Trump's Nobel Peace Prize ambition drives deal-making push, regardless of terms — John Bolton

Former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton expressed this opinion in an interview with Antin Borkovskyi, host of the Studio West program on the Espreso TV channel.

“Regarding the military component that could be used to ensure Ukraine's security, I believe the parties first have to decide what they want the force to do. Will it be a traditional UN style peacekeeping force authorized to use force only in its own self-defense, monitoring and reporting on Russian violations of a ceasefire? Or will it be a peace enforcement mechanism authorized to use force to keep the ceasefire in place, which could mean direct hostile contact between the forces of NATO members such as Britain and France and Russia?” John Bolton noted.

According to him, the immediate consequences are that Trump is investing in the concept of U.S. participation in Ukraine's security guarantees. You can already see signs that his base is saying: “Wait a minute, we were against American forces being in Ukraine from the beginning, and now you’re telling us that after three and a half years we’re going to put American forces on the ground and potentially risk armed conflict between two nuclear powers?”

“I don’t think Trump is considering these issues in any detail. And you might ask, how can he not be? We know what Ukraine’s objective is, we know what Russia’s objective is, so what is Trump’s objective? He wants a Nobel Peace Prize. To him, that means making a deal, and the terms of the deal are completely irrelevant. Whether the deal is favorable or unfavorable to Ukraine, or whether it is potentially long-lasting, does not make much difference to him,”  the politician noted.

In his opinion, there is hope that security guarantees and security forces, whatever their form, will be able to deter Russia from new attacks. At the same time, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued an unequivocal statement from its spokeswoman that Russia categorically will not accept the permanent deployment of NATO forces in Ukraine. This is a matter of principle — whether British and French troops will be there or not.

“That is why I think people should not let their expectations outrun the reality of the parties’ positions. There is certainly room for improvement. I think progress could be made if Trump were willing to bring back the economic threat of sanctions against Russia, including more secondary sanctions on countries buying Russia’s oil and gas. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday that they are not going to do that, because if sanctions are threatened again, Putin will walk away, and that means no Nobel Peace Prize,” Bolton summed up.

• On August 19, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that he was ready for a bilateral meeting with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin without any preconditions.
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia is not rejecting either bilateral or trilateral peace talks with Ukraine. However, he later said that negotiations between dictator Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are not planned because there are no preconditions for them.