A Historic Day w/Peace in the Making – Top 3 Takeaways, August 19th, 2025
Takeaway #1: It was quite the parade
And independent of any other facets of what took place yesterday it was a remarkable display. Think about how hard it is to get seven of your friends or family together on short notice. Then imagine doing it overseas with world leaders within only two days. Yesterday, at the White House, at the request of President Trump, NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte was on hand as was EU President Ursula von der Leyen, my favorite European leader Giorgia Meloni, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Finnish President Alexander Stubb. One by one they made their way to the White House yesterday in advance of Ukranian President Volodymir Zelensky. Having all those people drop everything they were doing to make their way to the United States on a Monday at the request of President Trump was quite the statement unto itself. As Trump posted on Truth preceding: A big day at the White House. We have never had so many European Leaders here at one time. A great honor for America!!! Let's see what the results will be??? After the hour-long procession of their arrival, came a quick private meet and greet between President Trump, President Zelensky and key members of President Trump’s team. And then there was...
Takeaway #2: The Presser
In the setting where everything fell apart March, the tone was decidedly different this time with President Zelensky on his best behavior. The one bit of big news that came out of the presser was that President Putin would be President Trump’s first call after meeting with the European leaders and that President Trump was optimistic about a trilateral meeting.
That meant that this time he got to eat. On that note from there President’s Trump and Zelensky greeted the other European leaders in the State Dining Room (that was the first sign of progress with the Trump-Zelensky meeting this time – they did make it to lunch) before all European leaders, including President Zelensky, met with each other in a group setting. The only person who would have been able to make that kind of a move with so many leaders so quickly was President Trump. As President Trump said prior to the meeting on Monday: President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight. Remember how it started. No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!! That was right in line with what I mentioned in my takeaways yesterday, specifically... This is clearly a critical day if there’s to be peace. And here’s what we know in advance. 1) Ukraine can’t defeat Russia’s military and win the war. Period. 2) Therefore, Zelensky and the EU generally, can get onboard with ceding territory permanently to Russia to secure peace, or can continue the war until they can’t anymore and eventually risk losing the entire country. That set the stage for what came next which was...
Takeaway #3: Peace in the Making
Ok, so the headlines coming out of Monday’s meeting might not sound encouraging as far as the peace process goes...a la Russia rejecting any kind of NATO styled security guarantees coming out of this thing but remember – this is a negotiation. The first offer, whatever it might be, was never going to be agreed to by either side in this thing. In reality the news was about as good as it could be with President Trump currently working on arranging a meeting between Putin and Zelensky followed by a trilateral meeting that would include him. Here’s where we stand... President Trump’s opening position is this. Cede Crimea, lost over a decade ago by Ukraine to Russia, once and for all, and agree to end pursing a place in the NATO alliance. President Zelensky’s additional ask is for NATO-styled peace keeping force. The EU’s additional ask is that there must be a ceasefire before a trilateral meeting between President’s Trump, Zelensky and Putin. Putin’s opening position is that there can be no NATO-styled security guarantees. And look, its high stakes diplomacy, that involves an extremely bad actor in Putin, there’s a chance peace doesn’t come out of this. However, on the surface, for the opening public positions stated by all parties – it doesn’t seem like they may be as far apart as it seems. I personally would be surprised if peace were struck without Ukraine giving up most, if not all, of the Donbas region which is mostly controlled by Russian forces currently. It was somewhat notable that it wasn’t a focal point publicly. That could be a particularly good sign for Ukraine in all of this. I don’t proclaim to have any of the answers here, but you can see with the cards laid out publicly how it might be possible to find a way out of this somewhat quickly. Time will tell. It’s important to note that Gallup’s most recent polling found that Ukrainians overwhelmingly, 69%, want negotiated peace “as quickly as possible”. That’s up a whopping 30-points from March – at the time of the first failed Trump-Zelensky meeting. It’s also worth pointing out that President Zelensky has remained in office nearly a year and a half since his elected term ended because he canceled elections in the spring of last year. As for Putin’s approval rating in Russia – not that it necessarily matters because there aren’t honest elections that take place, and because respondents may be saying what they say out of fear, but his approval rating among Russians is 86% - nine points higher than when Putin launched the Ukrainian invasion. And as for Trump – he's noticing an immediate bump as part of this peace process. In the only poll that has fully polled a likely voter sample after Friday’s summit with Putin – President Trump is up eight points over last month in the Insider Advantage poll – to 54%. One poll does not a president make but an eight-point bump with the same pollster one month to the next is a sign of something significant – regardless of what the headline number is. That’s especially true when the pollster in question most recently oversampled Democrat support in the 2024 elections by 0.4%. So, in other words Americans appear to overwhelmingly approve of President Trump’s diplomacy to bring an end to this war too. Stand tuned.