More coercive clarity on Trump’s Ukraine peace plan

Trump’s Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, told the New York Post more about how the US president plans to bring Russian leader Vladimir Putin to the peace table.

According to Kellogg, the US might ratchet up its energy-related sanctions on Russia and associated secondary ones on its clients if he refuses. This would occur together with more diplomatic pressure, likely upon China and India to have their leaders convince Putin to reconsider, and “some type of military pressures and levers that you’re going to use underneath those.”

The immediate goal is “to stop the killing — just stop it — and then you go from there”, so, in other words, the approach would aim at getting Russia to agree to a ceasefire. This aligns with what was assessed here in late January about Trump’s plans.

The problem, though, is that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed on the same day as Kellogg’s interview that “A temporary ceasefire or, as many say, freezing the conflict, is unacceptable” for Russia.

One day earlier, however, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested that Russia’s position on not holding talks with Volodymyr Zelensky due to the Ukrainian leader’s “illegitimacy” might be reversed for pragmatism’s sake, so the position rejecting a ceasefire could possibly be reversed too.

That could occur if Trump coerces Zelensky into withdrawing from at least Kursk and Donbas along with declaring that Ukraine won’t seek to join NATO, thus satisfying some of Russia’s goals.

Ukraine would then lift martial law and finally hold long-delayed elections, which could potentially lead to the US replacing Zelensky, as Russia’s foreign spy agency claimed last week is supposedly in the cards.

That scenario sequence aligns with Russian and US interests, but it can’t be ruled out that some of the outgoing Biden administration’s Russophobic hawks remain in positions of influence within the US’ “deep state” and end up dissuading Trump from coercing Zelensky into territorial concessions first.

Without Ukraine withdrawing from Kursk and Donbas, it’s unlikely that Putin could justify compromising on last June’s ceasefire demands that Ukraine withdraw from all the territory that Russia claims as its own and declare that it won’t ever join NATO.

He can accept a delay on implementing the second until after the next parliamentary elections since Ukraine’s goal of NATO membership was enshrined as an amendment to the Constitution in 2019 and therefore can’t be removed without parliament’s support.

What Putin would be loath to accept is freezing the current Line of Contact (LOC), even if the US coerces Ukraine into withdrawing from Russia’s Kursk Region as a quid pro quo since it would suggest that their sneak attack there last summer forced him to give up on his demands to disputed territory.

Lending credence to that interpretation could raise the risk that Ukraine launches another sneak attack elsewhere along their international border if post-election peace talks stall in order to coerce more concessions.

Putin might settle for Ukraine only withdrawing from Kursk and Donbas in exchange for a ceasefire since the first is universally recognized as Russian. The second is at the heart of their territorial dispute, and demanding more might provoke the US into enforcing its secondary sanctions against China and India.

As Kellogg recently said, sanctions enforcement is “only about a three” on a scale of one to ten so it could be increased if needed, which would put Putin in a tough position if Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi then pressure him.

China and India could be coerced into drastically curtailing or outright abandoning their large-scale import of discounted Russian oil if the US imposes super-strict Iranian-like sanctions on Russia explicitly aimed at “driv[ing] [its] export of oil to zero” through full secondary sanctions enforcement.

The consequences of their compliance could spike the price of oil worldwide and throw countless economies into a tailspin, which is why the US has thus far avoided the policy.

Trump has already imposed 10% tariffs on China and he’s expected to negotiate hard with India during Modi’s trip to Washington DC late next week, which might even see the two sides launch free trade talks.

Each Asian giant has their own self-interested reasons for avoiding any further economic pressure from the US. They might curtail their imports of discounted Russian oil as a compromise to the US in exchange for no secondary sanctions enforcement and to avoid destabilizing the global market rather than defying the US.

Even in that case, Russia’s foreign revenue flow, upon which a share of its state budget depends, would be disrupted, which might parallel their leaders pressuring Putin to reconsider his rejection of a ceasefire since it would be indirectly responsible for harming the economic interests of all three.

If the “military pressures and levers that [the US is] going to use underneath those” take the form of ramping up arms shipments to Ukraine, including long-range missiles, then it might suffice to prompt a rethink in Moscow.

However, there’s also the possibility that Russia “goes rogue” in the sense of continuing to pursue its maximum goals in the conflict in spite of American, Chinese and Indian pressure, hoping that the Ukrainian frontlines soon collapse and Trump then abandons the geopolitical project instead of trying to salvage it.

This “hawkish” thinking on Moscow’s part could be predicated on decision-makers assuming that Trump would accept this defeat without fear of it ruining his reputation and that he won’t escalate to brinksmanship.

While that’s plausible, the counterargument can be made that Trump doesn’t want to bear responsibility for what would be the greatest American geopolitical defeat ever and won’t let the US$183 billion that the US has invested into this conflict so far go to waste without at least securing control over Western Ukraine.

In that event, Russia might still ultimately be coerced into compromising on its maximum goals, but after having needlessly burned bridges with China and India, could be isolated in the post-conflict future.

The likelihood of Trump implementing a comprehensive pressure campaign against Russia if Putin rejects a ceasefire might get him to compromise on his original demands for this, though only if Ukraine first withdraws from Kursk and Donbas.

It’s not in US interests to perpetuate the conflict according to MAGA thought leader Steve Bannon, who has warned that Trump risks his own Vietnam at a time Trump is eager to “Pivot (back) to Asia” pronto in order to contain China.

Trump would, therefore, do well to coerce Zelensky into withdrawing from those two regions instead of “escalating to de-escalate” against Russia if Putin doesn’t agree to simply freeze the LOC.

As Kellogg told the New York Post, “Very frankly, both sides in any negotiation have to give; that’s just the way it is in negotiations…Is it gonna be acceptable to everybody? No. But you try to run this balance.”

That’s precisely the approach that Trump should follow, otherwise he risks derailing his broad foreign policy agenda.

This article was first published on Andrew Korybko’s Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become an Andrew Korybko Newsletter subscriber here.