ENB Pub Note: While President Trump and his team wanted to end the Ukraine war on day one of his administration, they did not have the critical information they needed. The Biden Administration has removed information from the essential think tanks in the war colleges and critical parts of the government. This became evident to those who understand energy and geopolitics and how land vs. sea power is manipulated to control trade and governments. We are now on a path for negotiations, but the Trump administration still needs guidance on how we got here to understand the best way forward. Check out the articles and interviews from George McMillan on his page on Energy News Beat HERE:

Can Trump Force Ukraine to Accept a Peace Deal?

During his presidential campaign, U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to end the Russia-Ukraine war within “24 hours” of taking office. That clearly didn’t happen, but Trump—who considers himself a master at dealmaking—has still been pushing for a rapid end to the conflict in his first 100 days.

Trump has taken an unorthodox approach to this process, launching talks with Russia without involving Ukraine. When seeking to end a war between two countries, it’s generally helpful to include both warring parties in negotiations.

“I don’t think [Trump] understands just how complex this war is and just how far apart the sides are,” Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said. We spoke to Pifer, a veteran U.S. diplomat with years of experience focusing on Ukraine and Russia, to get his views on Trump’s rapid push for an end to the war and whether he’ll be successful.

In recent days, Trump has been decidedly more antagonistic toward Kyiv than Moscow, including labeling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” (a label he conveniently seemed to have forgotten about). Trump has refused to characterize Russian President Vladimir Putin, widely regarded as among the most repressive leaders in the world, as such. Trump also falsely claimed that Ukraine, not Russia, started the war.

The Trump administration’s position on Ukraine has placed Washington at odds with key allies. On Feb. 24, the United States sided with Russia and other traditional adversaries on United Nations resolutions regarding the war.

Meanwhile, the administration has been accused of making major concessions to Russia, including ruling out the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO and leaving the door open for territorial concessions. It also opened up the possibility of sanctions relief and even economic deals with Russia.

“If you’re going to be an honest broker, you don’t start off as they did two weeks ago by conceding to the Russian position on the two biggest issues, territory and security guarantees,” Pifer said. “I can’t see a single concession that we got from Russia, and I can’t even see if we asked Russia for any concessions.”

Trump should have spent this time “finding ways to pressure the Russians,” Pifer said, such as asking Congress to sign off on more military assets for Ukraine, which would have sent “a real signal to Putin.”

Does Ukraine have a choice? It seems as though Trump is trying to bully Ukraine, which has been heavily reliant on U.S. aid throughout the war, into accepting a peace deal—regardless of whether the terms are favorable to Kyiv.

Trump is “putting pressure on the party that he has leverage with, because Ukraine ideally would like to be able to receive more American military assistance,” Pifer said, but he’s “not putting pressure on the recalcitrant party.”

Despite the challenges Ukraine would face without U.S. support and the troubling battlefield realities with Russia making incremental gains in the eastern part of the country, Pifer also said that Zelensky is not going to sign off on a bad deal for his country.

“Zelensky has a domestic constituency, which is going to be watching him to make sure that he does not sign a bad agreement. Though polls show that a majority of Ukrainians now favor negotiations, they also show a significant number of Ukrainians still oppose any territorial concessions,” Pifer said, adding that the Ukrainians “are prepared to keep fighting rather than sign a bad deal, even though they know it’s going to be hard.”

“A chance for course correction.” As the Trump administration continues outreach with Russia, it’s also pushed for a minerals deal with Ukraine in what Trump and his officials have framed as a way for the United States to get back some of the money it has given to Kyiv over the past three years.

After Zelensky initially rebuffed the Trump administration’s demands on minerals, Washington and Kyiv reportedly reached an agreement this week on a framework that would give the United States access to Ukraine’s deposits of rare-earth minerals.

Zelensky is set to meet with Trump in Washington on Feb. 28 to finalize the minerals deal, and the Ukrainian leader is hoping the agreement will incentivize the Trump administration to continue U.S. assistance for Kyiv.

“There’s a chance for a course correction when Zelensky comes to town on Friday,” Pifer said.

When asked what Ukraine gets in return for the minerals deal, Trump said a lot of “military equipment and the right to fight on.” It was unclear if he was referring to the military equipment the United States has already given Ukraine since the war began or to future aid.

But Zelensky wants something more concrete. “I wanted to have a sentence on security guarantees for Ukraine, and it’s important that it’s there,” Zelensky said on Feb. 26.

Trump and his team have said the minerals deal itself is a form of security guarantee because having U.S. workers in Ukraine digging out the minerals will deter Russia from “playing around,” as Trump put it during an Oval Office meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer today. Yet Trump has refused to include military security guarantees as part of the deal so far.

Can Europe fill America’s shoes? Regardless of what happens in the near future, the Trump administration has made the case that Europe should assume responsibility for Ukraine’s security in the long term. The European Union is now considering how to approach a possible future in which the United States abandons Europe, NATO, and Ukraine—and is taking steps to secure more military aid for Kyiv.

