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April 24, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
26:44
Here's Why Trump Will Never Solve War In Ukraine

The Trump Administration has expended enormous time and energy attempting to end the war in Ukraine, yet with each step forward the Administration seems to be forced to take two steps back. It is becoming more and more clear that the negotiations are going nowhere - even the Administration is admitting this. In fact they are doomed to fail. And here's why...

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Frustration In The Trump Administration 00:11:01
Hello, everybody, and thanks for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
Dr. Paul is out today.
So, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the efforts of the Trump administration on Ukraine.
I think it's obvious to everyone that the Trump administration has expended an enormous amount of energy in their efforts to try to stop the war.
Now, we first heard candidate Donald Trump saying he would stop the war in 24 hours.
Well, that didn't happen.
Then it was Kellogg has 100 days to solve it.
He's kind of been a minor player in the scene, and the war itself hasn't been stopped, obviously.
It's incredible to see an administration spending this much energy on a problem.
They clearly want to find some solution.
What I'm going to talk about today is my view that they won't be able to solve this problem because they don't understand the problem.
And I'm going to do a couple of things.
Let's put this first clip on.
This is Trump today.
He's frustrated.
He's furious.
Vladimir, stop.
Trump responds to massive Russian strike on Kiev.
And I highlighted this, leaving nine dead.
Now, I'm used to seeing massive strikes leaving hundreds dead, but that, of course, is in Gaza.
So it's interesting that the Russians are able to bomb downtown Kiev, only killing nine people.
Of course, that's a tragedy, and it's unfortunate, and it's terrible.
However, that's hardly the massive kind of humanitarian disaster.
So Trump is furious, and he sent a note.
Well, he posted a note to Putin, if we go to the next one, showing how frustrated and angry he is.
I am not happy with the Russian strikes on Kiev.
Not necessary and very bad timing.
Vladimir, stop.
Which Vladimir?
5,000 soldiers a week are dying.
Let's get the peace deal done.
Increasing frustration, not only with Putin on the part of Trump, but he's also very frustrated with Zelensky, the other Vladimir.
Go to the next one.
This is something he put up yesterday.
He was furious yesterday at Zelensky because Zelensky rejected out of hand this proposal that Kellogg and Witkoff, the two special envoys and perhaps Rubio himself, are carrying around to the various parties, trying to get them to agree to.
And here is Trump posting yesterday.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is boasting on the front page of the Wall Street Journal that Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea.
There's nothing to talk about here.
End quote.
This statement is very harmful to the peace negotiations with Russia in that Crimea was lost years ago under the auspices of President Barack Hussein Obama and not even a point of discussion.
So as word of this peace plan, yet another peace plan leaks out, both sides rejecting aspects of it.
Crimea hasn't been an issue of contention in quite some time, yet nevertheless, you can sense the frustration in the administration.
And it's not just limited to President Trump.
I have a couple of audio clips here that will underscore the frustration level among other cabinet-level individuals.
This first one is from Vice President JD Vance, who recently made this comment of frustration with the inability to move forward on this.
Let's listen to JD here.
We've issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it's time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process.
We've engaged in an extraordinary amount of diplomacy, of on-the-ground work.
We've really tried to understand things from the perspective of both the Ukrainians and the Russians.
What do Ukrainians care the most about?
What do the Russians care the most about?
And I think that we've put together a very fair proposal.
We're going to see if the Europeans, the Russians, and the Ukrainians are ultimately able to get this thing over the finish line.
Again, I feel pretty optimistic about it.
I think everybody has been negotiating in good faith, but it's now time, I think, to take, if not the final step, one of the final steps, which is at a broad level, the party saying we're going to stop the killing, we're going to freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today, and we're going to actually put in place the kind of long-term diplomatic settlement that hopefully will lead to long-term peace.
We've issued a very explicit proposal.
So there's Vance, Vice President Vance, expressing the frustration.
And now we have Secretary of State Marco Rubio also expressing frustration recently on the lack of progress.
Let's go to that next clip and listen to Marco Rubio expressing his frustration.
