US President Donald Trump believes that the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin holds all the cards, according to an article in The Times, as reported by Hvylya.
The newspaper notes that Trump repeated the same phrase again and again during a tense meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office earlier this year.
"You don't have cards," he said. "You don't have cards."
In the months that followed, European leaders fought hard to secure another meeting for Zelensky. They organized talks at the Vatican to repair the damaged relationship between the White House and Kyiv. They agreed to pay for any American weapons sent to Ukraine, meaning hundreds of millions of dollars are now flowing from European taxpayers to American arms manufacturers.
Seven of them - Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz, Giorgia Meloni, Alexander Stubb, Mark Rutte, and Ursula von der Leyen—accompanied the Ukrainian President to Washington as a show of diplomatic support after Trump hosted President Putin for a meeting in Alaska in August.
The article states that despite the European lobbying, Trump's fundamental view of the conflict has not changed since that February meeting in the Oval Office. For Trump, Zelensky is attempting to bluff for a better deal despite holding a losing hand. The US President believes Putin holds all the aces.
"Look, Russia is a very large power, and they [Ukraine] are not," Trump summarized earlier this year.
It is, therefore, no surprise that the 28-point peace plan, which leaked this week after being presented to Zelensky, is heavily skewed in Russia's favor.
It was discussed over three days in Miami at the end of October by Steve Witkoff, the President's special envoy.
The publication writes that Witkoff is a New York real estate developer who does not speak Russian and relied on Kremlin interpreters during previous negotiation rounds. He could barely name five Ukrainian regions whose future he was negotiating. He had visited Russia five times without ever having been to Ukraine.
On the other side of the table sat Kirill Dmitriev—a man who not only speaks fluent English but also came to the US as a teenager and has a deep understanding of American politics. The Kyiv-born head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund can also claim to be Ukrainian and is, therefore, the living embodiment of Putin's theory that Kyiv rightfully belongs to the "Russian World."
This obvious mismatch produced a deal to Putin's liking.
"We feel that the Russian position is truly being heard," Dmitriev told Axios this week.
Under the terms of the draft plan, Ukraine must reduce the size of its army to 600,000 service members, withdraw from its fortified positions in Donetsk, and enshrine in its constitution that it will never join NATO. Sanctions against Russia would be lifted, and Putin would be readmitted to the G8—a forum from which he was excluded over a decade ago.
The plan stipulates that Ukraine must ban "Nazi ideology and activities"—a clause that suggests tacit US approval of Putin's claims that Zelensky, one of only three Jewish world leaders, heads a Nazi regime in Kyiv. The Ukrainian President would also be compelled to hold elections within 100 days of signing the agreement—undoubtedly an opportunity for Putin to instigate provocations.
Zelensky did not immediately condemn the plan because he cannot risk incurring Trump's wrath, but he has very little time to avoid having an unsatisfactory peace imposed on Ukraine.
Trump initially promised to resolve the war in Ukraine within a day of returning to the White House. The President claims to have already settled eight wars and is desperate for Ukraine to be the ninth to bolster his chances for a Nobel Peace Prize next year.
However, following a poor night for Republicans in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey this month, Trump realizes he needs to talk more about the cost-of-living issues concerning American voters, rather than boasting about his peace efforts between Azerbaijan and Armenia, if he wants to succeed in next year's midterms.
As Trump attempts to return to his domestic agenda, he may find it quicker to pressure Zelensky, rather than Putin, to end the war because, in this poker game, he believes it is the Ukrainian President who holds no cards.