We now know the peace deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war is under way and what the different facets of it look like. The wildcard is Zelensky and he appears to be pushing back hard on the deal, to include publicly insulting President Trump and refusing to sign up to the rare earth mineral US funding security deal he proposed. Maybe the peace problem has been Ukraine all along, and not the NATO leaders like former UK PM Boris Johnson? The bottom line is the Trump administration is now at the table with Russia, the European Union and Ukraine are currently not. Is that going to be a problem? Unfortunately for both the UKR and EU, they’ve been the intransigent and minor players in the peace deal, accomplishing little to nothing to attempt to stop the killing. At some point they will have to be brought into the deal because from what we’ve heard so far, there is at least one proposal on the table for some kind of peacekeeping force, likely to include EU country forces. But as JD Vance and Pete Hegseth have both stated, NATO membership is not on the table for Ukraine, nor is a return to pre-2014 borders, so those issues will have to be addressed. We spoke with David Pyne just weeks ago about his peace proposal ideas and he is back with us today to discuss the current situation and where it might lead us.

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