Trump & Putin Peace Process Continues, Ukraine Negotiates, Europe Ignored.

## Opening: A New Axis of Negotiation What emerges from the conversation is the sense that a distinct diplomatic dynamic is forming between Washington and Moscow that sidesteps the wider transatlantic architecture. A recent phone call between the two capitals—and the ensuing sequence of meetings and public posturing—has crystallized a maneuvering room in which bilateral deal-making, rather than multilateral European-led strategy, appears to be the motor of any prospective de-escalation. The significance is not simply that talks are happening; it is that the locus of influence may be shifting. The discussion makes the case that if peace advances, it will most likely be the product of a U.S.-Russia understanding that compels reluctant regional actors to accept terms they might otherwise reject. ## Media Framings: Three Lenses on the Same Moment The conversation juxtaposes three journalistic narratives—broadly represented by U.S. mainstream, Russian-state, and European outlets—to illuminate how interpretation shapes policy pressure. One strand presents the U.S. president as either abdicating responsibility or prudently reorienting; another casts the rapprochement as clever Russian diplomacy that outflanks Europe; and a third worries that European unity is fraying. These framings are not neutral windows on events. They operate as tools in the diplomatic theater, influencing domestic constituencies and the calculations of secondary actors such as Kyiv and Brussels. The result is a contested information environment in which each actor reads the same gestures—phone calls, invitations, press briefings—as evidence of either betrayal, strategy, or collapse. The conversation argues that the New York Times-style narrative, which treats the apparent U.S. pivot as abandonment, serves a domestic and ideological function: it rallies those who equate pressure with morality and sees negotiations as tantamount to appeasement. Conversely, the Russian-state framing insists the Kremlin has been the pragmatic architect of the opening, portraying Moscow’s offers as strategic moves designed to reinstate a negotiating baseline while minimizing European interference. European coverage, for its part, is characterized by alarm—chiefly that its leverage is dwindling and that Washington might decouple its policy from the EU’s preferred line. ## The Bipolar Bargain: Why U.S.-Russia Dialogue Matters At the core of the exchange is an analysis of power: the United States and Russia remain the principal actors whose choices tilt the balance between escalation and settlement. The conversation emphasizes that when two great powers decide to engage, they create leverage over smaller stakeholders. This is not merely coercive leverage; it is also the capacity to set the envelope of what counts as feasible terms. If Washington and Moscow find sufficient convergence—on timing, sequencing, or tradeoffs—they can impose a deal from which Ukraine and European states will find it politically costly to disentangle themselves. This bilateral bent also reshapes incentives. For Washington, the calculus involves domestic politics, alliance management, and strategic competition elsewhere; for Moscow, it involves securing a durable settlement that removes the prospect of a Western military architecture at its borders and normalizes outcomes achieved on the battlefield. The conversation suggests both capitals perceive benefits to channeling talks through a direct line: it minimizes leak points, limits third-party spoilers, and concentrates decision-making where grand strategic tradeoffs can be struck. But the approach carries risks—it can disempower allies and leave the country at the center of the conflict feeling negotiated over rather than negotiated with. ## Europe on the Sidelines: Marginalized or Strategic Restraint? A central theme is the evident frustration of European capitals at being excluded from the newest phase of engagement. The discussion portrays Brussels as scrambling to preserve relevance, alarmed that an American disengagement or pragmatic accommodation with Moscow would undercut years of investment and political capital in Kyiv. European officials have sought to reassert themselves through proposals—such as ceasefires tied to conditionalities—that aim to shape the sequence and terms of any settlement. The conversation contends that these moves reflect both genuine concern for Ukrainian sovereignty and a strategic fear of being sidelined in shaping the post-war order. Yet there is also an alternative reading: what looks like marginalization may be a consequence of the particular attributes of great-power diplomacy. Europe lacks the coercive heft—the strategic depth of military and nuclear deterrence—belonging to the United States, and it cannot on its own guarantee the security assurances Russia seeks to see absent NATO arrangements. The conversation therefore frames Europe’s predicament as structural: