Donald Trump has created ‘political momentum’ to end the Ukraine war – but his team lacks the expertise to develop a ‘state-of-the-art ceasefire’ deal, a former OSCE boss tells The i Paper
Donald Trump’s inexperienced diplomatic team do not have “much of a clue” about how to achieve a ceasefire agreement to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, a former boss of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has said.
Thomas Greminger served as the chair of OSCE Permanent Council in 2014, overseeing the organisation’s special monitoring mission to Ukraine, which deployed civilian observers to monitor the political and military crisis that led to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
In 2017, he took on the role of OSCE secretary-general, facilitating talks between high-level officials from Moscow, Kyiv and Washington with the aim of securing peace in Ukraine.
Speaking to The i Paper from Switzerland, where he runs the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), Greminger said Russia’s intentions in 2014 were “totally different” to their current ones.
‘No pressure to end the war’
“In 2014, while the Russians annexed Crimea, while they fuelled destabilisation in the Donbas, they had no intention to let the situation spin out of control.”
“They had an interest to de-escalate to a certain extent,” he said. “This obviously is different today.”
He explained the Moscow currently believes “the military momentum is still on their side, the economy is doing well, and they are coping well with sanctions. So there is no pressure to end the war”.
Kyrylo Budanov, the chief of staff for Volodymyr Zelensky’s office and a member of Kyiv’s negotiating team, said three-way peace talks this week between Russian, Ukrainian and American negotiators had been “really constructive”.
But little concrete evidence of progress was reported on key sticking points in negotiations, including the future of Ukrainian territory held by Russia or security guarantees for Ukraine after any peace deal is achieved.
The US delegation in Abu Dhabi included of US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner – both of whom took up diplomacy without any prior experience after working in real-estate development and investment.
Zelensky has since revealed that US has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach an agreement to end the nearly four-year war.
Lack of diplomatic experience ‘a problem’
While acknowledging “the political momentum” that Trump has created in resolving the war in Ukraine, Greminger described the lack of diplomatic experience his envoys have as “problematic”.
He said: “A good year ago, it was still very problematic to even refer to ceasefire negotiations, to negotiations to end the war.
“Now it is clear this is happening – there is momentum in the negotiations. And … this is thanks to President Trump.”
But Greminger added: “What I still find relatively problematic is … there is a gap between this political drive and then professional expertise in the process.
As examples of inexperienced peacemakers, he pointed to Kushner and Josh Gruenbaum, an investment banker-turned-White House senior adviser who participated in talks with Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Florida last week, alongside Wiktoff, Kushner, and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
“These people, they are probably great negotiators, but clearly [do] not have a lot of process expertise in terms of how you approach a conflict settlement.
“They clearly have very little expertise in European security. They probably have not much of a clue how a state-of-the-art ceasefire looks like.”
Greminger cited Witkoff and Dmitriev’s 28-point plan, introduced in November, which appeared to echo Russian demands, including forcing Ukraine to cede territory it held, reduce its military to 600,000 and renounce ambitions to join Nato.
Witkoff (right) and Kushner (second, left), accompanied by Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov (left) and Dmitriev (Photo: Kristina Kormilitsyna/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
While acknowledging the deal sought to cover key sticking points in negotiations, Greminger added that “it was terribly structured, terribly phrased, there were duplications. You could clearly see it was not written by pros”.
Trump the businessman vs Putin the strategist
Asked about the dynamics between Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who Greminger briefly met in 2014, he said the pair are in some ways “extremely different”.
He explained: “President Putin is a very true technician. He is very systematic. He has an intelligence background, and I think you can still tell that he has this background.
“Trump, I think you can also tell that he has a private sector background. He’s extremely transactional.”
Greminger pointed to Trump’s “approach of scaring people, threatening people, and then often scaling down, negotiating and coming out with a deal that looks good to him”.
Trump appeared to follow the trajectory described by Greminger in relation to Greenland, semi-autonomous territory belonging to Denmark.
Following repeated threats to acquire the Arctic island “the easy way” or the “hard way”, Trump appeared to water down his threats after a “framework of a future deal” on Greenland was agreed with Nato’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.
Turning to the similarities between Trump and Putin, Greminger added: “Both, I think, appreciate each other as strong leaders. Both, I think, are not ashamed of being relatively authoritarian. I wouldn’t consider either of them as Democrats at heart.
“Then you also have national security interests that come into play. I wouldn’t say that this would then totally marginalise the effect of strong personalities, but relativise [it].”
Asked about Europe’s ability to rely on the US amid Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland – territory belonging to a fellow Nato country – and America’s decision to downgrade Russia as a national threat last year, Greminger emphasised the need to “strengthen European strategic autonomy”.
“Practically speaking, I would expect [them to try] to create a stronger European pillar of Nato,” he said.
“I don’t think that will see Nato disappear … or that the US will abandon Nato, but the US will keep pushing Europeans to invest more in European security, which is, I think, quite legitimate.
“And on the other hand, Europeans, they have now seen that Americans can be a very unreliable, a very unpredictable partner.
“And so there is a huge incentive to do more to invest, more to become more autonomous and more independent from the whims of a US administration.”