Silver Linings

Ignore the horrific things Trump said, and there is still hope for peace in Ukraine.

I’m traveling back to NYC with a car full of kids and all our gifts, so I’ll keep today’s piece brief!

Yesterday, Trump met with President Zelenskyy at Mar-a-Lago, ostensibly to discuss the peace proposal from Ukraine and its European allies, which includes security guarantees for Ukraine.

As before, Trump first communicated privately with Russian president Vladimir Putin, which left many worried that Trump would merely repeat the aggressor nation’s talking points and demand an immediate deal that included the ceding of territory.

If you were to only look at who was there representing the U.S. and Trump’s later statements to the press, you’d come away disheartened. At the table for the U.S. was a true rogue’s gallery, including Steve Witkoff, Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio. At the far end was Jared Kushner, who isn’t even a U.S. official but seems to have his hands now in everything.

And Trump’s statements did not inspire confidence. At one point he even said Russia “wants to see Ukraine succeed.” Lies.

That produced a cock of the head from Zelenskyy, who showed remarkable restraint.

Trump also said he understood why Putin would not agree to a ceasefire, because they might require Russia to stop fighting and then to restart. That, of course, is what all ceasefires do, so this amounts to “They don’t want a ceasefire because they don’t want a ceasefire.”

Trump’s horrific statements aside, there were some important silver linings to the meeting. Unlike in disastrous meetings past, Trump didn’t demand immediate changes, nor did he try to browbeat Zelenskyy into submission. Instead, Trump agreed that the process would be ongoing and that any agreement would need time to be worked out. Zelenskyy went to Florida with the primary goal of not seeing peace talks derail, and they did not.

Nor did Trump walk away, as he has threatened to do in the past. “I don’t have deadlines,” Trump told reporters while greeting Zelenskyy at Mar-a-Lago. “You know what my deadline is? Getting the war ended.”

Many points of disagreement still need to be worked out, including control of the Donbas region (Zelenskyy wants a demilitarized zone from which all parties would pull back) and who will wind up with a currently Russian-held nuclear power plant.

Zelenskyy wants other European nations involved. They were instrumental last time in keeping Trump on track for a deal. And there are more peace talks in the works—perhaps to be held in the U.S. to flatter Trump—and such nations’ leaders would attend them. (This time, some of these leaders attended by phone.)

It is admittedly a sad state of affairs to have to cater to the ego, third grade level comprehension and mercurial whims of Donald Trump. But realists like Zelenskyy understand what that takes now, and he is willing to endure it all, so long as his nation might eventually be spared further suffering.

That makes Zelenskyy the continuing hero of this story, struggling against a cabal of villains and idiots who plainly see not a murderous warmonger in Putin but a golden ticket, a way to secure vast oil and mineral wealth. These are not real peacemakers; they are robber barons. And they will do what is best for themselves, not the world, Ukraine or even the U.S.

If Zelenskyy can succeed against these odds and still achieve a peace deal with longterm security guarantees, it will be as improbable and praiseworthy as his country’s valiant and continuing resistance to Russia’s invasion.

He just might pull it off.