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Trump Can Force An Endgame In The War Between Ukraine And Russia
By Jerome R. Corsi
Oct. 23, 2025
By cancelling the proposed meeting with Vladimir Putin in Budapest, President Trump may again contemplate whether threatening to arm Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles, capable of striking deep into Russia, will finally force Russia to the peace table.
Let’s examine the twists and turns of the U.S. position on the Ukrainian war in the last two months.
On September 23, 2025, during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the U.N. General Assembly gathering, Trump suggested that Ukraine could win back all the territory seized by Russia. Less than a week later, on September 29, Vice President J.D. Vance was the first to suggest that the United States was seriously weighing Ukraine’s request for long-range Tomahawk missiles to defend the country against Russian forces.
On the same day (September 29), General Keith Kellogg, U.S. Special Envoy on Ukraine, said that President Trump has authorized NATO members to deploy into non-NATO Ukraine offensive missile systems that the United States provided. Kellogg insisted that Trump had authorized NATO to strike deeply into Russia with missiles (supposedly Tomahawks) that the United States had brokered to NATO. Kellogg had to understand that authorizing NATO to strike Moscow with U.S. missiles would instantly transform the Ukraine war from a proxy war between Ukraine and Russia into a direct war between NATO and Russia, if not a direct war between the United States, NATO, and Russia.
That both Vance and Kellogg spoke on the same date suggests Kellogg was the author of the suggestion that Trump should supply Zelensky with Tomahawk missiles brokered by the United States to Ukraine through NATO.
On October 13, perhaps in response to the statements from Trump and others in his administration, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made a clear threat when he suggested we would return to the risk of nuclear war should Trump supply Tomahawk cruise missiles to Zelensky. “It’s been said a hundred times, in a manner understandable even to the star-spangled man, that it’s impossible to distinguish a nuclear Tomahawk missile from a conventional one in flight,” Medvedev said. “The delivery of these missiles could end badly for everyone. And most of all, for Trump himself.”
Then, on Thursday, October 16, Trump had a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the phone call, Trump accepted Putin’s suggestion to meet in Budapest, Hungary, for another round of talks. Putin, however, insisted that a peace agreement was only possible if Kyiv agreed to surrender control of Donetsk.
The very next day—October 17, 2025—during his White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump refused to provide Ukraine with the Tomahawk missiles. During the meeting, described as contentious, Trump insisted Zelensky must surrender the Donbas region in southeastern Ukraine, even though Kyiv still controls about a quarter of the Donetsk province. Dontesk is a largely Russian-speaking, strategically key region that Russia has failed to maintain due to “a string of heavily defended towns that block Russia from making rapid westward advances towards the capital.”
Trump’s comments following the October 17 meeting made it clear that Trump had reversed the position his administration had advanced in September. Thus, Trump returned to calling upon Kyiv and Moscow to “stop the war immediately,” suggesting that in a peace deal, Russia would retain the territory its military had gained. “You go by the battle line, wherever it is,” Trump said upon landing in West Palm Beach. “Otherwise, it’s too complicated. You’ll never be able to figure it out. You stop at the battle line.”
However, things changed again on October 21, after a preliminary meeting between Secretary of State Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov proved unproductive. That caused Trump to cancel a planned meeting with Putin, saying he did not want to participate in another “wasted meeting”. Putin refused to agree to a ceasefire along the current front line.
In Gaza, Trump was able to strong-arm Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into a ceasefire with Hamas, simply by expressing his displeasure over Netanyahu’s decision to attack Hamas leaders in Qatar without first seeking permission from Washington. But unlike Israel in its war on Hamas in Gaza, Putin is not dependent upon the United States to continue the war in Ukraine. Putin’s insistence that he wants control of the Donbas region as a condition of a ceasefire suggests Putin is willing to continue a war that he feels Russia can and will win, even if it means going to war with the United States.
Trump appears to be wavering between two sets of advisors: U.S. Special Envoy General Keith Kellogg, who has clearly taken the warmongering position against Putin in Ukraine, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, who has met with Putin five times this year. Kellogg has repeatedly insisted that Ukraine could win the war if Trump provided Ukraine with the weapons needed to win the war. Importantly, Kellogg did not attend the meeting with Zelinsky in the White House on October 17. Witkoff told the Ukrainian delegation that Zelensky must give Russia the entire Donetsk region to stop the fighting.
What Trump must realize is that the United States State Department under Presidents Obama and Biden, together with the CIA and George Soros, were the aggressors determined to weaken Russia by expanding NATO to include Ukraine, extending U.S. military muscle to the border of Russia. In his 678-page book entitled Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, Scott Horton, the director of the Libertarian Institute and the editorial director of Antiwar.com, wrote:
The current fear campaign against Russia in the American media is no different from the demonization of any of the U.S. government’s enemies here and around the world: virtually the entire popular narrative is fake. But the older generation is used to hating Russia and the young have been sold a line about “Russian aggression” throughout Eastern Europe for years now. There is also the harm done by the Russiagate hoax that claimed the dastardly Putin influenced President Donald Trump upon our land, which has seemingly forever damaged the brains of America’s Democrats and made peaceful coexistence for them unthinkable. (page 662)
Suppose Putin intensifies military pressure to take the Donbas region, and Trump supplies Zelensky with Tomahawk missiles. In that case, we return to the brink of nuclear war—the same precipice we faced when Biden authorized Ukraine to use U.S. ATACMS long-range missiles to attack Russia. The geopolitical reality is that Russia cannot be disengaged from the territory Russia currently holds in Ukraine without triggering an unthinkable nuclear war.
What Trump must realize is that the only way to stop this war may be Witkoff’s solution of ceding the Donbas region to Putin—an endgame Trump can force simply by refusing to supply advanced weapons to Ukraine, even if that means cutting funding to NATO. Simply holding fast on not supplying Tomahawks to Zelensky may be enough for Trump to force an endgame on Zelensky, causing Zelensky and NATO to accept the reality that Putin has won this war, including the Donbas region, short of nuclear war.
In a world where regional conflicts can rapidly escalate to a nuclear tragedy, Trump is right to assume the role of peacemaker. By extending the Abraham Accords in the Middle East, Trump envisions that a “Peace Through Prosperity” policy offers the best solution to dampening regional conflicts by aiming to create strong middle classes throughout the region. Trump needs to advance similar thinking to settle a centuries-long conflict between Russia and Ukraine over the Donbas region if we strive to resolve a war that Trump correctly claims should never have been started in the first place.
GodsFiveStones.com is a tax-deductible 501(c)3 foundation created by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D., and Karladine Graves, M.D., managed by Capstone Legacy Foundation. As reported on GodsFiveStones.com, Andrew Paquette, Ph.D., has discovered cryptographic algorithms in the State Board of Elections voter registration databases in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Florida, New Jersey, and Oklahoma.
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From American Thinker
Link:
https://www.americanthinker.com/arti...nd_russia.html
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