With every passing day, President Donald Trump’s transactional worldview comes into sharper relief. In Russia and Ukraine – as in so many other areas of Trump’s foreign policy – it’s all about the money.
For the nations of Europe, the week has already been deeply shocking. Just seven days ago it was impossible to imagine the fracturing of the transatlantic alliance that has kept the peace in Europe since 1945, and which found unexpected unity in the effort to defend Ukrainian independence and sovereignty against Russian aggression.
Now, the United States looks every inch an adversary of the UK and its European allies. Trump’s loose language branding President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” is the latest indicator that he is determined to tilt peace negotiations in Moscow’s favour.
The ultimate prize for the Kremlin may not simply be the chunks of Ukrainian territory that Trump wants to award president Vladimir Putin, nor the capacity for a refreshed Russian army to invade other neighbouring countries within the next 12–18 months. Trump’s largesse towards the Russian leader extends to granting Putin the imprimatur of respectability via a face-to-face meeting in Saudi Arabia, followed by summit meetings on Russian and American soil respectively.
The American president also wants to restore the Russian dictator’s seat in the G7, turning it back in the G8 almost a decade after Moscow was expelled from the grouping over its initial Ukraine incursion, the military annexation of Crimea in 2014.
In the latest development, US officials have objected to calling Russia the aggressor in a G7 statement to be released on the third anniversary of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on Monday.
“We are adamant that there must be a distinction made between Russia and Ukraine…the Americans are blocking that language,” an official told the Financial Times.
Whether Russia belongs in a group that is supposedly reserved for the world’s most advanced economies was never entirely clear, even when Western powers agreed to grant it membership in 1998.
The deal was sealed at that year’s Birmingham summit of G7 leaders, with prime minister Tony Blair telling reporters that his colleagues had decided with “without the voice of Russia being heard…it is far more difficult for us to deal with the international issues that confront us”.
Then, no one around the leaders’ table had ever heard the name “Putin”, nor could imagine that 16 years later, after Russia’s takeover of Crimea, Moscow would have to be thrown out.
Now Trump wants Putin back at the top table, a stunning reward for a Russian leader who has always craved international acceptance, even as he tramples over agreed global norms, stifles freedom of expression, murders his political opponents and is accused of war crimes.
“I think it was a mistake to throw [Russia] out,” Trump told reporters last Thursday. “I think Putin would love to be back…If they were there, I don’t think you would have had the problem that you have right now,” he surmised.
America’s G7 partners are evincing no interest in welcoming Russia back to the fold. Canada’s foreign minister, Mélanie Joly, told reporters there is “no way this will happen”. The country’s Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, widely expected to succeed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau later this year, said “Russia’s exclusion from the G7 is every bit as justifiable today”.
Even the Russians insist they do not covet G7 membership, with Kremlin officials dismissively describing it as an “outdated structure”.
Moscow has instead put considerable effort into cementing Brics – the grouping led by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – into a muscular alternative alliance that has even discussed launching its own currency in an effort to counter the might of the US dollar.
But now, Trump is holding out the possibility of the US getting into bed with Russia geopolitically, and economically as well. Notable after Tuesday’s meeting with Kremlin officials in Riyadh was the US secretary of state’s contention that “incredible opportunities…exist to partner with Russia, geopolitically on issues of common interest, and frankly, economically on issues that hopefully will be good for the world and will also improve our relations in the long term”.
The prospect of sanctions being lifted to permit US businesses to re-engage with Russia, or possibly Trump’s new sovereign wealth fund itself investing in the country, alarms many observers.
“It really worries me,” one former senior US official with deep experience dealing with Moscow told The i Paper. “God help us if we discuss doing business with Russia,” the official warned, fearing that economic engagement would only embolden Putin even further.
In Ukraine too, it is apparent that economic priorities top Trump’s agenda.
As Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer prepares to travel to Washington next week, becoming the first European leader to cross the White House threshold since the inauguration, top Trump officials are openly indicating that the President’s hostility towards Zelensky is fueled by a firmly-held belief that Kyiv has ripped Washington off.
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said on Wednesday that Trump’s fury towards Zelensky was created by what he called “the bizarre pushback and escalation of rhetoric over presentation of what we see as an absolute opportunity”, namely America’s proposal to rob Ukraine of its mineral wealth.
“We believe the American taxpayer deserves to recoup much of their investment,” said Waltz, amid reports that in Munich last week Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to strong-arm Zelensky into signing an agreement to give Washington control of 50 per cent of the country’s lithium deposits and its other valuable rare earths. The handover is being demanded to offset the roughly $175bn in assistance that Congress has provided Ukraine since the Russian invasion began.
Zelensky, who first broached the idea of providing the US with some access to its mineral wealth, refused the American pressure tactics, a fact that Trump and his acolytes appear to consider “bizarre”.
European leaders including Starmer may find it equally curious that the US, which has not lost a single American soldier fighting the war, intends nonetheless to enforce an outcome that forces Kyiv to tick the boxes on Putin’s wish list, and then strips Ukraine of its most prized natural resources as well.
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