The only way a war ends in a negotiated settlement.
If it's not an unconditional surrender, then it is both sides to make concessions.
We're not going to prejudge what those concessions are because those concessions will depend on what Ukraine will accept and Russia will accept.
But we have to make concrete steps towards peace.
What we're not interested in, and I'm not accusing them of this, I'm just telling you what we're not interested in is negotiations about negotiations.
We're not going to continue this forever.
So none of it was threatening.
I think it was more an explanation of this is our timeline, and at some point it'll be clear whether you want peace or you don't want peace.
Okay, so there's supposed to be some big talks starting in Europe today, I believe it was.
It was going to be at the level of the ministerial level, so it would be Secretary of State, Foreign Minister, etc.
And at the very last minute yesterday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff bailed at the last minute.
And it said that this was a bail because it was supposed to be a high-level Ukrainian delegation participating along with the Europeans.
The U.S. high-level bail is said to be out of frustration for the recalcitrance of Zelensky in refusing to accept something that has been certainly de facto for at least 10 years.
Now go to that next clip.
Here is a clip in Politico about this.
Rubio and Witkoff bail on crucial Ukraine talks amid Crimea split.
And what that did to the talks is that it downgraded them significantly.
And go to the next one.
So them leaving, the two higher ranking leaving, that leaves Keith Kellogg.
Trump's Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg is now headlining the London talks from the U.S. side instead.
But it's Witkoff who's been the crucial go-between in talks with Russia over the conflict.
But this is somewhat less leading because what Witkoff has been doing, he's been going back and forth to Moscow several times, but he's carrying with him the Kellogg plan, which is what the U.S. keeps doing.
It keeps going to Moscow, carrying a plan that was reflected in an article that Keith Kellogg co-authored with Fred Fleitz, a neocon who had once been in the CIA.
They put this article together back in 2024, April of 2024, how to end the conflict in Ukraine.
And from the very beginning, it displayed an absolute astonishing lack of understanding about the origins of the war, how the war was being conducted, how the two sides were fighting.
Extraordinary, extraordinary lack of understanding.
Kellogg himself has been shown to be quite sensitive or quite in favor of the Ukrainian side.
Anyway, the Kellogg plan has been a dead letter from day one.
It's very, very clear.
It basically reflects the thinking in Washington that this is a stalemate.
Both sides need to just give up.
Come on, boys.
Stop your fighting.
Go to your rooms.
That's the idea.
And anyone who's been following the war in Ukraine at all over these past few years, aside from mainstream media, understands that that is not the case.
And in fact, everything that had been said about Russia throughout this period has turned out to be false.
Russia is on the verge of collapse.
The ruble will be rubble, as President Biden said.
The ruble has appreciated these past three weeks significantly against other currencies.
That the Russian economy is in shambles, that the Russians can't fight, that Russian military equipment is no good.
Well, all of this has proven to be false.
Yet, the Kellogg plan is predicated on all of these things being true, right?
So, just like in math, if you get all the numbers wrong and you add them all up or do all of your integral calculations, you're going to get the wrong answer because you didn't put the right input in.
And that's exactly what's happened from the beginning.
And I'll explain why, and I'll explain why I think this means that the talks will fail ultimately in just a second.
But there's this interesting spectacle of imagine this in your mind.
Here is Rubio, here is Witkoff, the two players, and then here's Kellogg.
The three of them are about ready to go to, I believe it's Paris or London, what have you, to meet the counterparts over there and to meet a high-ranking, I think, the foreign minister of Ukraine.
And at the last minute, the two of them say, Kellogg, you're on your own.
We're not going.
And it brings up a scene in one of the greatest movies of all time.
And if you're a fan of this, you'll see exactly what I mean.
If you're not, please indulge me.
But let's put on that next clip, that YouTube clip, and play it.
I forget how long I wanted you to play that.
Play the first 32 seconds of this clip.
So here's Rubio and Witkoff and Kellogg.
Sal, Tom, the boss says we're coming in a separate car.
He says for you two to go on ahead.
Hell, you can't do that.
