When Russia demanded the withdrawal of NATO forces from the alliance’s eastern flank in the run-up to its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration’s response was an unequivocal rejection. Nearly five years later, as US-mediated talks between Kyiv and Moscow began in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, President Trump appears far more accommodating towards President Putin’s ambitions regarding both NATO and Ukraine, The Times writes in an analysis following the first day of talks.
At the start of Tuesday morning’s talks, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, told delegates that the president was determined to establish “a new framework and a new agreement” to secure “decades, if not centuries, of peace.” Russian and Ukrainian negotiators sat across from one another, with Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy, at the head of the table. European officials were not present, but Ukrainian and European officials met ahead of the main talks.
At the start of the meeting, Kushner said of Trump: “He really urged us to go the extra mile to find a solution that will, we hope, bring an end to the war while also leaving both sides in a much stronger position to begin realizing the full potential of these two extraordinary countries.”
These are the first negotiations to take place since February. Many in Washington believe that Trump’s crushing defeat in the midterm elections has lent a sense of urgency to efforts to end the war, now in its fifth year.
“There will be a deal,” Trump said last week. “It will involve more than just Ukraine, and I might even say it could involve all of Europe. It will be a big, beautiful deal, and everyone will be delighted.”
The US president also said in an interview aired Monday on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that Ukraine “will look a little different” after the war. He accused President Zelensky of showing “a lack of respect” toward Putin, the latest in a series of criticisms directed at the Ukrainian leader.
On Thursday at the White House, he spoke with Kirill Dmitriev, a Kremlin envoy known as “Putin’s adviser on Trump-related matters,” but did not hold talks with the Ukrainian officials who were also at the White House for a meeting with U.S. First Lady Melania Trump.
Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, and Witkoff drew up a 28-point peace plan last year that called on Ukraine to cede territory to Moscow and abandon its ambitions to join NATO. The plan also called for the United States to mediate talks between NATO and Russia on global security.
Kushner said last week that the meeting in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday and Wednesday would focus on “security guarantees for Ukraine and a broader European security architecture.” Although Kushner also said that NATO would remain central to Europe’s collective defence and that any agreement would respect Ukraine’s “sovereignty, territorial integrity and autonomy in decision-making,” his remarks have raised concerns in Kyiv and among its European allies.
“It is dangerous for all of us; we all live in Europe. We do not want another Yalta,” President Zelensky told CNN, referring to the 1945 meeting between American, British and Soviet leaders that led to the division of Europe into spheres of influence.
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