According to those who want Ukraine to fight to the last Ukrainian, President Trump has threatened President Putin: make a deal or else!

More likely this is a piece of political theatrics that the Russian President understands well and will respond to positively, knowing what it is all about.

This is what Trump actually said, and it doesn’t sound like much of a threat:

“I’m not looking to hurt Russia. I love the Russian people, and always had a very good relationship with President Putin – and this despite the Radical Left’s Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX. We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process. All of that being said, I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a “deal,” and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries. Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way – and the easy way is always better. It’s time to “MAKE A DEAL.” NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!”

As many have pointed out, putting “high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States” is hardly something that Putin will lose sleep over, considering that is already the Western policy and there is very little going from Russia to the US these days which could be taxed, tariffed or sanctioned anymore than it already is.

Trump has already put the war down to NATO marching up to Russia’s borders which he himself could understood had raised legitimate Russia’s security concerns and provoked the Special Military Operation of February 2022. And he has stated that he holds both Biden and Zelensky responsible for taking on the fight with Russia when they should have known that Russia would be a tough nut to crack indeed.

So what Trump is actually attempting now is the managing of the Ukrainian defeat and limiting the damage for himself and America.

Trump is, of course, first and foremost, concerned with the interests of the United States. What he knows is that to win the war against Russia the world needs to be taken to the brink of Armageddon. Trump being a realistic businessman, who wants to make America Great Again, does not see nuclear brinkmanship as a profitable strategy in the circumstances. So, he is sensibly suggesting an end to the war and for Putin to help him out in this.

Those who proceeded him, in the Biden administration, were also reluctant to risk nuclear oblivion by instituting the kind of escalation in the war that would be needed to gain some kind of situation which could be declared a victory. Instead, they fed Kyiv with much less than they demanded – and a good deal later than it was needed. They would not risk America for the cause of Ukraine, even if they proclaimed that Kyiv was fighting for democracy against the Barbarians. Their intention seems to have been to keep the Ukrainians in the field for as long as they could hold out by giving them enough hope, but at the same time, not risking an escalation that would lead to a full-scale NATO vs. Russia war.

Having said that, the giving of the ATACMs to Kyiv by the Biden administration was an act of extraordinary recklessness. It meant that NATO was attacking Russia directly because these long-range missiles were given by the US, operated by non-Ukrainians, and guided by US intelligence to their selected targets. The decision was made without debate in Washington and without the consent of Congress. They gambled that Putin would not respond extravagantly, in the way that the West caracatures him.

The Biden administration has now left Trump with an awful mess in Ukraine which the new President will find great difficulty in clearing up. He can only “STOP this ridiculous War” by Putin meeting him half-way.

Trump needs to confine the defeat to Kyiv as much as possible to the Ukrainians. Unfortunately for the President the West has invested an awful lot of military and financial resources and moral propaganda in the war. With the Ukrainians having failed to expel the Russian forces from nearly a quarter of their territory and Putin remaining in the Kremlin, despite all the West could muster against him, this is a defeat for Washington, no matter what rejoicing there is in the casualties and destruction it has caused.

It is noticeable that there are wild assertions of numbers of Russian casualties being made in the Western media at this time. These serve as a kind of comfort blanket for Western commentators – ah, sure wasn’t it all worth it all to kill so many Russians! The Ukrainian dead and wounded are forgotten in these moments of glee, demonstrating sadly that these people did not care a jot for the sacrifice of those Ukrainian lads doing the fighting.

The former British Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, has been saying for over a year now that the Ukrainians were losing because they would not conscript their teenagers to the front! He blamed the failure of the much-advertised counter-offensive that was supposed to win the war for the UK on this absence of sacrifice on the part of Ukraine. This was the same Ben Wallace who had claimed, as the highpoint of his military career, to have captured an entire IRA active service unit in Belfast in 1993, which secured his promotion to captain. Then the “IRA ASU” turned out to be a few local lads whom his men were harassing and who the police released without charge.

Let us suggest that Mr Wallace was an armchair general playing soldiers with young lives Ukraine was not willing to sacrifice in Britain’s games.

The BBC have a team of information gatherers working on the aspect of Russian fatalities and at the last count they have found evidence in cemetaries, press reports and social media for around 80,000 Russians killed in action. They claim that it is possible they have missed a few thousand in their count. But it is strange that BBC journalists do not confront people like Wallace with the evidence of their own team of fact checkers when they make outlandish claims to claim success. And they do not, for a moment, ask why Kyiv forbids estimation of its own casualty level or suggest that logic dictates that if Russian casualties are 80,000, Ukrainian killed in action number 250,000 or more in all probability.

From this dire situation for Kyiv that risks total collapse Trump knows he has to do damage limitation for the US and prevent himself being the scapegoat for the NATO failure in Ukraine – as the man who betrayed the gallant Ukrainians and surrendered to Putin.

Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, since it was the Biden administration which lost the war and it is Trump who has been left to pick up the pieces – or alternatively take the world to the eve of destruction.

Trump seems determined, in picking up the pieces, to make the warmongering Brits and Europeans to fully pay up for NATO in the future – now that they are screaming hysterically about the Russian threat to them. The Russian steamroller, despite its “massive losses”, is illogically presented everyday as unstoppable in rolling up Ukraine and the map of Europe.

This nonsense all plays nicely into Trump’s hands and he is at present demanding 5 per cent of GDP from the Brit and Euro free riders on US military protection. Perhaps he will settle for 3 or 4 per cent when he cuts the deal, but having reduced Europe to an economic dependency of US energy Washington can now look forward to making big savings on military expenditure in Europe that it can use elsewhere – to take Greenland or the Panama Canal or encircle China perhaps?

Trump will want to beef up the European contribution to its own security, even though he knows Russia only desires good neighbours, rather than any buffer zone in Europe. Meanwhile social Europe will spend less on its economy, healthcare, education and social services and will have to tax its citizens more, while the US makes hay in the sunshine of a new age! And Europe may also have to pick up the tab for the reconstruction of Ukraine, which would disable the EU for a generation.

One suspects from Zelensky’s language that he is trying to save face and avoid being perceived as having capitulated to Trump. But he probably wants to be put out of the misery Ukraine has found itself in.

If Trump successfully pulls off the managing of Ukrainian defeat it is surely win/win for him at least. It is likely though that Trump will have to ratchet up the threats and draw out the negotiations process first to show that he is driving a hard bargain with Putin before any deal is pulled from the hat. A hasty settlement would stink of defeat and the stink would hang round Trump and his reputation for ever. Putin will understand this.

The big question is whether a deal can be found that President Putin is willing to cut with the US President that is at least bearable for Russia, after 3 years of a war that, as Trump points out, should never have happened and which has had profound consequences for all.