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- [00:00]
Host
This is a bonus episode of history as it happens. It's December 3, 2025. Almost another full year has come and gone, and the war in Eastern Ukraine grinds on far longer than the 24 hours President Donald Trump said it would take to settle it.
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Donald Trump
Mr. President.
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Yaroslav Trofimov
Johannes Petra from Austrian National Television.
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Donald Trump
How are you? You once said that you would end.
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Yaroslav Trofimov
The Ukraine war in 24 hours.
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Donald Trump
You later said you said that sarcastically, of course, it was sarcastic.
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Yaroslav Trofimov
But you've now been in office for.
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Donald Trump
Five months and five days.
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Yaroslav Trofimov
Why have you not been able to end the Ukraine war?
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Donald Trump
Because it's more difficult than people would have any idea. Vladimir Putin has been more difficult. Frankly, I had some problems with Zelensky. You may have read about him. Everybody has problems, even you. But you have nice ocean and don't feel now, but you will feel it in the future. God bless. You don't know that.
- [00:54]
Yaroslav Trofimov
God bless.
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Donald Trump
God bless. You. You're not going to. Don't tell us what we're going to feel. We're trying to solve a problem. Don't tell us what we're going to feel. I'm not telling you because you're in no position to dictate that.
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Yaroslav Trofimov
Remember this.
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Donald Trump
You're in no position to dictate what we're going to feel. We're going to feel very good. We're going to feel very good and very strong. You will feel influenced. You're right now not in a very good position. You've allowed yourself to be in a very bad position and he happens to be right about it from the very beginning of the war. You're not in a good position. You don't have the cards right now.
- [01:28]
Host
In those early days of 2025, the American president took Putin's side, saying Ukraine was at fault for starting the war. Then he seemed to lose interest for a while, and then there was a summit in Alaska that accomplished very little. And most recently this week, US envoys met Russian officials at the Kremlin. A five hour session produced no breakthroughs on a revised plan whose original version was heavily tilted toward Russian interests.
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Yaroslav Trofimov
You spoke with Mr. Witkoff and with.
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Host
Mr. Kushner last night.
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Yaroslav Trofimov
Last night. Did they give you the sense that President Putin still wants to end the war, still wants to make peace?
- [02:04]
Donald Trump
He would like to end the war. That's what they. That was their impression. Now, whether or not.
- [02:11]
That was their impression, you know, their impression was that they'd like to see. He would like to see the war ended. I think I'd like to get back to Dealing a more normal life. I think I'd like to be trading with the United States of America, frankly, instead of, you know, losing thousands of soldiers a week.
- [02:26]
Host
So the war continues.
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The Russian drones attack before dawn. What will it take to end the war? Which is not the same as saying achieving peace. Yaroslav Trofimov is the chief foreign affairs correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and the author of two books related to this conflict, Our Enemies Will Vanish and no country for Love. Yaroslav Trofimov, welcome back.
- [02:52]
Yaroslav Trofimov
Great to be back.
- [02:53]
Host
You know, this year began with the Trump administration saying that peace would be easy, he would end the war. President Trump would end the war in 24 hours. I think everyone understood that would not happen. There was that infamous meeting in the Oval Office with Trump deriding, or I should say berating President Zelensky. There was a summit at some point this year in Alaska that had no discernible results. And now this most recent round of negotiations. Before we get into any specifics, how would you generally assess the state of play in negotiations in the war right now?
- [03:27]
Yaroslav Trofimov
You know what it really is? Groundhog Day. We have the cycles of hopes and at the end of the day, it turns out to be much ado about nothing and we're back to square one. And there have been many of these by now, starting with February. And obviously you had Steve Witkoff, President Trump's special envoy, going to Moscow, coming back starry eyed, and I'm seeing that President Putin is ready to do this and that. And then they would go to nitty gritty and force the hand of the Ukrainians and force the Ukrainians to accept a lot of the concessions. And then we'll go back to Putin. And Putin would say, well, actually I want more. Actually that's not good enough. And actually there's no deal. What Putin is achieving through all of this is very real material benefits. I mean, this latest round did not lead to any breakthrough in peace, but it did lead to the US Dropping talk of supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, which used to be on the table, no longer are and is derailing efforts by the Europeans to use the $300 billion in Russian money that's frozen mostly in Belgium to help the Ukrainians fight the war. And, you know, you have these new divisions in the West. So this game is being played really.
- [04:37]
Host
Skillfully by Russia who wrote the 28 point proposal. There was a dispute over this in the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, apparently, and I have to say apparently, because it's not Clear. Saying it was a Russian plan. No. Then the US had written it. What's your best information on that?
