RBringing peace to Ukraine in twenty-four hours was a field boastful of candidate Donald Trump that no one could take seriously. His first steps as president on the way of the cross of negotiation with Russia quickly made him understand that it would take a little more time. A hurry man, he could not help but set a new delay to obtain a ceasefire: Easter, or the first hundred days of his mandate in late April. We are there.
This undoubtedly explains the impatience that his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, demonstrated Friday April 18 by leaving Paris in the aftermath of a day of high -level tripartite talks at the Elysée. These interviews, of an unprecedented format, nevertheless constituted an advance: for the first time, the Europeans, represented by France, the United Kingdom and Germany, were able to discuss Ukraine with the Americans and the Ukrainians.
So far the discussions had taken place either between Ukrainians and Americans, or between Europeans and Ukrainians, or between Americans and Russians. Another tripartite meeting, in the same format as that of the Elysée, is scheduled the following week in London. But this advance, which is to be credited by the commitment of President Emmanuel Macron in the search for a solution to the Ukrainian conflict, does not seem to have produced a solution likely to lead to a cease-fire.
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Washington is now threatening to withdraw from the process. If he does not appear “In the coming days” that an agreement is ” Feasable “said Rubio on Friday, “We have to move on. The United States has other priorities ”. President Trump added a little later: “If one of the two parties makes things really difficult, we will just say, you are crazy, you are horrible people, and we will pass our turn”he said. As often, Mr. Trump also said the opposite – “I hope we don’t have to do it” -and his vice-president, J. D. Vance, visiting Rome, declared himself ” optimistic “.
However, these threats must be taken seriously. In this strange game around the search for a peace in Ukraine without a coherent American plan, two positions remain constant: those of Russia and the United States. Ukraine has made multiple concessions to accept an unconditional and even signed ceasefire, on Thursday, a memorandum of Washington on its natural resources.
Europeans have continued to meet in an attempt to organize the security of Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire. The Russian president did not move an iota on his claims, while pretending to be open to negotiations. As for Mr. Trump, he does not hide his disdain for President Zelensky, which he regularly accuses, against all evidence, of having started war, but he systematically spares Vladimir Putin, president of the aggressive country.
More serious: no one knows if Washington intends to continue the American military aid to Ukraine provided by the Biden administration, whose deliveries are coming to an end. It is therefore not excluded that Mr. Trump leads his business to Russia to the end and abandons Ukraine to Europeans. “It’s not our war”recalled Marco Rubio. This is a hypothesis that Europeans must prepare to face, by intensifying their military aid to kyiv.
