Susie Wiles reveal: Trump thinks Putin wants all of Ukraine

During the Christmas holidays, the word peace makes a frequent appearance, in sermons and carols and frequent performances of Handel’s Messiah, with its glorious Hallelujah Chorus praising “the Prince of Peace.”

That makes it even more infuriating to watch President Donald Trump demanding that Ukraine (and American’s European allies) agree to a so-called peace deal by the new year that guarantees more war and killing. Equally depressing is to watch much of the media buy the premise that the U.S. and Russia are actually conducting peace talks.

Baloney. What is going on in Berlin, Miami, Washington, and Moscow is a Trump-led farce. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders are forced to play along lest POTUS cut off crucial U.S. intelligence sharing and halt critical (but limited) sales of U.S. weaponry. They know Trump seeks a deal, any deal, even one on Kremlin terms, in order to claim he achieved peace in Ukraine. Yet the gleam of a Nobel Peace Prize and rare earth business deals with Moscow override any concerns about helping Moscow crush Kyiv.

Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, has shown no interest in negotiating, but just waits for more Trump concessions. Any deal that protects Kyiv’s future will be rejected by Vladimir Putin, but Trump, following past practice, will likely blame Ukraine.

That is why many more Americans, and security conscious Republicans in Congress must recognize that Trump is no worldly prince (or king) of peace. Rather, he is a poseur who must be prevented from sacrificing Ukraine on the altar of his ego and endangering the security of Europe and the United States.

You doubt me? Then read Part Two of the notorious Vanity Fair interviews with Trump’s chief of staff and right-hand woman Susie Wiles, in which she reveals Trump’s mindset regarding Ukraine. Despite debates within Trump’s team over whether Putin wants the whole of Ukraine, she admits, “Donald Trump thinks he wants the whole country.”

Vanity Fair asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio if he felt the same. He responded that, after watching Putin repeatedly reject freezing the war at the line of conflict, “You do start to wonder, well, maybe what this guy wants is the entire country.” Presumably, the secretary has bothered to read Putin’s speeches in which the Kremlin leader has said over and over again that Ukraine has no right to be a state,

However, Rubio has been pushed aside as negotiator in favor of the supremely naive and ill-informed real estate mogul Steve Witkoff, who keeps insisting Putin wants peace, an argument repeated by POTUS. Trump initially signed off on a 28-point “peace” plan that was handed by a Putin emissary directly to Witkoff.

Even though Zelensky and European leaders have gotten some of the most egregious points eliminated, the two biggest obstacles still remain: Putin’s demand that Kyiv turn over critical territory that Russia hasn’t been able to capture in nearly four years, and strategic guarantees of Western military aid to prevent Russia from violating any agreement.

On both sticking points, the Trump negotiators continue to play into Putin’s hands.

On the question of territory, what Putin demands is that Kyiv turn over a belt of fortified cities on high ground in the Donetsk region. Moscow has been unable to make major territorial gains in this area since near the beginning of the war, and the gains they have made have incurred terrible Russian casualties.

This belt “is not easy to conquer because [its cities are] well fortified militarily and naturally due to the landscape,” I was told by Yehor Cherniev, deputy chairman of the Committee on National Security and Defense of the Ukrainian parliament. “It would cost the Russians thousands and thousands of lives and months if not years to take it. I don’t see any compromise on this.”

Yet Putin has persuaded Witkoff to demand that Kyiv turn it over for nothing, which would leave the flat farmlands of central Ukraine open to further Russian attack.

Compounding the insult, Witkoff has proposed that the area be made into a “demilitarized zone” from which Ukrainian troops would withdraw but Russian troops not enter. No one who has read anything on recent history could be unaware that Putin has zero respect for such nonsense. “We know the Russians would just use this to infiltrate soldiers in civilian clothing and then seize control of the area,” Cherniev said by phone from Kyiv. “It would just be a trap.”

The second, enormous sticking point, concerns security guarantees for Ukraine in case Putin violates any agreement.

Putin has broken every accord Russia has signed with modern-day Ukraine. This includes, most notoriously, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine handed over its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in return for pledges from Moscow, Washington, and London that Kyiv’s sovereignty would be respected.

No wonder Zelensky insisted on Monday: “There is one question I — and all Ukrainians — want to get an answer to. If Russia again starts a war, what will our partners do?”

Putin has made clear he accepts no NATO membership, no Western military guarantees and only a shrunken, disarmed Ukrainian military. As for the Witkoff team, they concur on no NATO membership for Ukraine, but have offered only puffery in its stead.

The big headline has been that Trump would agree to “Article 5-like” guarantees, a reference to the provision in NATO that an attack on one requires help from every member. But Trump has played up the ambiguity of Article 5, which doesn’t specify that the help needs to be military. “Depends on your definition,” he said in August. “There’s numerous definitions of Article 5.”

A member of Ukraine’s parliament said of Russian plans for a demilitarized zone: “It would just be a trap.”

Moreover, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), a golf buddy of Trump, has made clear, that even if the Senate approves security guarantees, it wouldn’t be a treaty but “a congressional blessing, statutory in nature.”

A “blessing” won’t help Ukraine if Russia pauses, regroups, and attacks again.

It fascinated me that, after revealing Trump’s awareness of Putin’s goals, Wiles told Vanity Fair she thought Trump’s greatest achievement of 2025 was acting as “an agent of peace.”

The president’s claim that he ended eight wars is braggadocio: No wars were ended, including in Gaza, where a ceasefire is tottering. The list includes long-standing disputes that remain and outbreaks of fighting that continue, and even a Pakistan-India outbreak, where New Delhi denies Trump played a role in settling it down.

But if POTUS wants to be known as a peacemaker in Ukraine, it will only happen if he helps Ukraine convince Putin that a unified West will not permit Russia to crush Ukraine. That would require arming Ukraine to the hilt with U.S. and European weapons paid for by Europe, backed with frozen Russian assets or the European Union’s shared budget. It would also require U.S. enforcement of current and future sanctions, which the White House isn’t doing.

Most of all it would require Trump to pressure Putin, which he shows no signs yet of doing. The Russian despot is vulnerable economically and militarily, and Ukraine won’t lose if POTUS doesn’t betray the country. But Putin will only be persuaded to cease fire if Trump joins Europe in convincing him he can’t afford to continue the fight.