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Yaroslav Trofimov
This plan came out of meetings that Steve Wykoff had with the Russian special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, and obviously Jared Kushner also started playing a role in this. And the plan reflects a lot of the core demands that Russia has had since this whole thing began with the first round of talks in February 2022, when Russian tanks were on the outskirts of Kyiv. And the key demands were handover of the territories, recognition of Russian occupation of these territories, limits on the Ukrainian ability to defend itself, and a ban on any foreign alliances or any presence of foreign troops or any meaningful security guarantees for Ukraine. Because what Russia seeks is a Ukraine that is disarmed, a Ukraine that is not in a position to defend itself the next time the Russians invade. And that is still the goal. That is why President Putin did not agree even to this latest iteration of the plan once those key parts of the plan were removed.
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Host
Yeah, the plan has been revised since it was initially proposed, although, as you say, some of these points or stipulations were not new. They've been there since the beginning. Before we get to the Russian side, one more question about what's happening on the American side. Of course, there's also the Ukrainian side. The Ukrainians weren't present for the initial planned rollout. But why is it that Kushner and Witkoff and not the Secretary of State, are leading the US Negotiations?
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Yaroslav Trofimov
Well, it's a good question. And obviously the Europeans are asking that question as well. I mean, Witkoff is a cabinet level appointee now. I mean, so he has a formal role in the US Government, unlike Jared Kushner. But if you look at a lot of these deals, you know, you have this billionaire diplomacy. So you have President Trump working with very rich people whom he trusts, perhaps because they're rich, who very often overrides formal policy. Look at the example of Syria. You know, I mean, there was a lot of people who were opposed to the recognition of the new government there, to lifting the sanctions on Ahmed Al Sharra's government in Syria. That does have a lot of Islamists with bad past, including himself, who used to be Nisi and Al Qaeda. That was all overruled because Tom Barrack, the very rich, now US Ambassador to Syria and special for Syria, had different opinions. And so you have the formal US Government in Washington, and then you have the other government of President Trump and his billionaire friends meeting in Miami or in Mar a Lago in Florida. Who perhaps sometimes have more authority than the formal government. And so you have situations in which Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also the national security advisor, two of the most important national security jobs in the country, finds out about this major breakthrough once it leaked out to the media, as far as we can know.
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Host
Matt, your newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, reported a headline, make Money, Not War, Trump's Real Plan for Peace in Ukraine. The Kremlin pitched the White House on peace through business, to Europe's dismay. The president and his envoy are on board. The implication of the story is that there's corruption involved here to benefit Trump personally.
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Yaroslav Trofimov
Well, I mean, we don't stay in the story that there is corruption to benefit Trump personally, but certainly, you know, the Russian government is dangling out a lot of carrots to a lot of people, offering them personally beneficial deals in exchange for basically getting Ukraine. But the whole idea, if you listen to Stibutka himself, he has much nobler terms, and he says, well, there is just giant business opportunities and will bring peace through business and everybody's going to get rich. Well, you know what? Angela Merkel had the same idea. She had this famous.
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Cooperation through trade, and that's why she built the North Stream 2 pipeline to pipe Russian gas into Germany and Europe. And what actually happened is that this whole trade just funded the Russian war machine and enabled the invasion, enabled the Russian imperialism. So that approach with Russia has been tried already. That's why we have the war in Ukraine.
- [08:59]
Host
Now, is it possible that Putin is looking for a way out of this? He keeps saying we're winning, keeps pushing these maximalist demands. And I know my question might sound silly, because I really don't think the man is interested in peace per se, but is it possible that he understands the reality that trying to militarily conquer Ukraine might be impossible for him and that he's not going to get much more than he already has. So he's seeking to get more through negotiations. And he would also benefit from a pause in hostilities.
- [09:31]
Yaroslav Trofimov
I think he still wants all of Ukraine. I think he doesn't believe that conquering all of Ukraine is impossible. He might want a pause in hostilities. And, you know, if this is a pause in which he gets to rearm to replenish his coffers and the sanctions are lifted and the cohesion of the west is destroyed, meanwhile, Ukraine is not allowed to rearm, and Ukraine collapses into internal bickering and squabbling and political crisis, then in a year or two, he can attack again and get to Kyiv. It would be the third invasion, right? Because they already did it in 2014, imposed the deal on Ukraine, which they violated. In 2014 they violated the commitments in the Budapest Memorandum.
- [10:11]
Host
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