Trump's 2025 Ukraine Negotiations

Decision Workshops

In March 2025 Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky met in the White House to discuss the a possible ceasefire in Ukraine. It ended with an argument and Zelensky left without any formal agreement being made. What was the situation, what happened, and what could have happened?

Confrontation Analysis Tableau showing the Dilemmas all parties faced

This is a large tableau that may take quite a a bit of thinking about. In it I have put all the possible things that should have been up for negotiation between Trump and Zelensky in their meeting. The negotiations should have been about the decisions mentioned above, and how the situation could be changed (i.e. how the dilemmas could be eliminated). Instead other things were brought up. For example, if Zelensky had respected President Trump and Vice President Vance, or said "Thank You". There was also a lot of talk about the history of the situation, i.e. the wrongs committed in the past rather than the future. They should have talked about the future not the past.

Ukraine's Dilemmas

These are the dilemmas, as shown by the orange bars at the right of the tableau.

Russia has not withdrawn from the part of Ukraine it occupies. (Dilemma with Russia)
Ukraine would like to join NATO, (Dilemma with the US)
Ukraine would like the US to continue sending war material to it so it can continue the fight. (Dilemma with the US)
Ukraine does not trust Russia to keep any ceasefire negotiated (Dilemma with Russia)

The USA's Dilemmas

These are the dilemmas, as shown by the blue bars at the right of the tableau.

There is no ceasefire and the USA wants one.(Dilemma with Ukraine)
The USA wants Ukraine to give it access to the critical rare earth minerals (Dilemma with Ukraine)

Russia's Dilemmas

These are the dilemmas, as shown by the red bars at the right of the tableau.

There is no ceasefire and Russia wants one.(Dilemma with Ukraine).
Ukraine has not withdrawn from the area of Russia occupied around Kursk (Dilemma with Ukraine).
Ukraine will not formally recognise the Russian ownership of it's lost territories (Dilemma with Ukraine).
Ukraine does not trust Russia to keep to the ceasefire (Dilemma with Ukraine).

Further thoughts and developments.

Note that the USA has no dilemmas with Russia and vice-versa. They have an aligned position. This explains a lot of Trump's behaviour.

Trump said Zelensky should "come back when he is ready for peace" i.e. when the top left box of the tableau contains a tick rather than a cross. This has been followed by Trump considering suspending all military aid to Ukraine. i.e. changing the dash in the threatened future column on the "supply war material..." row to a tick, to increase Zelensky's dilemma. This is what Russia was expecting (as shown by the small red cross in the threatened future" column).

The threat of cutting off all US support to Zelensky may bring him back to the negotiating table. But Zelensky himself has tried to get increased support from Europe, i.e. to eliminate his dilemma on the support by changing the tick to a dash. saying "I do not care if you supply me war materials or not (I have the Europeans to supply me)".

FAQs

These are some of the questions that came up after I shared this post, along with my responses. I hope that this will give you some more understanding both of the situation itself and of the principles involved in doing Confrontation Analysis.

Isn't this all too simplistic - I think there are other factors that have to be taken into account ? / Isn't this all too complex - I'd like to see a more concise description?

There is some judgement involved in deciding the level of complexity to go to when building a Confrontation Analysis tableau. I have done a top level analysis of what I consider the biggest problems. Other problems may and dilemmas may exist, but they are relatively insignificant when compared to the top level confrontation mapped here. A separate analysis could be done for many lower level confrontations, but to include them all would make the tableau unwieldy. As it is I think eight rows is quite a detailed analysis. If you have a large complex confrontation with many players then you should model them as separate tableaus. In general the tableau should be complex enough to gain insights, yet simple enough to understand easily.

Aren't some row options more important than the others? (For example the Russian "withdraw from occupied Ukraine" is more important than the Ukrainian "withdraw from region occupied around Kursk". Should we give these equal weighing?

Yes, some factors are more important than others. Including them both in the tableau does not imply they have equal weighting. Unlike Game Theory, Confrontation Analysis does not do weightings and perform calculations from these. This is is good as (apart from in pure gambling games) it is difficult to assign such weightings in real life situations, and the participants may assign different weightings and vary the weightings as emotions take hold. We know that "Withdraw from occupied Ukraine" is more important than "withdraw from region occupied around Kursk", but it is difficult to say whether it is seven or ten times more important. It is often best not to get distracted into working out what those factors are.

That being said it is possible to work with weightings assigned as we did when studying the Libyan civil war. The weightings served as guides for the players, they do not effect the calculations of dilemmas. However this does add complexity to the tableau, and most of the time it will not add enough value to make up for the increase in complexity.

Should we include other participants, such as the European countries?

This is again a question of where you draw the line between simplicity and complexity. In this particular case I started off by considering Europe as a player, but then removed it as the other participants had no dilemmas with Europe (or at least no dilemmas in the top level tableau).

Does Confrontation Analysis assume that Trump, Zelensky and Putin will all behave rationally?

Not at all. Confrontation Analysis looks at what people are saying is going to happen. If you don't trust what they are saying (because you think they are irrational) then this can be specifically added to the tableau (those are the small ticks and crosses showing what the other players are saying they think will happen) however, a participant should say that he does not trust the other party (in a tactful way!) for you add those small ticks and crosses.