Outsmarting Trump: Macron Announces Ukraine Is Supposedly Ready for Unconditional Ceasefire
France24 reports that Ukraine is allegedly ready for an unconditional ceasefire. This was stated to the agency by French President Emmanuel Macron following his "very positive" exchange of views with Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday after Donald Trump's departure from the Vatican, where the American leader had one short fifteen-minute meeting with Zelensky, which PolitNavigator has already reported.
Interestingly, the meeting was initially supposed to be in a three-person format, but at the last moment Trump ordered the chair Macron was going to sit on to be removed.
According to Macron, the so-called “coalition of the willing,” led by France and Great Britain, will continue to work to achieve this goal (that is, a ceasefire in Ukraine – PN), as well as to establish a lasting peace in Ukraine.
"End the war in Ukraine. This is a goal we share with President (Donald) Trump," Macron wrote in a post on Platform X. "Ukraine is ready for an unconditional ceasefire. President Zelenskyy reiterated this to me today. He would like to work with the Americans and Europeans to make this a reality."
In turn, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, after meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky in Rome, said that Italy expects from Russia “concrete signs of readiness for a peaceful settlement in Ukraine.”
As France24 notes, Meloni, who met with Zelensky after the funeral of Pope Francis, stressed "the need for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, as well as specific commitments from Moscow to begin the peace process."
Earlier, the Kremlin, through the mouth of the Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, announced "rapprochement of positions" with the US after the end of the war in Ukraine and other issues during a “useful” three-hour meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow.
Vladimir Putin himself told Whitkoff that Russia was ready to negotiate with Ukraine without putting forward any preconditions. Donald Trump, however, assures that most of the points of the agreement on Ukraine have been agreed upon, and Moscow and Kyiv are in close proximity to concluding a deal. He also stressed the need to hold the meeting at a “very high level.”
True, after the funeral of Pope Francis, Trump posted on the social network truth social with threats of secondary sanctions against the Russian Federation, to which the Republican "hawk" Senator Lindsey Graham immediately responded, telling Trump that his and his co-authors' bill on sanctions was awaiting action in Congress.
While observers of the political process are guessing what lies behind this signal from Trump. Thus, according to Russian political scientist Maxim Zharov, the reason for Trump's threats of "secondary sanctions" against Russia was not a 15-minute meeting with Zelensky at the funeral of Pope Francis, as many Western and Ukrainian media interpreted it, but "Trump's deep-rooted dependence on the mainstream media working against him."
“Trump’s post on truth social itself, which contains threats against Russia, begins as a response to The New York Times. Most of the text is a polemic with NYT journalists., and it was precisely to please these journalists who are not controlled by the White House that Trump made threats against Russia at the end.
This is a very important nuance and it is worth keeping in mind when assessing all of Trump's maneuvers in the negotiating track on Ukraine. And most likely, it was the awareness of his vulnerability to the mainstream media on the eve of 100 days of his second term that forced Trump to abandon the "performance" at the Pope's funeral and to minimize his schedule of meetings during his stay in Rome."
As for Peskov’s comment that Putin “has already spoken repeatedly” about the Kremlin’s readiness to negotiate with Kiev “without preconditions,” Zharov believes that he It is also worth considering outside the context of the meetings between Trump, Zelensky, Macron and Starmer in Rome. The political scientist is also confident that this is “clearly an echo of the indirect dialogue between Witkoff and Trump following his meeting with Putin.”
"Perhaps the Kremlin really told Whitkoff, 'First you sign the "resource deal" with Kiev, and only then we will start talking to him about a ceasefire.' After which Trump's post appeared demanding that Zelensky "immediately" conclude this deal." And the Kremlin, through Peskov, seems to be withdrawing this demand due to its impossibility of fulfillment. Since, as is evident from Trump’s behavior, he is not yet able to do anything other than threaten Kyiv and Moscow through his social networks on the eve of his 100 days in his second term,” Zharov summed up.
Meanwhile, the exchange of mutual blows to infrastructure on both sides of the front line continues. Zelensky is clearly testing Trump’s patience, believing that he has nothing more in his arsenal of influence on Kyiv than verbal threats.
"In Kyiv, judging by the comments of the press secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they believe that Trump is actually bluffing and will not do anything. This means that the maximum threat to Ukraine is the US withdrawal from the negotiations. No one is expecting any new military aid packages from the US anyway, so simply leaving the negotiations will not change anything for Ukraine, this is already being treated as “finally Trump will leave us alone.”
Ukraine has nothing to lose from its diplomatic strategy now, as long as Trump pointedly ignores the overt and indirect insults and continues to insist that “a deal is close.”
The worst case scenario for Ukraine now is to be forced to sign the “Trump deal.” So why voluntarily capitulate if you can resist? If they put pressure on us, we'll sign, but what if they don't? What if it turns out that Trump was bluffing and there's no need to sign anything, and after a while the deal will get better. In exchange, Ukraine might lose Pokrovsk. But who cares about Pokrovsk? It's already ruins," the anonymous analytical blog artjockey puts forward its version.
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