The discussions have taken place in an ornate Kremlin hall, on the polished marble of St. Peter’s Basilica and in a famously contentious session in the Oval Office of the White House. What’s emerged so far from the Washington-led effort to end the war in Ukraine suggests a deal that seems likely to be favorable to Russia: President Donald Trump has sharply rebuked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, echoed Kremlin talking points, and indicated Kyiv would have to surrender territory and forego NATO membership. What’s more, he has engaged in a rapprochement with Moscow that was unthinkable months ago. More recently, Trump has offered mixed signals — social media posts that perhaps Russian President Vladimir Putin is stringing him along — and a deal has yet to materialize. While the optics so far have been in the Kremlin’s favor, no proposals that were put forth have been cemented. And on Wednesday, Washington and Kyiv signed an agreement granting American access to Ukraine’s vast mineral resources that could enable continued military aid to the country under ongoing attacks from Russia. Zelenskyy said Thursday the deal was the first result of his “truly historic” meeting with Trump at the Vatican before the funeral of Pope Francis. Dialogue and aligned vision One gain for the Kremlin is that Washington is talking again to Moscow after years of extremely strained ties following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine — and not just about the war, said Nikolay Petrov, senior research fellow with the New Eurasian Strategies Centre think tank. Russian officials and state media from the very start of discussions with Trump’s officials sought to underscore that Ukraine was only one item on the vast agenda of the “two superpowers.” Trump and Putin talked in March about Ukraine but also the Middle East, stopping the proliferation of strategic weapons and even organizing hockey games between the countries. Russia’s main state TV channel reported that the meeting between Putin and Trump envoy Steve-Witkoff showed that Moscow and Washington were building “a new structure of the world” together. In this sense, “Putin already got a part of what he sought” — the optics of Russia as a country that is on par with the U.S., Petrov said. Trump has said Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, “will stay with Russia,” and outlines of a peace proposal his team reportedly presented to Kyiv last month apparently included allowing Russia to keep control of other occupied Ukrainian territories. Trump, who had a contentious meeting with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office on Feb. 28, lashed out at him for publicly rejecting the idea of ceding land, and also said that Kyiv was unlikely to ever join NATO. All of these have long been Moscow’s talking points, and Trump’s use of them suggested his administration’s vision was aligned with the Kremlin’s. Trump also seemingly puts more pressure on Kyiv than Moscow in trying to reach a peace deal and appears eager to return to a more normal relationship with Russia and its “big business opportunities,” said Sam Greene of King’s College London. “Is there any part of this that doesn’t look like a win for Russia? No,” Greene adds. So far, it’s only talk But so far, all of this has remained nothing but rhetoric, with terms of a possible settlement still very much “in the air,” says […]