Ukraine-Russia: Why Trump-Witkoff 'Diplomacy' Continues to Fail

Why Trump's tedious 'peace negotiations' have made little to no progress in 12 months, and why Russia aren't likely to wait around for Witkoff & Kushner to finally graduate from Diplomacy 101.

If you’re dizzy from Washington’s seemly endless shuttle diplomacy, you’re not alone. Still, Trump’s real estate duo will continue going through the motions of 'negotiating how to negotiate.' All this and more…

Full transcript of this Q & A segment:

RT International: Do you think the Ukrainian terms in these negotiation are going help all parties to reach an agreement?

Patrick Henningsen: I don’t think any changes in the Ukrainian stance on any of these positions for negotiations is really going to amount to anything in the end—I don’t think Ukraine, under this Zelensky regime, is really a credible negotiating partner, because at every single juncture attacks that they have (mounted attacks) within Russian territory, be that in Belgorad or hitting Russian homes most recently, and this is asking for a (military) response from a much more powerful Russian Federation. Then Zelensky will go and play the victim after that. So it seems like whoever is pulling the puppet strings of Zelensky behind the scenes—that could be NATO, the European partners, or the British—nobody knows quite knows for sure. Or it could be just the radical Ukrainian Nazi ultra nationalists. Regardless, they’re doing everything conceivable to hamper the advance of meaningful negotiations—and actually we’ve seen this pattern right across the board really for the last couple of years. In fact, we can go back to the beginning of the conflict itself; Ukraine has had multiple opportunities to find an off-ramp—before it would be ‘quit while you’re ahead’, but now it’s just salvaging what they possibly can from this absolute national catastrophe by deciding that they’re going to basically be the proxy in in NATO’s war, in order to weaken Russia. It’s been a disaster for Ukraine and will continue to be a disaster. And the longer it goes on, you know, the more sacrifices Ukraine is going to have to make, in terms of manpower, blood, and territory. And this is it’s tragic. It really is tragic. But really, they only have themselves to blame in Kiev and in Brussels—and in Washington if they don’t like the results when there’s been perfectly good opportunities to end this conflict over the last four years.

RT International: How important is it that the U.S. is leading these negotiations, and not Europe?

PH: If left up to the Europeans and the Ukrainians alone, to somehow interface with Moscow to find an end to this war, then I think that’s probably impossible. But again, this will probably end up as a war of attrition in the favor of the Russian Federation. That’s exactly where this is heading. While there’s progress being made by a US-led trilateral talks, the fundamental issue that’s kind of gnawing away is what the Russians might call “the root causes” of the conflict. And this is one of the big criticisms and weaknesses of this Trump administration is their inability to ‘own it’ (the root causes). They do not want to own the conflict as an American problem—as a destabilization effort in Ukraine that was initiated by the United States. This is beyond debate with the Maidan coup - the violent coup backed by the US, engineered by the US and its various forces in 2014. And that led to an 8-year civil war, a bloody civil war which uh led to the Minsk peace processes, which led to UN Security Council (Resolution 2202) to realize the Minsk peace process which collapsed, and then Russia intervened after the collapse of that UN Security Council Resolution (and the agreement behind it). That’s how we got to where we are today—and the United States is the cause of all of that. And Donald Trump doesn’t want to own it. He wants to say “we’re negotiating, but it’s the Trump administration negotiating,” and not the United States. And if this president in the US has to own it - and basically own the fact of what the Biden administration has done before him, and what he (Trump) did in his first term to accelerate the conflict by providing lethal aid to Ukraine and also by sandbagging and undermining the Minsk Accords which Trump did in his first term, and of course the Obama administration for kicking this whole fiasco off in 2014 (with the Maidan coup). You know, a US president today in 2026, needs to own all of that, and say as (the government of the United States of) America: “We’re coming to the table, and we realize this has been a mistake from the beginning (and tell the world). I’m ready to take responsibility for the previous administrations.” But Trump won’t do that. In his own egotistical, narcissistic, narrow worldview, he’ll keep saying, “This is Biden’s war. This is Obama’s war. It’s not my fault. We’re just trying to stop the killing,” etc. But it’s much deeper than that, and (recognising) that type of nuance is what’s required to pull off the type of statecraft act that’s that’s needed to bring this (war) to a close. You cannot do that kind of highwire negotiation, diplomatic effort and statecraft unless you’re willing to own it as a country, as a government, as the United States of America. And Donald Trump has not shown, and his team have not shown, that they’re willing to do that yet. And I think that’s the missing piece of this whole mosaic.

RT International: Can you see the conflict being settled by spring?

PH: I mean, certainly it’s possible, but when they say the conflict might be settled by this spring, what they’re really saying, the subtext of that is: is Ukraine going to accept terms of surrender by the spring? Because that’s really what it boils down to. There’s going to be no ‘security guarantees’ for Ukraine. The priority here, in terms of the lead countries, is going to be Russian national security going forward. This is a very real issue and that has to be acknowledged by the US, and by the Europeans, quite frankly, and of course that has to be accepted by the Ukrainians (because) they are not the most powerful actor in the region even though they have NATO buttressing them from behind. But the European support is going to lag in the same way that the US support is going to lag for Kiev. So really, I think at some point Ukraine is going to run out of arms, run out of resources, run out of the manpower required to maintain the front lines, and run out of the basic the ability to run a stable society in western Ukraine—and they’re really facing huge problems in that regard. So, Zelensky can go and mount all these gallant raids—hitting targets in Russia, showing that he’s tough, but the punishment that he’s going to reap on his own people as a result of his gallant adventurism in this losing war, (in terms the benefits his policies are bringing to Ukraine) it’s going to amount to nothing in the end. In fact, it’ll be a net loss for Ukraine going forward, increasingly. This is why Russia won’t doesn’t see the point in signing any type of major agreement with this unelected president (Zelensky), the “wartime president” in Kiev. It’s pointless because he doesn’t have a mandate with the Ukrainian people, and so he certainly doesn’t speak for the Ukrainian people—he speaks for NATO at the end of the day. That’s the problem.

