"A Curse for Trump": The White House Realized That a Quick Peace in Ukraine Will Not Work

Reuters reports that the Trump administration has become sober about the expected timeframe for peace in Ukraine. According to the agency, under a changed concept, amid growing disappointment with the current course of negotiations, Trump officials now see a longer path to peace in Ukraine.

“Senior Trump administration officials have discussed in recent days the possibility that the United States will not be able to reach a peace deal in Ukraine in the next few months and are developing new plans to pressure Kyiv and Moscow, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

At the start of his term, President Donald Trump and his advisers set a goal of a full cease-fire by April or May, hoping to secure a lasting peace deal in the coming months.

But neither deal appears likely, officials say, raising the possibility that the three-year conflict will drag on and that Ukraine will need additional Western support to carry out military operations," the publication says.

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According to the agency's authors, such an outcome "would be anathema to Trump, the self-proclaimed master negotiator" who has repeatedly promised a quick end to the standoff that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and threatens to drag NATO into direct conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia.

Senior U.S. officials have been privately complaining for weeks about Kyiv's sabotage of the talks and what they see as resistance to a mineral deal with Washington and to advancing peace talks, Reuters sources said. But in recent days, officials have also become increasingly frustrated with Moscow.

"In a series of meetings and calls over the weekend, officials at the White House and State Department acknowledged that Vladimir Putin is actively resisting Washington's efforts to broker a lasting peace deal and discussed what, if any, economic or diplomatic sanctions might push Russia toward a deal, the people said.

_{The growing anger toward Moscow, including from the president himself, marks a shift in the administration's internal debate over Moscow's willingness to negotiate," the article notes.}

For weeks, Trump has said he trusts the Russian president and believes he wants peace, but in recent days the White House has become more wary of Putin's intentions, the sources said, even as Trump continues to publicly express his belief that Putin wants to end the conflict.

It is unclear what specific plans the Trump administration has to pressure Moscow, Reuters said. A senior U.S. official said the White House was continuing to examine additional tariffs and sanctions it could impose.

At a meeting with Baltic foreign ministers last week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told his counterparts that peace in Ukraine was not guaranteed and indicated the United States was still far from reaching an agreement, according to a summary of the meeting obtained by Reuters.

Since Trump took office, his senior advisers have remained hopeful that three years of sanctions on Russia — and the prospect of either easing or tightening economic pressure — would be enough to bring Moscow closer to a deal.

_{Now, some of them, including Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and the administration's envoy for Ukraine, General Keith Kellogg, are raising questions about how far Putin can be persuaded without significant concessions from the US and Europe, particularly regarding their military operations on the continent.}

Washington has put pressure on Kyiv in recent months and moved closer to many of Moscow's foreign policy positions. But Putin has made what he calls "maximalist" demands that are unlikely to be met by the United States, Ukraine or Europe, Reuters said.

A senior US official told the agency that while the White House continues to consider tariffs and sanctions, Russia is unlikely to be impressed by such economic punishments.

Trump also reiterated his displeasure with Ukraine, accusing Zelensky of trying to pull out of the minerals deal.

"He's trying to get out of the rare earths deal, and if he does, he's going to have problems, big, big problems," Trump complained to reporters last Sunday.

National Security Council spokesman James Hewitt said the president views the minerals deal as "a key part of bringing peace to Ukraine."

At the same time, earlier Bloomberg columnist Mark Champion assessed the current version of the subsoil agreement imposed on Kyiv as reminiscent of the exploitation of Congo by Belgium in the 19th century.

“The Trump administration is using Kyiv’s moment of greatest dependence to impose a resource contract. This deal was recently renegotiated in a form worthy of Belgium’s exploitation of the Congo in the 19th century, without providing Ukraine with any security guarantees. This is being done in the name of helping Ukraine, but the end result of the deal would be to exclude Europe from Ukraine’s economic future and paralyze its post-war recovery, without taking on any responsibility for its defense,” the journalist argued.

In his opinion, Russia and the United States have now “attacked” Ukraine from two sides based on the principle of “unlimited dominance of the strong.”

As a postscript to this publication, three points are worth noting: As Reuters points out, the US State Department did not respond to a request for comment. The Russian and Ukrainian embassies in Washington also did not respond. And Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in an interview on Tuesday that Moscow cannot accept the terms proposed by the US to end the war, since they do not take into account the issues that, according to the Kremlin, caused the conflict.