by
Austin BayMarch 12, 2025
Late on March 11, the Trump administration announced Ukraine had agreed to a 30-day ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine War.
A joint American-Ukrainian statement said the U.S. will "immediately" resume full intelligence sharing and military-security aid to Ukraine. The Trump administration also said Ukraine had agreed to the strategic minerals deal President Donald Trump offered as payment for U.S. financial and material support.
Trump makes the case that the deal serves as an informal security guarantee for Ukraine -- meaning the minerals-for-support deal tells Moscow the U.S. has a strategic interest in peace, in Ukraine's political existence, in Ukraine's economic viability and in its independence from Moscow's destructive absorption and totalitarian corruption.
The deep logic behind Trump's deal is based on historical common sense that even a megalomaniac like Russian dictator Vladimir Putin should grasp: Peace empowers genuine economic viability and sustainability.
Why? War kills workers and consumers (human beings), destroys railroads and sinks ships (disrupts economic supply chains) and, in the case of U.S. access to Ukrainian strategic minerals in which it now has an international agreement ownership interest, presents Putin with the threat of U.S. economic sanctions and -- the clincher -- possible armed conflict with the U.S. if he continues to wage war.
If you think Trump's multivalent diplomatic gambit is all minerals, money and diplo-speak, then you haven't been paying detailed attention to the military muscle.
The Barents Observer reported on March 7 that on March 6, Finnish F/A-18 fighters escorted two USAF B-52s into the Arctic Circle on a so-called training mission. A video "by the Finnish Air Force, filmed from cockpit of a F/A-18, shows one of the B-52(s) releasing a guided JDAM bomb. Shortly after, a giant blast can be seen at a designated target in the taiga-forest within the Rovanjarvi firing range."
NATO ally training missions take place year-round, but U.S. heavy bombers dropping live bombs? Most unusual. The Pentagon confirmed that "B-52 bombers carried out air-to-ground drops now for the first time in Finland."
Rovanjarvi is 100 miles from the Finnish-Russian border.
Translation: The U.S. staged a strategic firepower display near northern Russian airbases that now harbor at least half of Russia's strategic bomber forces. To evade Ukrainian drones, Russia withdrew its big bombers to airbases in the east (Urals) and north near Finland and the Barents Sea.
The Barents Sea is an arm of the Arctic Ocean east of Greenland.
Trump has already made it clear he's interested in defending Greenland against Russia and China.
The B-52 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) exercise demonstrated the U.S. can destroy Russian air and naval assets quickly and decisively.
This is a form of coercive diplomacy fossil media misses but Russian intelligence and Putin don't.
Why is Trump's deal good for Ukraine? Brave Ukraine is near manpower exhaustion. In the last two weeks, both The London Telegraph and The Economist have described Ukraine's manpower situation as dire.
On Feb. 26, The Economist reported, "Where it matters -- on the front line, in the trenches -- Russia is replacing its losses much faster than Ukraine."
On March 11, a Telegraph correspondent reported, "Ukrainians are exhausted from three years of fighting." The Telegraph's headline: "Ukraine is losing a generation in war against Russia."
The conditions recall the April 1917 French Army "mutiny" following the Allies' failed Second Battle of the Aisne (Nivelle Offensive). By early 1917, nearly 1 million French soldiers had been killed out of a pre-war population of 20 million men (all ages). After the offensive failed, about half of France's infantry divisions refused orders to continue to attack.
Ukraine March 2025 hasn't reached the desperation of France April 1917. But Ukraine risks buckling and suddenly losing it all.
I think this is Trump's bet. A ceasefire and fragile peace stabilize Ukraine. Ukraine begins rebuilding. As for Russia? Its economic decline continues. Western Europe wises up and reliance on Russian energy diminishes. The Green Revolution is spent -- even the Germans turn on the nuclear power. Putin dies in four to five years.
Now let's talk about Crimea.