unable to match U.S. capacity to incentivize or punish, European states risk being spectators to a bargain in which the stakes for their neighborhood are existential. ## Negotiation Mechanics and Confidence-Building The conversation underscores an important diplomatic truth: durable settlements grow out of incremental steps that build credibility. Early-stage talks tend to cluster around low-hanging fruit—prisoner exchanges, humanitarian corridors, and reciprocal gestures—because these are mutual gains with limited strategic cost. The exchange highlights a concrete example: a sizeable prisoner swap, the kind of transaction that both signals intent and creates a sequence of reciprocity. Such measures are not trivial; they provide political cover for leaders to justify further concessions at home and create templates of cooperation that can evolve into more difficult bargains. The conversation also points to the tactical wisdom of keeping technocrats and specialized negotiators engaged. Technical experts from defense and foreign ministries can hammer out modalities—sequencing, verification, deconfliction—that political leaders can then ratify. That is why the presence of experienced delegations is consequential: they know where the negotiating lines can flex without threatening core interests. The discussion makes clear that the way talks are staged—who attends, what is made public, and how outcomes are sequenced—matters as much as the substantive proposals on the table. ## The Core Issues: Neutrality, Security Guarantees, and Political Order Beneath the visible choreography of exchanges lies a set of enduring substantive roadblocks. The conversation identifies three centerpieces that any settlement must confront: the security status of the country at the center of the conflict, guarantees against future threats, and the internal political composition of the state. Russia’s long-articulated demands—neutrality for the neighboring state, exclusion from NATO membership, and security assurances—map onto strategic redlines. Simultaneously, Moscow’s insistence on “denazification” and the removal of certain political actors is phrased in language that is politically toxic to many in the West. These issues are not amenable to simple compromise because they implicate identity, sovereignty, and the international legal order. The conversation stresses that sequencing will be decisive: whether talks begin by freezing the battlefield, then move to longer-term security guarantees, or whether they start with mutual confidence-building and only later tackle core political questions. Each pathway carries different distributional consequences, and those consequences explain why constituents—domestic political bases, diaspora communities, allies—can generate intense pushback against perceived concessions. ## Spoilers, Incentives, and the Limits of Deal-Making No negotiation operates in a vacuum, and the conversation highlights the range of potential spoilers and their incentives. Domestic

Trump & Putin Peace Process Continues, Ukraine Negotiates, Europe Ignored. The developments in the great power game between Washington and Moscow has taken another dramatic turn with the phone call between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Having had what both sides described as a good discussion, the two leaders agree on continuing the negotiation process and sideline the Europeans who are trying to spoil the process at every turn. Check out our shop: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com #M2 Hello everybody. We're nearing the end of the week, and I thought this is the right time to talk to you about the developments in the actual peace process between Russia and the United States. Even though Western media is trying to trash talk what is happening at the moment, I think what we get out of Washington, Moscow, and even Kiev tells us that the peace process is very much in progress, despite all of the efforts of the Europeans to derail what Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin are trying to set up. So let me explain this to you by looking at three newspaper pieces that we recently got. I think if we juxtapose those, we get a quite interesting overview of where the interpretations and the ideologies of this war lie as we speak today, on this May 22nd, 2025. The first piece is this one here by the New York Times, and you know, I don't hold the New York Times in very high esteem, but it's always a good paper to check because there you get the official narrative. You understand what is officially sayable and what is not. And the interpretation at the moment is that polite society agrees that Trump has a new position on the Ukraine war: "Not my problem." So this apparently is new. I mean, apparently, according to the New York Times, Mr. Trump so far took ownership of the war and of support for Ukraine, and now he seems to be walking away. So on the one hand, the actual analysis here is not too bad. I mean, Mr. Trump is