It screws up all my arrangements.
Well, that's what he said.
I can't go either, Sal.
I always liked it.
So Tessio, of course, is Kellogg.
Rubio, I would say, is Tom Hayden.
And Chichi is Witkoff, who runs in and says, We're not going with you.
You're on your own.
If you've seen the movie like I have about 100 times, you'll know what happens next.
Now, I hope that doesn't, that certainly will not literally happen.
But here's Kellogg saying, tell Zelensky it was only business.
Tell Trump it was only business.
So that's quite funny.
So let's go back to some clips now.
We see the fact that they're not going.
And I'll go to the next one: U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
Now, this gets to the point that I'm trying to make.
U.S. As War's Mediator? 00:15:31
U.S. Vice President JD Vance told reporters in India on Wednesday, that's yesterday, that the U.S. had issued a very explicit proposal to Russia and Ukraine to end the conflict by freezing it on its existing lines and threatened to walk away if progress is not forthcoming.
Now, there are two schools of thought on this.
There's one school that's saying that the administration is desperate to wash its hands of this war.
Trump even said on Air Force One, this is Biden's war, not mine.
That school of thought thinks that they are desperate to put forth this plan.
And essentially, what he's talking about is the Kellogg plan.
Just freeze the existing lines and walk away.
And the fact that neither of them will do that for different reasons may give the administration the out to wash its hands of this.
Now, that's one way my thesis won't work, because that would be the successful thing to do.
Okay, guys, we tried our best.
We've expended enormous amounts of resources and time in a very complicated world on this problem, and we realize we can't solve it.
We are completely walking away.
And that means, of course, no more money, no more bombs, no more involvement.
We walk away.
You go with the Europeans.
Let them sort it out.
Now, that would solve the war.
I don't think that's going to happen.
But JD Vance, if he's serious, now this is the other school, if he's serious that the best proposal the U.S. could come up with is essentially the Kellogg plan, which is freezing the existing lines of conflict, then the U.S. is going nowhere because they're misreading the situation.
The fact is very obvious now.
It's being admitted everywhere, including in the mainstream media, that Russia is winning and will win something that was predictable from the very beginning.
You have massive Russia and you have minor Ukraine.
Now, the variable, of course, was NATO throwing everything it had and getting a black eye and a bloody nose because nothing worked.
Nevertheless, not understanding that is a big issue.
So the failure to face reality on the part of the U.S. is significant.
Now, one of the problems, I believe, is the people, the principal players, have fallen victim to the propaganda in the mainstream media, the neocons, the Russia hawks, all of these things.
And we've talked about it before.
It's a stalemate.
It's a stalemate.
Therefore, we can come in and say, hey, guys, literally, just go to your rooms, get it over with.
That most of the weapons are out from Russia.
They're out of weapons.
I've said that before.
The Russians can't fight.
Well, we know that's not true now.
And here's a point that someone made.
It was actually a comment on one of the main points that I made.
I wanted to like to read it because sometimes a comment on X is actually more eloquent than all of the so-called experts on Capitol Hill.
This is why recycling the Kellogg plan over and over and wasting Putin's time.
Here, there's a great plan.
Here's a great plan.
The same one.
Here's why it won't work.
And I'll put up that next clip.
This is basic stuff.
This is not hard to understand.
The losing side of a war will never set the terms of peace negotiations.
The U.S. is very much a part of the losing side of this war.
So I think it's rather ridiculous how they see themselves as a mediator in this conflict.
Moreover, in a position to set demands over the Russians, whom they have tried everything they possibly could through proxies to destroy.
Now, this is a very insightful comment, as sometimes you find on X, because this exposes the absurdity, in fact, the charade of the entire operation.
When you're losing a war, you do not get to dictate the terms.
At the end of World War II, if Hitler hadn't offed himself, they wouldn't have said, okay, how about if you just take a third of Europe and give us the two-thirds?
It doesn't work that way, and it won't work this way.
But that commenter was also very astute because he went a step further, which is the step that I would go, which is to say that the U.S. is not a mediator because it's very much a part of the war.
