It may have been more than 20 days since Trump declared that he would end the war in Ukraine, but today more than ever, the evidence shows that the great victim of the last three years will once again be called upon to pay the heavy “bill.”

Donald Trump had made it clear, and there is no one now who does not take what the US President says at face value, that the war in Ukraine will end. Trump and his staff are planning to promote their own proposal by making a key opening towards Moscow for the US President’s way of seeing things. For Trump, a solution without direct communication with the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin cannot lead to any significant development, and so he has activated the “red” phone again after four years. Russia is also responding very quickly to American moves, showing that it is also an opportunity for itself under the current circumstances, on the one hand, to win multiple times on the Ukraine front and on the other hand, to bring Moscow back to the fore as a powerful center.

Yesterday’s telephone conversation between the two counterparts, in addition to the fact that it includes an announcement of mutual visits to Washington and Moscow, also contains an element that probably indicates the intentions of the United States regarding Ukraine. Trump emphasizes in his post that the President of Ukraine “will be informed in detail about the communication with Putin.” Trump, in all likelihood, having decided and announced that he would send his Minister of Finance to Kiev, did not inform Volodymyr Zelensky of his intentions. The way in which the US is choosing to act today has at the end of the road the end of the war between Russia and Ukraine, but it puts in second or even third place what will happen to the occupied territories of Ukraine and the defense guarantees that Kiev logically requests in order to sit at the dialogue table.

The Trump plan has in the foreground the economic guarantee from Kiev that it will provide a compensation of 500 billion even in kind so that the White House can continue to support its efforts and seems to base all the other key ones for the balance not only in the region but also in Europe on the personal relationship and appreciation that Trump has for Putin… The Ukraine case seems to have many elements in common with the Gaza case, only that Trump is not asking for “ownership” of yet another country in order to protect it, safeguard the interests of the West and promote justice. Trump wants to directly, in his own way, involve Europe physically in Ukraine and seems to be indifferent to whether such a thing under the current circumstances is feasible or if it will be accepted by Moscow.

The US President is very likely to actually end the war in Eastern Europe and rightfully take credit for it. The difference is that the end he is trying to put in place has no basis to guarantee that what the planet and Ukraine have been experiencing since February 2022 is not yet another “frozen” conflict or another chapter in the long list of tensions that have governed Kiev-Moscow relations from 2014 to the present. On the contrary, through Ukraine, Trump will attempt and possibly reap the greatest possible benefits, only these will be short-term.

The “ball” falls today, in addition to Europe, on the side of NATO, which will have to decide whether to continue to accept as its de facto policy the moves of the powerful but still illegible policy of the United States. If the North Atlantic Alliance aligns itself behind the American positions and the door to Kiev is officially and definitively closed, then it should not be ruled out that Ukraine will soon turn into a region with a “guardianship” vacuum that Beijing will have absolutely no problem filling – overwhelmingly. In such a development, the problem will become from a Ukrainian one to a direct and reciprocal Russian-American one…