What leverages does the Trump administration have to force Ukraine into agreements with Russia?

Elena Gold

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Writing a book about Russia-Ukraine war Feb 19

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What leverages does the Trump administration have to force Ukraine into agreements with Russia?

Actually, Trump doesn’t have much leverage to force Ukraine into agreements with Russia.

Months ago, I posted an answer how Trump can facilitate the end of the war in Ukraine in 48 hours — and my answer was that unless Trump were going to nuke Ukraine, this wouldn’t be possible.

Both Trump and Putin made the same mistake about Ukraine:

• Putin was planning a “3-day special military operation” to defeat Kyiv. We know how it went.
• Trump was planning a “3-day special diplomatic operation” to defeat Kyiv. It failed spectacularly.

First, Trump sent his minister of finance to Kyiv, demanding from the Ukrainians to sign an agreement that would grant the U.S. the rights on 50% of income from all of Ukraine’s mineral resources, ports, and infrastructure — with the U.S. to be paid first.

Zelenskyy refused to sign it.

He said he needed to read it properly.

The U.S. reps again demanded from him to sign it the next day in Munich — threatening that if Zelenskyy didn’t sign, he wouldn’t be able to meet the Vice President JD Vance.

I’m not sure why Americans think that talking to JD would be worth half of Ukraine’s resources — obviously, Zelenskyy also wasn’t valuing it that highly, so he again said, “No”.

Then the Americans quickly changed their mind and said that the Vance-Zelenskyy meeting was still on.

So, they met.

The statements following the negotiations were ambiguous, with Vance repeating Zelenskyy’s narrative of “durable peace”.

I believe that Trump’s goal of promising “to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours” was indeed based on his loathing of the fact that white Europeans are killing each other. Remember, his wife Melania is Eastern European; his first wife Ivana was also Eastern European.

So, when Trump said he wanted to end the war in Ukraine, his message was that too many people got killed and this had to stop.

This means, Trump definitely doesn’t want to be responsible for an even larger massacre in Europe.

And that’s what’s going to happen, if the U.S. completely dumps Ukraine now. The Ukrainians just refuse to surrender.

And it’s not just Zelenskyy.

Zelenskyy expresses the views of the majority of the Ukrainians.

And the U.S. government actually knows these views. The Republican Party has been ordering a monitoring of support for Zelenskyy and the idea of surrendering the Ukrainian territories to Russia for several years — a reputable Ukrainian polling agency has been doing it since 2022.

Trump doesn’t want to supply Tomahawks to Ukraine — which he threatened he would, if Russia wasn’t ready to negotiate peace — because he doesn’t want American missiles to kill Russians either.

So, what can Trump do?

Any of the levers he was talking about — oil prices, tariffs, etc. — aren’t going to make Russians and Ukrainians stop fighting right now.

Trump’s ambitious goal — to quickly stop the war in Ukraine — can’t be achieved, if Vladimir Putin refuses to stop fighting, unless Ukraine surrenders.

And Ukraine — which hasn’t surrendered to Putin for 3 years, despite being constantly bombed and hit with ballistic missiles — has no desire to surrender to Putin now, because America, too, demands it from them.

So, Trump may have no levers: because he doesn’t want to help Ukrainians to beat Russians — and it would be seen as completely disastrous if he were to help Russians to beat Ukrainians.