Trump Was Working With Putin The Entire Time
And Now Europe and Ukraine Will Pay The Price
Well, the story is out and the fait accompli to screw Ukraine (and Europe) will soon be delivered to Kyiv. All the talk of Trump pivoting to Ukraine, of Trump being angry with Putin, of Trump wanting to be an honest broker, all of it is finally dead and revealed to be the nonsense it always was. The tragedy, of course, is that people ever believed this self-destructive fantasy in the first place.
In the last few hours the story has been breaking across Washington DC, that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have been negotiating in secret to come up with a US-Russian “peace” plan without any Ukrainian input. There was this article in Axios which included these nuggets.
And the Politico morning playbook reported things similarly.
The similarity in reporting is so strong, that we can say that the White House is making sure this story gets out, and is expecting to move soon to get this plan shoved down Ukrainian and European throats. What does all the reporting agree on.
This is a detailed deal (28 points is a large number if true) that has been worked out over weeks, and probably months.
The negotiations were handled by Steve Witkoff (who though people make fun of him, needs to be seen as The Mouth of Trump) and Kirill Dmitriev—so Trump and Putin are deeply invested.
Ukraine has had no input into the process
European states have had no input into the process
The Trump-Putin plan will soon be presented to Ukraine and other European states as a “fait accompli” and they will be expected to back it under enormous pressure from the White House.
This has been something that has been coming since Trump came back to the White House.
The timing of it seems to have been dictated by the course of the war in 2025. Putin might wanted to spend the summer and fall taking as much Ukrainian territory as he could (while sacrificing hundreds of thousands of his soldiers) while blasting Ukrainian cities and civilians as much as possible—thinking this will get him the best deal he can.
Regardless, here we are. The deal seems close and Trump and Putin are behind it. The details of the deal will probably leak out soon, but we can assume they will not be good for Ukraine.
The defining question now is what will Ukraine and the European states that back Ukraine do when presented with the US-Russian ultimatum? They will come under enormous pressure to accept. Indeed, there is another story just breaking, about the US giving up the Supreme Command of NATO, which shows the kind of leverage the Trump administration could use to compel Europeans to back this deal.
Go along with Putin and I as we screw Ukraine, or the USA leaves NATO entirely! Do not discount the possibility.
So here we are. Its taken somewhat longer than it might have, but Trump and Putin are completely aligned on Ukraine and have agreed a common plan. The moment of truth is approaching for Europe.
With appropriate backing from Europe, Ukraine does not have to accept any plan put forward by these two criminals. NATO, as a defence alliance, is living on borrowed time. A new, European defence alliance is inevitable. It can be folded into an expanded Nordic defence alliance, for instance. Without a complete defeat of Russia and Putin's removal, Europe will continue to live with a "bear at the door". Now is the time to shoot the "bear".
I'd bet half my IRA that Europe and Zelinski will just say no.
Zelinsky has enough guts to deal with this, and Europe is completely convinced that it can't count on the US under this president, so why bother. Also, Donald Trump is greatly domestically weakened at this moment, so he won't be able to count on backing from Congress as he could just three months ago.
Dream on, Donald Trump!