threatening to walk away from the entire Ukraine project. But the way this is portrayed is, of course, a farce, because Donald Trump, for the longest time, has been trying—at least halfheartedly—on the one hand, to brand this as Biden's war and as something that should never have started and would never have started had he been in power. He never gets tired of saying that. On the other hand, of course, he made decisions that I and others interpret as mistakes when he listened too closely to some of his hawkish advisors like Rubio and Hegseth, instead of the more realistic faction of his cabinet, like Vitkoff and certainly also Tulsi Gabbard. And whenever he has come too close to the European line, he kind of burned—or ran the danger of burning—himself. But as it seems now, from what we've seen from the phone call that happened on -- 1 of 10 -- Monday, when the two leaders actually talked, he's been walking away from that fire, and this is quite significant. So the article in the New York Times continues its framing further down by quoting a former U.S. ambassador, Bridget A. Brink—I mean, she doesn't matter, but she put it in a way that I think exemplifies how the West currently sees everything unfolding. She says, quote: "The policy since the beginning of the Trump administration has been to put pressure on the victim, Ukraine, rather than the aggressor, Russia. Peace at any price is not peace at all." It is appeasement. This is, of course, another one of those horrible statements used to justify prolonging the war and to justify even more escalatory actions by the White House. The Biden administration has been using this for the entire three years of the war, right? That we will not appease Vladimir Putin and we will not even talk to them, right? We will not even open negotiations or discussions. Let's not forget, negotiations are only happening now in the new Trump administration. So this is, of course, one school of thought in the United States that, for propagandistic reasons but also for ideological ones, just wants to double down, right? The entire framing here is that we haven't done enough yet, right? We should not hold back. We should put more pressure, even though the pressure of the last three years—including the sanctions and especially all of the military aid, basically throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the battlefield—hasn't actually worked. But these people here still think we should just escalate more. If we do more war, then we get to peace. And if anyone says we want to get to peace through negotiations, then that's appeasement, because you're giving in to evil, right? That's the mindset, and that's also the framing that the New York Times uses here in order to explain the failings and all the things that Trump is doing wrong at the moment. And of course, on this one, I think Trump is actually quite right in doing what he does. But let's see here, further down there's another interesting passage in which the New York Times article says that Mr. Trump implied in his public comments that his call with Mr. Putin had resulted in a breakthrough of sorts. But it quickly became clear to the Ukrainians and Europeans that the Russian leader had made no concessions to Mr. Trump beyond negotiating. Russia is already doing that, albeit half-heartedly, sending a junior team to Istanbul last week for talks with the Ukrainians. Now, why does this matter? This matters because, on the one hand, it's absolute BS. The people that the Kremlin sent are not a junior team, and I will show you later who they sent. They sent skilled negotiators—the people who were already involved in the negotiations in 2022— and a high-ranking delegation of experts in their fields. So trash-talking them as a "junior team" really only makes sense if you think that peace negotiations only happen between presidents of countries, right? Because Mr. Zelensky went to Istanbul, right? Begrudgingly, he didn't want to go, but in the end he traveled to Turkey. Actually, he didn't show up in Istanbul—sorry, he went to Ankara. I correct myself: he went to Ankara to meet with Erdogan, and then his team went to Istanbul. I mean, he himself didn't take part in these negotiations, but his team did. -- 2 of 10 -- So the point, of course—the framing that these people have wanted to impose on us over the last couple of weeks—is that Putin is not willing to negotiate, despite the fact that the idea or the proposal for these negotiations in Istanbul itself came, of course, from Vladimir Putin in one of his nightly talks. He said, as a counterproposal to what the Europeans suggested—and I'll talk about that in a second—he is the one who said, "Let's negotiate." But of course, in the Western framing, in the New York Times framing, and so on, you still need to keep up the appearance that you cannot negotiate with Vladimir Putin, that you cannot negotiate with the Russians, right? So the trick they're using now is to say that because he didn't go himself to Turkey, as