But it’s an open question whether Europe is prepared to fill the gap, particularly given that the United States has contributed close to half of all assistance Ukraine has received since the war began. And the answer to that question could determine whether Ukraine is able to withstand U.S. pressure to accept an unfavorable deal.

“Europe is signaling that it will continue to support Ukraine even if the United States fails. The problem that Europe has is they probably do not have the defense industrial capacity now to make up for what the United States could provide,” Pifer said.

Pifer said he hopes people who know how to talk to Trump will be able to persuade him that if he comes up with a “shoddy” peace deal for Ukraine, he will be compared to Neville Chamberlain in 1938 and viewed as “weak” and as a president who “sold out an American partner.”

Trump has given a “textbook class on how not to negotiate with Moscow,” Pifer said, adding that Putin is likely sitting back and waiting for him to offer up even more concessions.

On the Button

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

An end to the Turkey-PKK conflict? On Feb. 27, the jailed head of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, called for his followers to disarm and dissolve the separatist group—opening the door for the cessation of a decades-old conflict between the group and Turkey that has claimed over 40,000 lives.

“I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility of this call,” Ocalan said.

The PKK, which was founded on the goal of establishing an independent Kurdish state, is considered a terrorist group by Ankara and Washington.

Efkan Ala, deputy chairman of the country’s ruling AK Party, said Turkey would be “free of its shackles” if Ocalan’s plea for the PKK to lay down its arms is heeded.

Packing up. United States Agency for International Development  (USAID) workers cleared out their desks at the agency’s now-shuttered headquarters in Washington today. The Trump administration has moved to gut USAID as part of a broader effort spearheaded by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to drastically shrink the federal government and slash spending. Musk has groundlessly characterized USAID as a “criminal” organization, calling it corrupt and wasteful.

The chaos surrounding USAID has had rippling consequences around the world. The Trump administration said it’s cutting more than 90 percent of USAID’s foreign aid contracts. Critics have said that Trump is halting lifesaving programs and doing immeasurable damage to the United States’ global reputation.

On Feb. 26, the Supreme Court temporarily halted an order from a federal judge for the Trump administration to release billions in frozen foreign aid.

More tariff talk. Trump said his 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, which were paused for one month in early February, will go into effect on March 4. Trump has tied these tariffs to the issue of border security and drug trafficking. In a post on Truth Social, he said that drugs “are still pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels,” though he didn’t offer any evidence to back this up.

Leading experts and economists have warned that imposing harsh tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, key allies and top trading partners of the United States, could have a detrimental effect on U.S. consumers and boost inflation.

Trump also said that imports from China will face an “additional 10% Tariff” on March 4. That would raise duties on Chinese imports to the United States to 20 percent.

Snapshot

Elon Musk speaks during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting of the new administration at the White House in Washington on Feb. 26.Elon Musk speaks during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting of the new administration at the White House in Washington on Feb. 26.

Elon Musk speaks during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting of the new administration at the White House in Washington on Feb. 26.Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Hot Mic

The cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon remain on shaky ground. SitRep spoke with Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid in Washington about the prospect of the Gaza truce continuing, and FP’s Rishi Iyengar caught up with Ziad Makary, former information minister for Lebanon, on the sidelines of the Web Summit Qatar conference in Doha about the Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire.

“I am not,” Lapid said, when asked whether he was confident that the Gaza cease-fire, currently still in phase one, would last and make it all the way to phase three. Lapid, who this week unveiled his own proposal for postwar Gaza that calls for Egypt to temporarily take control of the enclave and oversee its reconstruction, said taking a phased approach to the truce was a “mistake to begin with.”

“We should have had one deal for all the hostages,” Lapid said, even if that meant “for now, ending the war, because there’s nothing more important for the people of Israel than the return of all the hostages.”

Meanwhile, Makary said that the durability of the cease-fire in Lebanon depends on how much “pressure” the new Lebanese government that recently took office can continue to keep on Israel, whose troops maintain a presence in parts of Lebanon’s south—past an extended deadline for their withdrawal under the truce’s terms. The new Lebanese government’s focus will be on implementing a 2006 U.N. resolution that stipulates the Lebanese army will be the country’s sole military force and, in Makary’s words, “clean all the country” of Hezbollah weapons.

Trump’s deputy special envoy for the Middle East, Morgan Ortagus, visited Lebanon earlier this month and said Hezbollah’s representation in any Lebanese government was a “red line” for Washington. “Of course, this is the opinion of Americans,” Makary said, though he conceded that the militant group—which Washington deems a terrorist organization—will have to “transform its military branch into a political branch.” (Makary also described Trump’s controversial proposed U.S. takeover of Gaza as “unacceptable.”)

“We are very confident that Lebanon will rise again because Lebanese people are fed up with all those wars that are not Lebanese wars,” he said. “This is the main goal of the government—to withdraw Lebanon from the regional conflict and start working to build a sovereign and independent Lebanon.”