And this is a point that was really well made by an old friend of mine, Brian Berlettik, whose podcast I highly recommend.
He's a very insightful analyst who I've known for quite a long time.
And now we featured this article on the Ron Paul Institute website.
U.S. plays, quote, mediator in its own war on Russia.
And this is very, very important to point out, because the U.S. is not a mediator in this war.
The U.S. is not mom coming into the two boys fighting and separating them.
The U.S. is a fellow negotiator because this very much is a U.S. proxy war, a U.S. proxy war on Russia that was certainly escalated under the Biden administration, helped along by Trump 1.0, which sent a lot of weapons to Ukraine, and instigated by the second Obama administration.
Where we remember people like Victoria Newland and John McCain and others down there in the Maidan pushing for the overthrow of the government.
Like every other color revolution the U.S. has been involved in, it turned bad.
But Ukraine not being Libya, it's a big bad.
And that's what we're seeing here.
This is the fruit of the regime change labor.
So the U.S. is not a mediator.
The U.S. is a fellow negotiator, negotiating its exit from its part of this war.
Now, what Brian has a couple of excellent pieces of mainstream media clips that tend to, I mean, that do, but bolster what he says.
Now, go to this first one.
CNN, in a recent article, has reported that, quote, the United States could end its efforts on ending the Ukrainian conflict within days if there are no signs of progress.
Marko Rubia warned, we talked about that already.
If it's not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on, he told reporters.
And I've showed that clip.
So on one hand, it sounds like they're trying to get away fairly quickly.
Now go ahead, this is Berledic.
This is framed as if the U.S. is serving as some sort of mediator between Russia and Ukraine.
In reality, the U.S. is one of the two primary parties to the conflict, the other being Russia, with whom the war was provoked.
Go to the next one.
This is still Brian Berletic.
A series of articles from the Western media itself has revealed over recent years the degree to which the U.S. had not only politically captured Ukraine, but also institutionally captured its military and intelligence agencies.
I highlighted that part, reconfiguring them to operate as armed extensions of the U.S. along Ukraine's border with Russia and even across it within Russia itself.
Now, the first article he cites is an article from last year in the New York Times titled The Spy War: How the CIA Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin, which admits to a CIA-supported network of spy bases.
I'll go to the next one, please.
Pardon me.
A CIA-supported network of spy bases constructed in the past eight years, including 12 secret locations along the Russian border.
I'll go to the next one.
Then he brings up the article that everyone was talking about last month.
Pardon me.
A March 2025 New York Times article.
This is the big reveal in many ways, and I talked about this a couple times ago.
The partnership, the secret history of the war in Ukraine.
And this article would explain that not only has the U.S. provided tens of billions of U.S. dollars worth of military equipment, weapons, and ammunition, including a half billion rounds of small arms, ammunition, and grenades, 10,000 javelin anti-armor weapons, 3,000 stingers, helicopters, etc.
But that the U.S. military itself has been and still is playing a central role in picking at targets, picking and striking at targets on both sides of the Ukrainian-Russian border.
Literally involved in targeting and shooting.
Go to the next one.
And this is what the New York Times article talked about, this command center in Viesbaden, where the American and Ukrainian officers planned Kiev's counteroffensives.
This is the New York Times article.
A vast American intelligence collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers on the field.
This is important.
One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his NATO counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations.
I highlight this part.
They are part of the kill chain now, meaning that NATO is involved.
NATO is the United States, as we know.
It's literally part of the kill chain.
This is a U.S. war against Russia.
Ukraine just happens to be in the middle and is doing the dying.
Something that Lindsey Graham himself had already said is a wonderful thing.
The senator from South Carolina has already said this is the greatest thing ever.
Ukrainians are dying and Russians are dying and will come out ahead.
So now a couple more.
Now, this is still from Brian's piece.
This is the New York Times article, the one from last month.
If you go to the next one, military and CIA officers in Viesbaden helped plan and support a campaign of Ukrainian strikes in Russian annexed Crimea.
Hmm.
