It's something the US patriotic wing cares about a lot.
It doesn't take much to satisfy their need (basically just nice words about the US), but they'll absolutely burn bridges if they come to the conclusion that you're unwilling to show the US this courtesy.
Trump very obviously being part of this wing, is one of the reasons that gave his campaign for the first term such a huge boost. People were convinced that he wouldn't betray the US, like they were betrayed by nearly every politician before (but maybe Bill Clinton, although, in hindsight, he absolutely screwed over Europe by continuing the Russian shock therapy and not supporting Russia in updating the CFE treaty).
Vance is somewhat part of this wing, too, but to a much lesser degree than Trump. E.g. he acknowledged in his speech at the MUC SecConf, that the US made what he considers to be past mistakes, but Trump pretty much never acknowledges what he blames on Biden and Obama to have ever been official US policy (even if he doesn't outright deny it).
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Hence when Zelensky suggested the US will "feel it", too, in a slightly threatening way (due to the language barrier, I guess), Trump literally blew a fuse. You could see his head changing color in real time. I'm surprised he had the patience left to toss out the media semi-politely.
IMO, Zelensky should have picked up on Vance's hints to present himself grateful and stop trying to get commitments from the US infront of the media. Next time he should negotiate in his native language and bring a very capable translator, because picking up on such nuances is anything but easy if you're quite inexperienced in a language.
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Trump is not really vindictive, despite his talking points (see him refusing to retaliate on Iran for shooting down that $150M drone, him not going after H. Clinton at all once in office, selecting Vance as his Vice, meeting with Scarborough and Brzezinski, ...).
So Zelensky got a good chance to set things straight, but Trump has also made clear that how the US progresses from here is up to Ukraine making the next move.
Knowing Trump a bit, he will push ahead with talks with Russia and keep increasing pressure on Ukraine until Zelensky agrees to a ceasefire and joins the table by making talks with Russia legal again.
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Also Zelensky should take that "minerals deal". Despite being sold as such, it doesn't give any minerals to the US, but establishes an Ukrainian semi-sovereign fund with the focus of rebuilding Ukraine, financed through the Ukrainian government's revenue from natural resources and financial injections by the US.
Over time it'll also turn into a fully sovereign fund for Ukraine (unless the US keeps pumping absurd amounts of money into it) and Ukraine can withdraw money from it if they need it elsewhere.
> Also Zelensky should take that "minerals deal". Despite being sold as such, it doesn't give any minerals to the US, but establishes an Ukrainian semi-sovereign fund with the focus of rebuilding Ukraine, financed through the Ukrainian government's revenue from natural resources and financial injections by the US.
Issue is about not having any security guarantees. Problem with dictatorships is that they won't ever stop. The deal is beneficial for Russia. Russia will see it as a win which will encourage them to do the same thing every few years on repeat. Territory is one of the few limited resources in the World. Dictators desperately crave for it. Any economical damage they think is temporary and they see it as an investment. They certainly don't feel economy being bad. But they will feel powerful, but gaining territory. Only deal Zelensky should sign is one which will ensure that Russia doesn't invade Ukraine or any other countries again. Any other deal is a fake peace. Everyone around Russia and who has experience with Russia knows this. E.g. ex soviet countries.
I think the whole thing was a setup, and while Zelensky made mistakes, even with perfect behaviour, it was bound to go in this direction since the deal presented was not something Zelensky or a person with democratic values should accept, and Trump's goal was to humiliate him into submission from the get go.
Consider how much provocation Trump and Vance had done before that, calling Zelensky a dictator, the patience the man had is already amazing to last so long. But they would've kept provoking him until he says something which they can escalate on to humiliation.
> Any economical damage they think is temporary and they see it as an investment.
That's kinda what the deal is about, tho:
1. Ukraine gets rebuild, the US and Ukraine own huge portions of Ukraine's new industry through the fund
2. The fund gets richer and richer with Ukraine slowly taking over management, the US retaining a minority portion
3. Russia attacks Ukraine, captures all of it
4. Nearly all remaining industry and rights to natural ressources are retained by the fund, managed by Ukraine's exile government
5. Russia wants to expropriate the fund to cut off the funding available to the exile government
6. Russia realizes they'd have to expropriate the US government, starts sweating
7. Russia wakes up and decides not to proceed with step 3. to 6., because the downsides of taking over a country (insurgency, tons of explosives everywhere, new huge portions of population on expensive welfare and healthcare, ...) aren't worth it without any of the upsides.
> Issue is about not having any security guarantees.
Because they're not even negotiated yet. The "minerals deal" is something the US and Ukraine can negotiate right now, so it's on the table.
