The Brutal Truth About Ending The Ukraine War - David Sacks

your thoughts on where we're at with the Ukraine and if we're going to get a ceasefire, a peace negotiation or a peace settlement or if the United States is just going to walk away because it seems like Trump is a little perturbed by the progress here and he has said, you know, maybe it's just up to them to figure it out and he'll be done with the whole thing. Your thoughts, Saxs? Well, I think that the the Alaska summit was major progress. I think that first of all, the president deserves enormous credit for reestablishing diplomacy and communication with the Russians. There literally hasn't been a meeting between the US president and the Russian president since 2021 while this war is

going on and while the war has continued to escalate. I guess the Biden administration's policy was just to ignore the Russians and roll their dice and hope that the war didn't escalate out of control. In any event, I think Trump deserves a lot of credit for again reestablishing that diplomatic connection and trying to use diplomacy to end the war. And it was shocking to see how much Democrats and the media were openly rooting for him to fail in these efforts to end this war. And effectively, they're rooting for hundreds of thousands of more people to die or get maimed. They were pretty hysterical, right, on the news. It was pretty crazy.

Yeah. And by the way, they they claim that they care about the Ukrainian people, but the Ukrainian people by large majorities now want this war to end and they're willing to make meaningful concessions to do it. So there was a poll by Gallup, which Nick, maybe you can throw this on the screen where a year or two ago something like 70% of Ukrainians wanted to keep fighting the war. Now that number is down to 24%. Again, the vast majority are looking to achieve a peace. And I think that President Trump and President Putin made some important progress in terms of getting to an eventual peace deal. And I think there are a few planks here. Number one was the recognition

that we should try to get to a comprehensive peace deal, not a ceasefire. A ceasefire is temporary. And the Russians have already said they wouldn't do it because they understand from their point of view that this would just give the Ukrainians time to regroup and rearm and try to reset, but it wouldn't end the war. And the truth of the matter is that when you're fighting a war and losing, you don't get to call a timeout. So the Russians have been rejecting this idea of a ceasefire for months. And I think that it was wise, if our ultimate goal is to get to a deal, to recognize that the comprehensive peace deal is what we want to get to. So that's point number one. Point number

two is that President Trump acknowledged that Ukraine would not be joining NATO, which was the key source of the friction and the thing that ultimately led to this war. So I think that definitively taking NATO off the table I think was a very important precondition to getting to an eventual peace. And then I think the third thing was that the parties both the Russians and the Americans agreed that there would have to be territorial concessions of some kind. And we don't know all the details yet. There was some conversation about land swaps. But the point of the matter is that we're not going back to the pre-war status quo ante. The Russians have taken

the big chunk of territory. The Ukrainians have not been able to get it back. People are trying to blame Trump for this somehow. But the real cause of this is the failure of the counter offensive in the summer of 2023. Remember, we gave the Ukrainians something like hundred billion dollars worth of weapons to retake that territory. And it was an abysmal failure. They didn't even make it past the first Survivican line. That is a real cause of why the Ukrainians are going to lose territory in this war is they're simply not able to retake it. And I think there was a a general recognition coming out of that Alaska summit that there would have to be

territorial concessions. And I think in these three pillars, I think you have the basis for a comprehensive peace deal, which is again, number one, we're going for a peace deal, not a ceasefire. Number two, no NATO. And number three, we have to recognize the realities on the ground. Now, I think the big question mark, I think we could get to a peace deal pretty quickly if Zalinski and the Europeans were willing to acknowledge these three points, but so far they have not been willing to acknowledge those three points. And I think this is one of the things that if you're listening to the remarks the following Monday when the Europeans came

to the White House, there was no recognition. They were still clamoring for a ceasefire, you know, again, which the Russians had rejected as opposed to a comprehensive peace. They were still clamoring for NATO and they were still rejecting the idea of any territorial concessions including even Crimea which was lost over a decade ago. So I think that the issue we have right now is that Zalinski and the Ukrainian government, not the people, but the Ukrainian elite and some of these European countries that are backing him are not willing to make the compromises necessary to achieve a peace deal. And as President Trump has said, at the end of the day, you need the

Russians and the Ukrainians to agree. So I think that President Trump deserves enormous credit here for reestablishing diplomacy, for making substantial progress towards a comprehensive peace deal. But at the end of the day, unless Zinsky starts being willing to make compromises, I don't know how you're going to get to that deal. Yeah. Freeberg, Dave, any thoughts on this? No. Negotiation? Shimoth, anything? Well, I was pretty curious about the historical pattern of this. So, I just went back and here's what I learned. What's interesting to note is that since 1945, so not assuming, you know, conflicts in

