Donald Trump is a failed dealmaker who had President Zelensky ready to sign an agreement but then the meeting was a disaster

Echo editorial published by The Boston Globe editorial board:
Trump’s opening gambit on Ukraine peace already a loser
No good dealmaker gives away the store from the get-go.

So the guy who literally wrote (it was ghostwritten❗ ) a book on “The Art of the Deal*” somehow thinks it’s a smart negotiating tactic to cozy up to President Vladimir Putin of Russia and insult President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, all while bombs are still landing in Kyiv.

Only in Donald Trump’s “Alice Through the Looking Glass” world, where down is up, would the week’s events make any sense. 

In Trump World, Zelensky “started” the war — which was, in fact, precipitated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.

Whatever Trump thinks he’s accomplishing, the US goal ought to be to bring the war to an end without rewarding Putin’s aggression. 

And there should be no concessions until then.

No further concessions, anyway. Putin, who has succeeded in playing the American president like a balalaika, has already won some — like a 90-minute phone call with Trump, a meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, and the reestablishment of embassy staffing in Washington and Moscow. All such direct contacts had rightly ended three years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine.

It was surely no accident that the Russian delegation sent to Riyadh included Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, who brought a list of the “total losses” — of more than $300 billion — to American business attributed to US disengagement from Russia.

Lavrov told reporters after the meeting that “there was great interest” in the room “in removing artificial barriers to the development of mutually beneficial economic cooperation” — hinting at the possibility of getting American sanctions lifted.

But even as the US-Russia talks were going on, the bombardment of Ukraine by Russian drones and missiles continued. By Wednesday Russia had once again zeroed in on Ukraine’s gas infrastructure.

So the great dealmaker has accomplished what exactly?

Or is Trump waiting for Zelensky to sign on to that deal to give up half his nation’s mineral resources to assure continued US support — or perhaps to pay for past military support? It was unclear which.

What is clear is that the war goes on — and job one for Trump and his team is to stop the fighting, the killing, and the destruction. And the way to do that isn’t to give away the store to Putin before there is a path to a cease-fire.

Trump has shown a preternatural desire for a summit with Putin — which would be a huge concession absent a cease-fire.

It is certainly not unknown to have lower-level dual track bilateral meetings — rather like the ones that ultimately led to the Israel-Hamas cease-fire — as a starting point. But the bumbling efforts thus far by Rubio in Riyadh and Keith Kellogg, the special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, seem not even close.

Rubio promised following the Riyadh meeting that there would be “engagement and consultation with Ukraine, with our partners in Europe, and others. But ultimately, the Russian side will be indispensable to this effort.”

Nevertheless, there can be no progress on long-term peace efforts until a cease-fire is in place.

Then and only then should there be any talk of easing economic sanctions on Russia — as Lavrov and Dmitriev seem intent on accomplishing.

To do otherwise is to reward Putin for continuing his war of aggression.

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Charles Kupchan argued in a 2023, essay in Foreign Affairs, that the West could “offer some limited relief from sanctions in return for Russia’s willingness to abide by a cease-fire, agree to a demilitarized zone, and participate meaningfully in peace talks.”

But, they added, “Western governments could promise to fully lift sanctions against Russia and normalize relations with it only if Moscow signed a peace agreement that was acceptable to Kyiv.”

That approach recognizes, of course, that Europe and the NATO allies — who have thus far been left out of the talks initiated by the Trump administration — would have a critical role to play. After all, they have provided about a third of the military hardware used by Ukraine to fight the war and have imposed their own sanctions on Russia — often at great sacrifice.

Already on the table and part of the discussions among Europe’s leaders is providing troops to serve as peacekeepers, policing those possible demilitarized zones, assuring the safety of civilian populations, and in the process attempting to keep Russia honest.

Such a plan also leaves the disposition of land under Russian occupation to some future agreement. And, as Trump has already indicated, if even a path to NATO membership for Ukraine is off the table, then some kind of security pact with the United States or members of the European Union, preferably both, would be critical to guarantee Ukrainian sovereignty.

And then there is the matter of the rebuilding of Ukraine, a nation shattered by war — something to which the United States and its European allies have always been committed, that is, until the Trump administration upended the diplomatic world as we know it.

This opening gambit on ending a three-year war that has brought misery to Ukraine and its people and economic privations to ordinary Russians who have paid the price for Putin’s aggression has been less than impressive.

The fake ❗dealmaker-in-chief hasn’t helped the situation in recent days with his flurry of lies and vitriol toward Ukraine. A good deal is one that will bring lasting peace — one that is fair, that doesn’t reward Russian aggression, and that guarantees Ukrainian sovereignty. Anything less will be seen for the sham that is.

*Tony Schwartz (born May 2, 1952) is an American journalist and business book author who is best known for ghostwriting Trump: The Art of the Deal. New York, New York, U.S.