Marc Champion je sicer jastreb, vendar je v komentarju v Bloombergu podobno kot jaz ocenil rusko – ameriške pogovore na najvišji diplomatski ravni ta torek v Rijadu. Sestanek obeh diplomacij ni bil namenjen reševanju ukrajinske vojne, pač pa širšemu dogovoru med Rusijo in ZDA, v katerem je Ukrajina le fragment. Drugače rečeno, obe diplomaciji sta sklepali velik posel, v katerem je Ukrajina zgolj eden izmed ameriških jokerjev za sklenitev posla. Drugi joker, bistveno večji, je sprostitev sankcij proti Rusiji. Američane zanima, da ameriška podjetja dobijo nazaj zaseženo premoženje v Rusiji (v vrednosti okrog 300 milijard dolarjev) in da pridejo do deležev pri izkoriščanju ruskih energetskih in surovinskih virov. In v ta namen je Trump pripravljen sprostiti sankcije. V Ukrajini pa je Rusija itak že dosegla svoje, potrebno je le še zapečatiti stanje na terenu in Ukrajini izbiti iluzije o članstvu v Natu. In v znak dobre volje je Trump zaustavil pošiljanje orožja v Ukrajino, Zelenskega pa obtožil, da je samodržec. Pri čemer ga je prej izzval z nespodobno ponudbo (podpisom brutalnega dogovora o ameriški eksluzivni pravici izkoriščanja polovice ukrajinskih naravnih virov), ki je Zelenski ni mogel podpisati.

Ali ta ameriško-ruski “posel” zadostuje minimalnim standardom pravičnosti in morale, je seveda drugo vprašanje. Velesil te “malenkosti” niso nikoli zanimale.

_____________

We need to reimagine Donald Trump’s approach to ending Russia’s war in Ukraine by turning that proposition on its head. What he’s negotiating is a reset with Russia, making Kyiv and its future just the most valuable card that the US president has in his hand to trade.

Viewed from this perspective, there’s no reason to be shocked by the fact that Ukraine and Europe were absent at Tuesday’s high-level meeting between Putin and Trump administration officials, for this was about the relationship between America and Russia, not Ukraine. Nor by the otherwise disgraceful way in which Trump is now trying to tar Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as the obstacle to a settlement.

It also begins to make more sense that the master of “the art of the deal” would have begun — rather than ended — his campaign with phone calls to President Vladimir Putin, and promptly concede to most of Moscow’s Ukraine demands, before talks on the war have even begun. Those concessions already run from “no” to Ukraine joining NATO or getting its occupied territory back, to a call for wartime elections to get rid of Zelenskiy — a first step in the Kremlin’s demand for Kyiv’s so-called “denazification.”

This big-end-of-the-telescope view explains the presence in Riyadh of Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian sovereign wealth fund director who is also Putin’s point man on energy investments. The message that this US-educated former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker had for reporters in the Saudi capital was that Trump is a great problem solver, and the problem to solve is that the US lost $300 billion in Russian business due to the war.

As with Trump’s demand that Ukraine hand over $500 billion worth of imaginary rare-earth elements and other real resources, it matters less that this figure is accurate than that it’s big. Dmitriev said he saw US companies returning to Russia as soon as the second quarter of this year— even if some might find it a struggle to recover market share. In other words: How much must we pay the US to get our way on Ukraine?

According to the Yale School of Management’s CELI list of companies in Russia, there were 457 American firms doing business at the start of Putin’s February 2022 full-scale invasion. Of those, 23 are still working as usual; 100 — including the likes of Procter & Gamble Co. — remain but have scaled back; and the rest have either suspended operations or withdrawn altogether. Among the last category are some big names like Exxon Mobil Corp., whose 30% stake in a far-eastern oil extraction project the Russian state expropriated in October 2022. Exxon valued the stake at around $4 billion, and no doubt Putin could, if he chose, give it back.

So there’s plenty to talk about, with lifting economic sanctions a significant piece of leverage at Trump’s disposal. This, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday, is a concession the US won’t make until there’s a final deal. But here again, the administration’s stance fits better with the negotiation of a Russian reset than the terms of a Ukrainian settlement. Otherwise, as Daniel Fried, a top former State Department official in both Republican and Democratic Party administrations, told Bloomberg News, lifting sanctions would be better held back as an incentive for Russia to keep to an eventual ceasefire.

The outcomes of Tuesday’s Riyadh meeting also fall into alignment when Ukraine is understood as a pawn in much wider talks, rather than their main subject. Rubio said the two sides had agreed to reestablish diplomatic and economic ties, and to form negotiating teams to start discussing Ukraine, in that order. He stressed the “incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians, geopolitically on issues of common interest, and frankly economically” that ending the war would create.

Rubio certainly wasn’t talking about a jackpot for Ukrainians. While he was in Riyadh, Kyiv was under US pressure to accept Trump’s demand to sign over 50% of all revenue from the nation’s mineral resources, ports and other infrastructure in perpetuity, as recompense for US aid for Ukraine’s military effort to date, and with nothing offered in exchange. These are the kinds of terms that victors impose on defeated enemies as war reparations, and were no doubt designed to be rejected. That now sets the scene for Trump to portray Ukraine and Zelenskiy — whom he grotesquely now calls a dictator — as the problem.

Vir: Marc Champion, Bloomberg