US analysts for Newsmax Balkans: Negotiations will not stop the war in Ukraine or change Russian tactics

There is more and more talk about that trilateral meeting between Putin, Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

While everyone is talking about these meetings and other potential meetings, Putin is continuously bombing the territory of Ukraine and inflicting the biggest blows on them since the beginning of the war.

On the other hand, Zelensky strongly criticizes everything that Putin does and says that none of the negotiations that were conducted without him are compatible and do not bring results.

The Ukrainian president also declined Putin's invitation to come to Moscow, saying he did not want to attend in the Russian capital while his country was at war.

In Washington, they do not see a way out of this current crisis at all. Antony Schaefer, a former US colonel we spoke to, warns that the negotiations will not stop the war or change Russia's tactics of draining Ukraine. More precisely, he believes that it is a well-thought-out tactic by Moscow.

"Europeans continue to play a double game. During the conference of the Coalition of the Willing on September 4, President Trump was on the phone and accused the Europeans of buying Russian oil through India. He said on that occasion that the Europeans are still buying fuel worth about one billion and six hundred million dollars. So, he practically said: Drop the sanctions, our sanctions, and that must stop," our interlocutor said.

As he added, he believes that the key question is - how do you make people cooperate?

"It's going to be a tough conversation for the Europeans, if they come to Washington. Ultimately, I think it all ends with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Trump and President Putin sitting together in a room and finally resolving this. And I'd like it to be as soon as possible.

"President Trump has a lot of leverage when it comes to sanctions. First, when we talk about energy deals in Europe, President Trump has a lot of leverage especially over Hungary. The Hungarians are one of the worst offenders in Europe, absolutely dependent on Russian energy. Since 2022, when Russia made a full invasion of Ukraine, Hungary's energy imports from Russia have actually only grown," Klain told Newsmax Balkans.

As he added, Hungarians are buying even more energy, and the EU is trying to force them to stop it, so that they may start buying American instead of Russian.

"However, they currently do not have much influence on the Hungarians. I think this is a real opportunity for President Trump to force the Hungarians and Slovaks to stop buying so much Russian gas and thereby feed the war machine and really prolong the war," our interlocutor pointed out.

According to him, during most of the war, President Zelensky is trying to find the right way to gather allies in support of Ukraine.

"It was often a question of how to deal with different personalities in this situation. Now we see much greater cohesion around Ukraine. Europe is uniting a little more and trying to present a united front. If Zelensky manages to take advantage of that and show President Trump in particular that it is a much better option and a greater chance of success to end the war with the cooperation of Ukraine with the rest of Europe, than to go against them and enter into some quick, bad deal, then I think it will be a much more successful strategy for getting Trump's support," the analyst pointed out.

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