If one were to believe much of the Ukraine skeptic and/or Trump friendly commentary since Trump called Putin on February 11, Trump and Putin were going to in short order negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine and make Ukraine, the EU, and NATO swallow it. That was to be accompanied by normalization of commercial dealings between the US and Russia, which would seem to mean the lifting of some or even pretty much all of the US sanctions against Russia.

We’ll explain below how this plan for Trump as master-dealmaker going mano-a-mano with Putin and emerging victorious, or at least with a reasonably-face-saving agreement, has gone pear-shaped. And we have to say that we have been telling you so for quite a while.1

The short version of what happened in Saudi Arabia is Ukraine made the non-concession of agreeing to a one month ceasefire in turn for resuming

Keep reading this article on Naked Capitalism (Yves Smith) - Blog.

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