Trump Kabuki Theatre in Ukraine; Nothing of Substance Gets Resolved
Alastair Crooke, 12 February 2026
It is not a glitch (that nothing gets resolved). It’s a feature. For it opens rather, a path for ‘Business’ to be done -- for ‘stakeholder’ deals to be cut, and for billions to be shared out in payoffs. This is Trump’s geo-political transactional model: Business displaces traditional negotiation (at least while the money flows); Money is the politics.
Trump, Witkoff and Kushner are said to be confident that they can construct a financial reward system for western debt-holders, investors and politicians (and the Zelensky entourage, in the case of Ukraine) that succeeds in “retaining the financial rewards of war -- without the ancillary ingredient of bloodshed”.
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