The American president, Joe Bidenis launched in a race against time to supply military aid to Ukraine before his successor, Donald Trump, shelves that support when he takes power in January. Trump’s choice of retired general Keith Kellog as special envoy to Ukraine and Russia points out that the new president’s peace plan involves cutting off kyiv’s weapons tap and forcing a negotiation with Moscow that is more like a surrender.
The 725 million dollar package prepared by the White House could be one of the last shipments of weapons that the United States sends to Ukraine before On November 20, the Trump Administration takes charge from, until now, kyiv’s greatest ally and main supplier of money and weapons.
The new delivery will include ammunition for the HIMARS missile systems operated by the Ukrainian army, land mines, drones, anti-tank rockets and Stinger surface-to-air missiles. That is to say, the type of weapons to try to stop a Russian ground offensive and prevent Moscow’s troops from breaking any point on the long front line and overflowing into Ukrainian territory.
A major Russian offensive in Zaporiya or on the eastern front, from the Donetsk region towards Kharkiv, in northern Ukraine, is among Moscow’s possible war plans, which In recent hours it has also redoubled its attacks with missiles and drones against Ukrainian energy supply facilities. and has left more than a million people without electricity and heating on the threshold of a very cold winter ahead.
Attack on decision-making centers in kyiv
Furthermore, this Thursday, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, took the opportunity to threaten to attack “decision-making centers”, specifically in kyiv, a step that Moscow has not taken at the moment and that would further aggravate the already complicated Ukrainian war situation.
The Kremlin, aware that Trump’s arrival to power could turn the tables on the Ukrainian resistance and force kyiv to sit down to negotiate, wants to reinforce its conquests and achieve an unmitigated victory over the Ukrainian army assisted by the West since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Before he won the presidential elections on November 5 against the Democratic candidate and current US vice president, Kamala Harristhe Republican leader had stressed that The war in Ukraine would never have broken out if he had been president of the United States.
Trump’s plans to stop the war are underway
He also bet, for example last July, that The war would end in 24 hours. And, already in the middle of the electoral campaign, Trump refused to defend, as Biden had done since the conflict began, the defeat of Russia as an essential approach to ending the conflict.
Now, the most obvious proof that Trump intends to pressure Zelensky to accept the inevitable and negotiate an armisticealthough it implies military defeat and the cession of territory, offered it by appointing the retired Lt. Gen. Kellog as White House envoy to Ukraine and Russia.
Kellog, who was chief of staff of the White House National Security Council in Trump’s previous term (2017-2021), will have the mission to help settle a conflict that is already more of a nuisance than a source of business and hegemonism for the US and its arms industry.
Last June, Kellogg put forward a proposal to end the war directly and without frills: Arms shipments to Ukraine would be suspended until Zelensky agreed to negotiate an armistice with Putin.
In that text presented to Trump and titled “America first, Russia and Ukraine second”Kellogg and whoever was too national security advisor Fred Fleitz they pointed out that the war had no signs of tilting towards Ukraine and that the future of American military aid should depend on kyiv sitting down to negotiate peace with Moscow.
De facto, Such a strategy would mean surrendering to Moscow and confirming Russian annexations. in Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and the Crimean peninsula, the latter incorporated into the Russian Federation with a highly questioned referendum in 2014, when the current crisis was brewing.
The end of US aid will sentence the Ukrainian army
In any case, indicated Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitri Polianski, Cutting US military aid to Ukraine will be “a death sentence” for the Ukrainian militaryhence kyiv’s attempts to drag the US and NATO into an open war with Moscow.
Polianski accused Biden of complicating the transition from his government to Trump’s with his latest steps, such as the authorization for Ukraine to use long-range US missiles against Russian soil, which has unleashed the wrath of Moscow.
Mike WaltzTrump’s future National Security Advisor, has already indicated that he is studying, among others, the proposal of Kellogg, who, as special envoy to Russia and Ukraine, He will occupy a position that did not exist during the Biden era.
According to sources close to Waltz in statements to CNN, the idea is that Trump’s praetorians pressure Zelensky and his circle of political and military power to accept a ceasefire to stop the fighting temporarily, while negotiations begin. At that time, the Trump Administration will also demand that its European allies NATO to assume most of the cost of supporting Ukraine.
This part of the roadmap for the pacification of Ukraine could be the most complicated, since the European Unionwhere all the European NATO countries come together politically and economically, It has been very reluctant to stop the war if it means territorial losses for kyiv.
“We must bring this (the Ukraine conflict) to a responsible end,” Waltz said last week in statements to the Fox channel. To do this, he added, “we need to restore deterrence, restore peace and get ahead of this escalation, rather than responding to it.
Europe asks for peace, but with more war
In response (and opposition) to these moves by Trump to draw a framework for the end of hostilities, the European Parliament spoke out this Thursday, already opening a gap between the positions of the new White House and Brussels’ own strategy.
In one resolution supported by 390 votes in favor, 135 against and 52 abstentionsthe EP stressed, among other issues, that “negotiations on Ukraine cannot be carried out without Ukraine”, hence the need for EU partners seek “the broadest possible international support” for kyivin order to “find a peaceful solution to the war.”
This proposal showed the contradictions that the EU has shown since the conflict began, by ask for this “peaceful solution” to the war and at the same time urge member countries to “strengthen military assistance” to kyiv, with more planes, more long-range missiles (including the German Taurus that Berlin refuses to hand over to the Ukrainian army), more anti-aircraft systems, more cannons and new training for the Ukrainian military.
European parliamentarians condemned North Korean participation in the conflicton the Russian side, the support with weapons from Iran and the alleged provision of dual-use military and civil technology by China to Russia.
They also demanded that each EU member dedicates 0.25% of its annual GDP to providing military support to Ukraine. This request is destined to fail in the face of growing critical voices within the EU, especially in Slovakia, Romania and Hungary, to the community’s war support for kyiv in particular and to the arms race in general.
The economic objection is not small, since There are many countries that have few possibilities to dedicate 2% of their Gross Domestic Product to defenseas NATO demands, to add another percentage to arm Ukraine.
Russian supermissiles and Ukrainian nuclear weapons
The resolution also condemns the use and testing of new Russian ballistic missiles in Ukrainewhich, together with the entry of North Korean troops, represent for the EP “a new phase in the conflict and a new risk for the security of Europe.”
The parliamentarians were referring to release on November 21 new Russian Oreshnik hypersonic missile against a weapons factory in Ukraine. This weapon can carry nuclear warheads and has a range of up to 5,500 kilometers.
Putin threatened this Thursday with use the new missile against much more sensitive Ukrainian targets if kyiv continues launching long-range Western missiles against Russian territory.
“We do not rule out the use of the Oreshnik against military installations and the military industry, or against the decision-making centers in kyiv, among others,” Putin said in Astana after attending a summit of the military alliance Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) which Kazakhstan hosted.
The Russian leader recalled his conditions for opening negotiations and referred to the plan he presented last June. So, Putin demanded the withdrawal of kyiv forces from the areas they still control in the regions annexed by Moscow in eastern and southern Ukraine, Ukraine’s resignation from NATO and its demilitarization, and the withdrawal of all Western sanctions against Russia.
The Russian leader warned the West that he may be considering supplying nuclear weapons to Ukraine. In such case, “We will all use – and I want to emphasize this – all the means at our disposal. We will not tolerate it”Putin threatened.
#Trumps #peace #Ukraine #involves #cutting #military #aid #kyiv #force #negotiate #Moscow