Finally, the military and then the CIA received the green light to enable pinpoint strikes deep inside Russia itself.
So the United States with the CIA working with the Ukrainian military is helping, is actually doing strikes deep within the Russian state itself.
Now think about in the United States how we would feel.
This is something that is worth thinking about.
If Russian or Chinese officers were embedded in Mexico, say this terror thing got out of hand, the Mexicans wanted to overthrow the Trump administration.
The Russians says, okay, we'll play this game.
And they were involved with Mexican using Russian weapons, the Mexican government targeting parts of the U.S.
We would think that we were at war.
Pardon me.
So let's just do one more here from the New York Times article.
If we can put that next clip up.
Pardon me, it's something in my throat here.
And here we go with further evidence that this is the U.S. war.
This is not a Ukrainian war.
The New York Times admitted Viesbaden would oversee each High Mars strike.
U.S. General Donahue and his aides would review the Ukrainians' target list and advise them on positioning their launchers and timing their strikes.
The Ukrainians were supposed to only use coordinates the Americans provided to fire a warhead.
High Mars operators needed a special electronic keycard, which the Americans could deactivate any time.
This, folks, is a classic proxy war.
And so this whole idea that Trump and his team are in the middle negotiating with each side to stop the war is a farce.
It's a charade.
And if anyone thinks the Russians don't know that, well, they've got another thing's coming.
Whatever you say about Putin and the Russians, they're not dummies.
So they see what's happening.
They say the administration twirling and twirling and twirling around on itself, digging itself deeper, expending more and more capital, political capital, financial capital, just capital in terms of things that are probably a higher priority.
There should be a higher priority for President Trump.
How do you deal with this trade war you've started with China?
How do you deal with the genocide in Gaza?
How do you deal with what Israel is up to in the region?
How do you deal with Israel rattling sabers at Iran?
How do you deal with the Pentagon in disarray, as we've talked about on this show over the past few days?
A Pentagon where the Secretary of Defense is firing loyalists who he had worked with for years, claiming, acting as if he never knew them, that they were just leakers and disgruntled former employees because they were found out to have advised Heg Seth, the Secretary of Defense, successfully advised him, we should not sign off on an attack on Iran.
It's not going to be a cakewalk.
He listened to them.
He got smacked down by the neocons, and so he threw his staff under the bus.
Something, thank goodness, Dr. Paul never did to any of us.
So you have a situation, you have a White House in crisis, you have a Pentagon in crisis and disarray, and you have an administration that is expending an enormous amount of energy and effort without understanding the origins of the problem, without understanding the status of the situation, the status of the United States as a party to this war.
It just underscores the fact that the way out of this war is not for sending Steve Witkoff with another Kellogg plan.
Hey, try it this time.
You know, trying to talk Zelensky into something because Zelensky is working with the Europeans against the Americans.
Every time the Americans smack Zelensky down, he goes and talks to Kier Starmer.
He talks to Macron.
He talks to the incoming Chancellor of Germany.
And they say, don't worry.
Don't worry, Vlad.
We'll send you all the weapons you need.
Just keep fighting and keep dying.
The Europeans are against us.
Our NATO allies are at odds with the United States on this.
They're pushing for the war to continue.
The best way out of it, President Trump, if you're watching, I know you are.
Listen in.
The best way out of this is to walk away from it.
You were almost there on Air Force One.
You were almost there.
Now all the cards are in your hands to walk away.
We know that Rubio is frustrated.
We know that you're frustrated.
We know that Witkoff's frustrated.
JD Vance is frustrated.
Just say, listen, guys, we did our best.
We're pulling out no more weapons, no more intelligence, no more involvement.
It's up to the Europeans to solve it.
I guarantee you, the war would be over within a few weeks.
Now, it may not be frozen according to the current lines because when you're winning a war, you tend to not stop.
You have your negotiations after the war is won or lost, and that's when the negotiations end.
Every war has happened like that.
Vietnam, of course, World War II, they all ended in Versailles after World War I.
They all had negotiations after the outcome was determined.
But the best course for the United States is to just get out.
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