How much sway he may have with Trump, we'll have to wait and see.

[applegrove]

9. Good. Trump still should have not telegraphed he would

not support Ukraine. Obviously I hope for peace.

[Emrys]

10. Trump spouts all sorts of things that don't end up happening

I mean, the backpedalling from ending the war in a day - "easy" - can't have been some sort of tactical negotiating masterstroke, apart from the usual tactic of trying to get elected on the basis of vacuous undertakings that disappear down the memory hole or prove so wildly stupid and self-defeating that even Trump wouldn't go ahead with them.

I'm more pissed off at the rubbish he spouted about not being happy about Ukraine striking targets inside Russia with US weapons (it's struck inside Russia with homegrown weaponry for the last couple of years, and increasingly, to good effect, this year) because that's "escalatory" and he could see no good reason for it. I hope someone he'll listen to will quietly take him aside and explain it to him in words of one syllable.

[applegrove]

11. Those incursions into Russia are so Ukraine could have bargainning

chip(s) when it comes time to negotiate with Russia, no?

[Emrys]

13. I was talking about (and I believe Trump was referring to) missile strikes across the border

to take out weaponry and personnel that were attacking Ukraine from what had been places of safety because of the restrictions on using certain US-supplied weapons in that way. Since russia had no compunction about striking anywhere and everywhere it could in Ukraine, it seemed imbalanced, and fears of Putin going through with his threats to use nuclear weapons if A NATO country's weapons were used on Russian soil proved to be just another imaginary red line.

But yes, the drive into Kursk was partly to lure Russian troops away from other fronts, but also to provide a bargaining chip if and when negotiations start. The Ukrainians made it clear they had no intention of making the land part of Ukraine.

[applegrove]

14. Okay. I vaguely remember missile strikes at arms depots

in Russia.

[Emrys]

15. There have been many strikes by Ukraine on targets deep in Russia using homegrown drones,

Last edited Mon Dec 16, 2024, 10:44 PM - Edit history (2)

sometimes in the form of adapted light aircraft.

They've hit oil and gas refineries, ammunition stores, air bases, military headquarters etc. Some of the strikes have been around 1,000 miles into Russian territory. The media framed the issue of use of US-supplied weapons solely in terms of range and described ATACMs etc. as "long-range", whereas they are in fact medium-range - long range was something the Ukrainians could already manage, but the firepower they could project with each drone or missile was limited, and many of them in each volley would usually be intercepted as they didn't have stealth capabilities.

Here's Trump mouthing off in his TIME interview, which took place on November 25:

I think the most dangerous thing right now is what's happening, where Zelensky has decided, with the approval of, I assume, the President, to start shooting missiles into Russia. I think that’s a major escalation. I think it's a foolish decision.

https://time.com/7201565/person-of-the-year-2024-donald-trump-transcript/

As so often, I think he feels he has to spout some sort of BS to kid on that he actually understands anything and to seem relevant, whereas what he's doing here is, as usual, revealing his ignorance of why Ukraine might want to attack facilities that are raining vast swarms of weaponry on Ukraine almost daily.

The "with the approval of, I assume, the President" is especially disturbing here - it was common knowledge that there was a long-running dispute over this issue between the White House and the Ukrainian government, and that Biden finally gave the go-ahead just before Putin's much-hyped strike on Dnipro with the Oreshnik (or more correctly, Kedr) ballistic missile. Trump's obviously been too busy to read any briefings or look at a newspaper, or maybe even Fox News, which may have covered it.

[applegrove]

19. Thanks for the details.

[applegrove]

20. Putin lauded Trump's criticizm of the missiles. He said

Last edited Sat Dec 14, 2024, 02:42 AM - Edit history (1)

only time will tell if Trump helps Russia get a great deal.

[Buns_of_Fire]

12. Gee, and here I thought His Excellency had it all figured out.

Or maybe it was just the concept, as in "war is bad, m'kay?"

[Johonny]

16. So basically Biden solve this so Trump can take the credit

What a leader.

[applegrove]

18. Or Biden can take the blame if peace fails.

[JI7]

21. I think it might be more about what Putin will demand

if the war is still going on. And public perception in the US and West.