Mr. Zelensky did, that shows he's a bad faith actor. And that's, of course, a lot of BS. It's utter propaganda. It also must be said—again, the fact that there are talks, that there are actual negotiations—is something that we never had under the Biden administration, ever since they sabotaged the 2022 Istanbul negotiations, right? So the entire spin of the New York Times—but what we need to understand is that it's not just the New York Times; this is the Western framework for understanding what's happening. The entire framing is that nothing has changed: Mr. Putin is still a warmonger, Russia doesn't want negotiations, Russia is bloodthirsty and wants to conquer all of Ukraine. And now Trump seems to be abandoning Ukraine, right? But that is not what is happening. What is happening is a peace process. And I will not get tired of emphasizing this. Peace is not struck overnight, like over a 30-minute phone call. Peace is just like war: it needs preparation, it needs building up. In this case, not of troops. What it needs is building up of understanding, of trust, of teamwork—actually, across the aisle, across the battlefield—in order to get to something. And it seems to me, the longer I look at this, that, of course, Mr. Putin understands very clearly what this is about, and Mr. Trump seems to understand it too, at least so it seems this week. If you want to get a better interpretation of what's happening, then we should actually go and compare what the New York Times article said with a Russia Today article. And don't forget, in the European Union it is forbidden to broadcast Russia Today. So what I'm doing here, showing you a Russia Today article, actually breaks the rules of the European Union. But luckily, I'm a Swiss citizen—not part of the European Union—and I'm living in Japan, also not part of the European Union. And in both countries, accessing Russia Today is still very much possible. There are still some free countries, even within the unfree West. But this article here, written by Mr. Sergei Poletaev, really gives us a little bit of clarity on the entire strategy of the process. So, of course, the Russians, from their end, put their spin on it with the wording and so on: "Putin ends the charade." Trump call puts brakes on West's diplomatic offensive. And he points out something important in this article, which is that it was, of course, the Europeans and the Ukrainians who tried to sabotage the US-Russian rapprochement in order to bring an end to the war, because both of them—Kyiv and Brussels—still want to push on. And the thing is, they don't want to push their own troops onto the battlefield. They want to push NATO, and especially the United States. They want the backing of the -- 3 of 10 -- United States because they are aware that they themselves are weak little chickens that could barely stand up for a month on one of these battlefields. They're weak little chickens. And the United States, that's the mother goose. And you need the mother goose in order to do this. So Mr. Poletaev writes that what's unfolding is not just a conversation about peace, but a broader contest over influence and strategic direction. Competing visions of how the conflict should end or be managed are colliding in real time. Western Europe is scrambling to maintain relevance, Ukraine is caught between urgency and uncertainty, and Trump, now at the center of this geopolitical tug of war, is being courted by both sides. This is very well put—this is just very well put. The factions are now pretty clear, and the question is which one will win over Donald Trump, because at the end of the day, the mind of the United States matters in this game of military power and economic coercive power. The whole goal, it seems at the moment, of the Russian and U.S. leaders is to come to an understanding that they can then push down on the others and make them swallow a bitter pill that they don't want to. Let me continue with the article. This leaves the Western Europeans with just one real move: convince Trump to return to their agenda, boxing him into a policy that isn't his own. And you can see very clearly how this has been playing out over the last couple of weeks, how the Europeans have been trying to lay one trap after another. For instance, this call for a 30-day ceasefire, which the Russians said from the beginning they are not going to do because that's... They tried this long enough with Minsk and so on. They said, "We will negotiate, but we will negotiate while the battlefield continues being the battlefield. Especially since we're the winning party, we're not going to give up our opportunity on the battlefield in order to be misled by you guys again." So they made it very, very clear. And the Europeans, of course, understand this. Then they tried—the Europeans said, "You need to accept the 30-day ceasefire without conditions, otherwise it's going to be more sanctions." And they even managed to convince Trump to, at certain points on Truth Social an