EUROPE AND THE UKRAINE QUESTION

Will Europe's fear of Putin prolong the war?

US Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz meet with Saudi and Russian officials, including Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in February in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. / Photo by Russian Foreign Ministry/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images.

I have been reading and watching as the second Donald Trump presidency moves toward a showdown between the powers bestowed on the executive branch by the Constitution and the authority of the Supreme Court.

During the past week I spoke with officials who know about peace talks concerning the Ukraine War. I have previously written here about those talks with perhaps more optimism than was warranted. Fearful of a disastrous defeat in Ukraine, Europe has rallied behind Volodymyr Zelensky, the embattled Ukraine president whose most recent visit to the White House ended in abject humiliation that won him sympathy from many observers.

Trump sees Russian President Vladimir Putin as the kind of a guy he can do business with. I was told that there have been talks with Russia about the prospect of the Trump family building a major beach resort in Crimea, which Russia has occupied since 2014, in the aftermath of a settlement along with a similar facility in Russian-occupied Donbass province in Ukraine. The United States would drop all of its sanctions on Russia and once again become a purchaser of Russian gas and oil and would perhaps finance the mining of rare earth minerals in Siberia.