NEWS SEGMENT

RT International: Well, let’s discuss all this and cross live to Patrick Henningsen, independent journalist and founder of the 21st Century Wire news outlet. Welcome to the program. Moscow says it’s open for a peace settlement, but the conflict will continue until Kiev opts for peace. Your thoughts on what’s ahead in round two in Abu Dhabi (UAE)?

PH: Well, it everybody has their their own version or their own interpretation of what a a peace settlement looks like. But I think there’s also a bigger divergence in the process in which that peace settlement is reached. And this is the problem. And I think the Trump administration—although that they’ve managed to thaw relations with Russia, which is a positive thing—I’m sure everybody can agree this is great that they’re talking and that it’s a 180°degree difference from the Biden administration. However, the process that Donald Trump and his administration go about coming to, and arriving at any sort of agreement, is totally unconventional. They’ve got this shuttle diplomacy between the US and Zelensky or/and Kiev, and then between the US and Russia, while Europe is hardly involved in the in the core of this discussion. And so there there’s really no way to build the architecture for a framework (that will result) in some kind of a binding treaty or a peace agreement down the road with this type of ad hoc Trump-style diplomacy—that’s really good at getting headlines in the short term and not very good at nailing down the type of agreement that’s going to last. And so Russia, understanding this, is doing its best to accommodate the US new style of international diplomacy—which has no precedent (historically). Meanwhile they’re just going to get along and a lot of these disputes are going to be probably determined on based on what’s happening on the battlefield. That seems to be the case. Zelensky is in delusional state, talking about life before the SMO began. Life before February 24th, 2022, as if that was the beginning of this whole crisis. Of course, this beginning of this crisis goes way back even further. We could start it at February 2014 with the US-backed coup in Maidan (in Kiev) and the civil war that ensued for eight years. I mean, that’s how we got to this place to begin with. And “security guarantees”, uh, “life before the invasion”, and “pre-1991 borders”. I mean, I don’t know what world they’re living in in Kiev, but I guess they think this is the only hand that they can play at the moment.

RT International: Russia said its delegation in the United Arab Emirates is working on security issues and that it won’t share the results of these talks. With that in mind, and us on the sidelines, do you think if will be forced to consider Moscow’s demands in the end?

PH: Yes, I this is really playing out to be a war of attrition. It always was from the beginning, and Moscow’s demands aren’t that different today than they were uh at the beginning of this conflict. So the agreement that was reached in Istanbul at the beginning of April in 2022, I mean we’re not that far away from that—Russia’s priorities right now are well the four regions Donbass regions; Lugansk, Donesk Zaparozia and Kherson—those are non-negotiables. That’s off the table (as far as Russia is concerned). So what else? Zaparozia nuclear power plant? There’s no way that’s going into Ukrainian hands - not with the sort of nuclear threats and ambitions that Zelensky himself and the ultra-nationalist (Nazi) far right in Ukraine have mentioned in the past. It’s not going to happen. That’s an existential security issue for the Russian Federation. And then beyond that, we have the demilitarization of Ukraine. I’m sure Russia is willing to make probably some concessions on that, you know, the size and scope and capabilities of a future Ukrainian military. And then we have the “denazification'“ issue. That’s probably going to be the most difficult in the end. That’s going to be a sticking point. And the problem is for Russia, they do not want to be in a position to have to refight this conflict with uh ultraists and NATO in, you know, in 5, 7 or 10 years time. So, in the meantime, I think these negotiations will ‘continue to negotiate’, but they’re not really going to get close to any sort of a binding agreement unless this attrition starts to wear down Ukrainian society, and the political economy in Ukraine collapses, rapidly. And that would probably coincide with a rapid collapse in morale in the military which would then open the door for really a rapid advance by the Russian military and we see that at the end of many major wars. I mean, World War II is a perfect example; the Soviet Union waged a massive war of attrition against Japanese forces in the Pacific (the Soviet invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria, Korea in August 1945), and of course against the German forces in the eastern front of Europe (Operation Bagration), and the end of the war was just a a blitzkrieg (the Battle of Berlin), but in the favor of the Red Army. And I think in this situation, we’ll likely see the same result in Ukraine. Now, does that mean that Russia is going to want to keep a lot of new territory that they might gain in the coming months? Maybe, maybe not. This could be leverage for negotiations, or for a negotiated settlement—that would be more in Russia’s favor. But the longer this pantomime of ‘peace talks’ goes on, it’s not going to be in the favor of Ukraine or for Europe and NATO, or really in favor of the US. Although this is not a direct threat to US national security, but for for for NATO, this is an existential issue for political NATO. For European NATO—this is an existential issue.

RT International: Patrick Henningsen, independent journalist and founder of the news website 21st Century Wire. Thank you so much for this analysis.

PH: My pleasure. Thank you.