For all the other stuff Russia and Ukraine need to come to the same table, which Ukraine is very reluctant to do.
Trump only tried to get Ukraine to agree to a bare minimum ceasefire, to stop the killing.
> Russia realizes they'd have to expropriate the US government, starts sweating
Not sure what you mean by that? Russia would just nationalize the assets. What would US do about it, if they are not willing to do anything so far? The ownership in this fund would just be nice to have, not make it worth going for Russia then any more than now. And in any case Russia could just make an offer to share the minerals themselves, which they already did. It wouldn't make a difference to US.
> Russia wakes up and decides not to proceed with step 3. to 6., because the downsides of taking over a country (insurgency, tons of explosives everywhere, new huge portions of population on expensive welfare and healthcare, ...) aren't worth it without any of the upsides.
Historically Russia has repeatedly demonstrated willingness to harm their economy in return for gaining more territory.
This deal is worthless in terms of deterring Russia, if Russia is not deterred currently, this deal is not going to make a difference.
The most important thing to Ukraine is - how can we make sure that Russia doesn't invade us again. Everything else is worthless for Ukraine, for the West, and for Democracy.
> Russia would just nationalize the assets. What would US do about it, if they are not willing to do anything so far?
I do not know what keeps governments from doing this, tbh.
But up until now Russia has done so exclusively in a retaliatory manner.
Or them paying their debts to the clearing houses, despite US citizens having been forbidden from accepting their money.
Same with the EU not outright taking over Russia's currency reserves, but taxing them at 100%.
There's something that prevents governments from screwing around on this, even if I do not quite understand what it is.
And the US gov is probably quite high up on the list of entities not to mess with.
> And in any case Russia could just make an offer to share the minerals themselves, which they already did.
Sure, but it's not about the minerals at all. The relation between minerals and this deal is about the same like the relation of a pineapple tree to pizza.
> Historically Russia has repeatedly demonstrated willingness to harm their economy in return for gaining more territory.
Or for no reason whatsoever. But it's not really fair to compare the Communists or the Tsarist Empire to modern Russia.
> The most important thing to Ukraine is - how can we make sure that Russia doesn't invade us again. Everything else is worthless for Ukraine, for the West, and for Democracy.
Ukraine needs to work on this with Russia.
Russia has made clear that they want security guarantees themselves, so a universal solution might be viable. The problem being, that Russia doesn't feel threatened by Ukraine, but those backing it.
It doesn't take much to satisfy their need (basically just nice words about the US), but they'll absolutely burn bridges if they come to the conclusion that you're unwilling to show the US this courtesy.
Trump very obviously being part of this wing, is one of the reasons that gave his campaign for the first term such a huge boost. People were convinced that he wouldn't betray the US, like they were betrayed by nearly every politician before (but maybe Bill Clinton, although, in hindsight, he absolutely screwed over Europe by continuing the Russian shock therapy and not supporting Russia in updating the CFE treaty).
Vance is somewhat part of this wing, too, but to a much lesser degree than Trump. E.g. he acknowledged in his speech at the MUC SecConf, that the US made what he considers to be past mistakes, but Trump pretty much never acknowledges what he blames on Biden and Obama to have ever been official US policy (even if he doesn't outright deny it).
.
Hence when Zelensky suggested the US will "feel it", too, in a slightly threatening way (due to the language barrier, I guess), Trump literally blew a fuse. You could see his head changing color in real time. I'm surprised he had the patience left to toss out the media semi-politely.
IMO, Zelensky should have picked up on Vance's hints to present himself grateful and stop trying to get commitments from the US infront of the media. Next time he should negotiate in his native language and bring a very capable translator, because picking up on such nuances is anything but easy if you're quite inexperienced in a language.
.
Trump is not really vindictive, despite his talking points (see him refusing to retaliate on Iran for shooting down that $150M drone, him not going after H. Clinton at all once in office, selecting Vance as his Vice, meeting with Scarborough and Brzezinski, ...).
So Zelensky got a good chance to set things straight, but Trump has also made clear that how the US progresses from here is up to Ukraine making the next move.
Knowing Trump a bit, he will push ahead with talks with Russia and keep increasing pressure on Ukraine until Zelensky agrees to a ceasefire and joins the table by making talks with Russia legal again.
.
Also Zelensky should take that "minerals deal". Despite being sold as such, it doesn't give any minerals to the US, but establishes an Ukrainian semi-sovereign fund with the focus of rebuilding Ukraine, financed through the Ukrainian government's revenue from natural resources and financial injections by the US.
Over time it'll also turn into a fully sovereign fund for Ukraine (unless the US keeps pumping absurd amounts of money into it) and Ukraine can withdraw money from it if they need it elsewhere.