US President Donald Trump stunned Washington’s allies and foes alike when he announced this week that he had a one-and-a-half-hour telephonic meeting with his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP
US President Donald Trump is rapidly proving to be a man of his words. Love or loathe him, the straight-talking Republican Party leader and a man who received a huge endorsement for his electioneering messages is someone who can be described as “what you see is what you get”.
Trump stunned Washington’s allies and foes alike when he announced this week that he had a one-and-a-half-hour telephonic meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
Although their discussion touched on various pertinent issues such as the Middle East and energy, it was Ukraine that drew widespread interest globally.
Trump had vowed during his election campaign prior to the November 6, 2024 US elections that he would bring to an immediate end the Hamas-Israel war and before his inauguration on January 20, 2025 would also stop the Ukraine war.
So far, it has surprised no one among the staunch Trump supporters that he has made good on his promises. A ceasefire is in place in Gaza and by all accounts, the end is nigh for the war in Ukraine.
In their first publicised meeting, both Trump and Putin expressed a desire to sit around the table and resolve differences through dialogue, instead of guns and bombs.
A much-anticipated face-to-face meeting between the two leaders of the world’s leading nuclear powers will most likely take place in Saudi Arabia. Riyadh is a strategic partner for both Washington and Moscow.
On one hand the US looks up to Saudi Arabia as the Trump administration carves up a hostile-free future between Israel and the Arab nations. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia and Russia boast some of the most cordial bilateral relations.
The two are oil-producing nations and are members of BRICS+, although the Saudis have delayed their full membership of the bloc.
The stage is now being prepared for one of the most important round-table meeting the world has seen in recent memory. The Kremlin’s eagerness for dialogue to begin has already been well documented. Spokesperson for the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, said both Trump and Putin “agreed to issue instructions for preparing contacts” and meeting logistics.
The turbo-charged speed with which Trump is going has left many of his allies in the European Union and NATO reeling in shock and disbelief.
Until January 20, 2025 when Trump ascended to the Oval Office as the 47th president of the US, Russia and Putin were pariahs across the West.
According to President Trump, Washington wasted astronomical sums of dollars shoring up Ukraine in a war “foolish war”.
Russia has maintained that the war in Ukraine could have been avoided had the US under former President Joe Biden and NATO addressed Russia’s concerns with regard to NATO’s expansion eastward.
Moscow also feared that its national security was completely threatened by Ukraine’s anti-Moscow posture and public declaration for NATO’s expansion to Russia’s door-step.
After the telephonic meeting between Trump and Putin, the next call was to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He was briefed about the essence the talks. The return to the pre-2014 Ukrainian borders was “unrealistic”, Washington believes, and logically so.
The predominantly Russian-speaking Crimea, formerly an autonomous part of Ukraine that is strategic to access to the Black Sea, seceded in a controversial referendum in 2014 and got incorporated into Russia in what the Kremlin has described as the “will of the people”.
There are many geopolitical takeaways from this week’s Trump-led developments. His spectre looms large everywhere. At the meeting of NATO’s defence ministers’ meeting, Europe was scrambling to make sense of the sudden change of the Russophobia strategy aimed at what President Putin says poses an existential threat to Moscow.
Without the US, Europe will be unable to provide the money and arms to Kyiv. The hidden fragmentation within the EU will also likely come to the fore. Slovakia and Hungary will lead a charge for peace with Russia, and the lifting of sanctions so that Europeans may once more buy inexpensive oil and gas from the nearby Russian Federation.
In other words, Trump has in one swoop tossed around a hugely funded campaign to annihilate Russia. In one week of drama, Russia has moved from being a pariah to a partner without NATO or EU deliberating on the new path to the future.
The fact that Trump left NATO and Ukraine in the dark as he initiated peace talks with Russia will fragment Europe much more. But then again, there is very little that Europe can do to push back against the Trump agenda.
Europe is heavily indebted to the US, economically and militarily. The looming threats of tariffs that are a new sword in Washington’s arsenal are a nightmare for all the EU member-states.
When all is said and done, the US has funded Europe for far too long, and played a big brother for the EU. As Trump steadily abandons Europe, a new international order is being born, where the strong traditional bonds between the US and Europe are being dismantled is a ferocious tide of the make America great again (Maga) revolution.
I have previously welcomed the Trump phenomenon on the basis that it was not a globalist, imperial wave. As the Maga mantra suggests, the US owes loyalty first and foremost to the US. Hence, Trump is ever so ready to unleash his business acumen to resolve complex geopolitical problems, regardless of what allies and foes think, or feel.
When that time comes for the end of his office term, the world will look back and agree on one thing: Trump did it his way.
*Abbey Makoe is the founder and editor-in-chief of Global South Media Network.
** The views expressed here do not reflect the views of Sunday Independent, Independent Media and IOL.