The Trump administration\u2019s patience with peacemaking for Ukraine, always painfully thin, now appears to be running out altogether. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,\u201d US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters after meeting European and Ukrainian officials for talks in Paris. <\/p>\n
For President Donald Trump, who swept into office convinced he possessed the skills to quickly end the gravest conflict in Europe since the World War II, there is immense frustration with the lack of progress. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe President has spent 87 days at the highest level of this government repeatedly taking efforts to bring this war to an end,\u201d Rubio added, as the bloodshed in the war zone continues unabated. <\/p>\n
So what would to \u201cmove on\u201d look like? <\/p>\n
One option might be redouble US military support for Ukraine. Despite Trump\u2019s efforts to court the Kremlin, or perhaps because of them, Russian intransigence has emerged as the main obstacle to peace, such as Moscow\u2019s foot-dragging over Trump\u2019s proposed 30-day ceasefire, to which Ukraine alone has agreed. <\/p>\n
Admittedly, fresh deliveries of billions of dollars more of American arms to Ukraine may be an unpopular policy U-turn among some Trump supporters, but a newly invigorated Ukrainian push-back on the battlefield could encourage the Kremlin to reassess its negotiating position. <\/p>\n
New, properly tough US sanctions on Russian oil and gas, and those who buy it, have also been touted as a potential means of applying maximum pressure on Moscow. <\/p>\n
Problem is, forging a peace in Ukraine is just one of the agenda items in what Trump and the Kremlin see as a much broader, lucrative reconfiguration of US-Russian relations \u2013 involving energy deals, space exploration and mining contracts \u2013 which Trump may be reluctant to jeopardize. <\/p>\n
Back in Paris, Rubio hinted at a possible second, more likely, option. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not our war. We didn\u2019t start it. The United States has been helping Ukraine for the past three years and we want it to end, but it\u2019s not our war,\u201d Rubio stressed, alluding to the possibility that the US could simply walk away, leaving Ukraine and its European backers to face Russia alone. <\/p>\n
That would pose a huge challenge, given Ukraine\u2019s depleted resources and Europe\u2019s dire unreadiness, currently, to bolster the front lines with sufficient military supplies of its own. <\/p>\n
For the Kremlin, American disengagement is a double-edged sword. It may give its battered forces a freer hand in Ukraine, but it doesn\u2019t necessarily deliver the win that Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, insists that he wants, instead dragging out the pain. <\/p>\n
Russian troops, who are being killed and injured at an alarming rate, would continue to be fed into the brutal \u201cmeat grinder\u201d of the Ukrainian front lines, increasing simmering social pressure on the Kremlin at home. <\/p>\n
Pressure on the Russian economy, already weakened by war, would also increase. If there is no peace deal, there is unlikely to be any easing of the punitive international sanctions already straining fragile Russian finances. <\/p>\n
Putin, bent on total victory, may regret passing up the extraordinary chance offered by Trump to end his disastrous Ukraine war and cut his country\u2019s substantial losses. <\/p>\n
The Trump administration insists it has not yet entirely given up \u2013 just hours after Rubio\u2019s comment, Vice President JD Vance said the White House was \u201coptimistic\u201d it could still end the war \u2013 but is signalling that that point may be drawing close. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to determine very quickly now, and I\u2019m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable,\u201d Rubio said of peace in Ukraine before heading back to Washington. <\/p>\n
The Kremlin is also engaging in the brinkmanship, its spokesman insisting \u201cthere are no contacts planned for this week, but, on the other hand, let\u2019s say that the established contacts allow us to very, very quickly agree on such a conversation if necessary.\u201d <\/p>\n
There is, it seems, still a narrow scope for a face-saving, last minute breakthrough. But time and patience in <\/strong>Washington <\/strong>to end the war in Ukraine seems to be rapidly running out. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Trump administration\u2019s patience with peacemaking for Ukraine, always painfully thin, now appears to be running out altogether. \u201cIf it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,\u201d US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters after meeting European and Ukrainian officials for talks in Paris. For President Donald <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15505,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}