Africa because they are not really quite part of the western political global order per se, it's important to ask the question like how have other territorial disputes panned out? So there are disputes that end in stalemates and when you end up in a stalemate you basically arrange a DMZ demilitarized zone type arrangement. So there's one in Korea right 1953 to now. There's one in Cyprus 1974 to right now and there's one in Kashmir 1947 to today. And then there's this kind of thing in between Israel and Lebanon. And then second, there are disputes where there's some action taken by one country to take something by force, but then there's no consensus

internationally as to who owns a territory. So Crimea, as Saxs mentioned, 2014 to present, and then Israel and West uh East Jerusalem, sorry. So I think the point is that unless President Trump figures out a way to do something that's frankly truly unprecedented, the historical pattern is that it's been nearly impossible for even the most powerful and influential person in the world to frankly draw deals in these kinds of situations, especially when they become protracted. And I think that's what he's getting to when he reinforces these things never would have started or gotten this far had I been

president. You know, that's what he says in quotes. And I think this is what he's referring to, which is that the longer these things get drawn out and particularly with Russia, Ukraine, and Israel, Gaza, you're talking about conflicts and historical issues that have been simmering for hundreds of years and in some cases thousands of years all the way back to the antiquity. So, I don't know. I I just think that it's an incredibly incredibly difficult position and I just don't know what's going to happen. But I think that for modern progress to happen, I think it's important for both of these two issues

to get put to bed as quickly as possible. Jake, what do you think? And we saw the media attacking Trump for even daring to hold negotiations with the Russians. Do you think this was a good idea or do you think that somehow uh Trump was caving to Putin? I give Trump a lot of credit. He is incredibly good at foreign policy and specifically with dictators. If you look at our past presidents, they didn't want to meet with Putin. They didn't want to meet with Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il. They thought isolation was the best policy. It's not. I think talking to these folks

and trying to find common ground is the best policy. Even if it's a 5% chance of it actually working out, which is what I think any president dealing with a dictator and a death spot like, you know, Putin is going to have. I think you have a 5 or 10% chance. And I think Trump and Biden actually had a lot in common that worked. the lone leasing of the weapons and not costing the American taxpayer any money where a lot of partisan people said, "Oh my god, this is costing the Americans so much." It's actually Trump has figured out a way to make it profitable. He's selling more weapons to Ukraine and he got us the minimal rights. It turns out Trump

was able to turn a cost center or a supposed cost center into a profit center in terms of this specific war. And if you look at the sanctions, Trump has increased the sanctions. So Trump had my exact position that I fought for here on this podcast for the past couple of years in this conflict, which was keep the pressure up on Putin. And Trump took it over the top by going to Putin's main client for his oil now, which is India, and putting a massive tariff on them and threatening them with a huge tariff. That was a bold, audacious way to deal with Putin. So, I give Trump a ton of credit for trying to make peace here. And Putin has been, Hold on, let me just finish. And Putin has been

absolutely humiliated. He can't even get to Keev, let alone take over Finland or Poland. And this has cost Russia, their greatest customer, which is the EU, Germany. These people are never going to buy his oil again. Not after what happened here. And that you can give a lot of credit to Trump because he told them when they built their oil pipelines that the Germans were lunatics for doing that and for creating a massive revenue stream for a dictator who is in my mind a war criminal. What he did in invading Ukraine makes him a war criminal. What he did in kidnapping these children makes him a war criminal.

I think it's awesome that Trump is doing this intervention even if it has a 5 or 10% chance of working and then making the NATO alliance pay their fair share and selling them more weapons. I think also brilliant. So I I give Trump a lot of credit here. He's aligned exactly what I said we should be doing, which is holding dictators who invade other countries accountable for it. And he's added to it the fact that he can connect with people. So I give him a ton of credit for it, Zach. I know that's maybe not the answer you want, but that's how I look. I think you use this highly moralistic language and you engage in a lot of name calling and I actually think

that's kind of which one which name is inaccurate, please. Dictator or war criminal? Well, look, you're complimenting Trump for engaging in diplomacy with Putin, but then at the same time, you want to call him a dictator and war criminal, and that's not going to be conducive to actually trying to reach a peace agreement. Now, it's fine. But I'm not doing the negotiation. If I was doing the negotiation, I wouldn't come in and say, "Hey, dictator, war criminal, let's fight for peace." I'm giving you my personal belief as a person not negotiating. So you're praising and you're praising Trump for increasing the pressure and

leverage that he has with the Russians, which I think is fine. My question for you is would you increase the pressure or leverage with respect to Zalinski? So for example, would you tell Zalinski in no uncertain terms, listen, stop demanding to be part of NATO because it's not happening? In fact, the president has done that. Uh what about um yeah, the the answer to that question is yes. I would say listen, it's not realistic to join NATO. You can get some security guarantees. There's sort of talk of this NATO light. So, I would agree with that. I would say listen, we're going to take and I said this on a previous episode. We should

just take off NATO inclusion for like 20 years. Okay. So, here's the what about territorial concessions? I think that's a decision Ukraine has to make. We should encourage them to make whatever decision is best for them. But if they want to keep fighting this thing, that's going to be up to their people to decide if they want to fight for their land. Well, the people have said they don't want to keep the the problem you have right now is that 70% of Ukrainians say they don't want to keep fighting. They're ready. Sounds like they're ready to make concessions. Yes. So, it sounds like Zilinsky should

listen to his people. Yes, that's his decision to make. I think he has sovereignty and the people get to make that decision in his country. Well, but the the problem you have is it's not just Zilinsky, right? It's his ruling click. They have canceled elections and they will remain in power as long as the war continues. So they there's a conflict of interest there and there's a lot of money flowing into Ukraine because of the war. So what if the ruling elite wants to keep the war going forever while the people want it to stop? Yeah. They're going to face a revolution right quick. And so I think they have to

take the citizens of Ukraine into account. And it's a tough decision for them to make, but it's not our decision to make for them. Is that a reasonable position? It sounds like a reasonable position. I think it's reasonable. Yeah. I mean, I don't I look, at the end of the day, the Ukrainians and the Russians have to agree. Yes. And I I think that of of the major parties, I think President Trump cares the most about peace. I mean, I think he is pushing the hardest for there to be a peace