Trump’s energy ceasefire ‘a product of a fantasy,’ diplomat says
A career British diplomat who served as the UK’s ambassador to Belarus has told The Guardian that Russia has “no interest” in ending its war in Ukraine, and described Donald Trump’s weekend announcement of an “energy ceasefire” as “a product of a fantasy” with no factual basis. Nigel Gould-Davies, now a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in the Guardian’s Thursday briefing that talks since Trump’s return to the presidency have “not really been negotiations.” The diplomat’s comments come as a proposed deal to import Russian diesel — announced by Trump this week in hopes of lowering US pump prices before next month’s midterm elections — has drawn bipartisan criticism in Washington, and as Ukraine’s military has had its access to Starlink satellite internet terminals suddenly restricted.
Gould-Davies, who served as the Foreign Office’s head of economics in Moscow before his posting to Belarus, set out the analytical framework he applies to the conflict. There are established norms for negotiating during armed conflicts, he said: diplomats look for the interests, needs and red lines each side articulates, in pursuit of what he called the “win set” — the overlap in conditions under which both parties judge it better to end fighting than to continue. “The problem with this situation is that Russia has no interest in ending the war,” Gould-Davies said. “Russia has repeatedly said publicly that it is not interested in a ceasefire.” Moscow’s actual goal, in Russian terms, he said, is “decisive superiority and dominance over a severely weakened Ukraine” — a condition Ukraine “can’t, and won’t, sign up for.”
Gould-Davies framed the diplomatic record since Trump returned to the presidency the same way. “They have not really been negotiations,” he said, but “parallel efforts by Russia and Ukraine to persuade the White House it’s the other side’s fault” that a peace agreement — and, perhaps more importantly to Trump, an elusive Nobel Peace Prize — had failed to materialize. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, rounds of talks in Belarus, Turkey, Abu Dhabi and Geneva have all proved futile.
Gould-Davies argued that Trump’s posture added a further obstacle to the existing difficulties: what he described as the challenge of having “a non-standard president” in the White House. When Trump unilaterally declared an “energy ceasefire” over the weekend via Truth Social, Gould-Davies said, the announcement “had no basis whatsoever in reality.” Neither Moscow nor Kyiv had been informed. “He simply made it up,” the diplomat said. “A product of a fantasy.”
Beyond the diplomatic theater, Gould-Davies said, Trump’s interests do not appear aligned with Ukraine or with traditional US allies. “[Trump’s] natural centre of gravity is to favour Russia,” he said, citing restrictions on US weapons supplies and past pauses in intelligence sharing. His theory of ending the war, Gould-Davies added, “involves concessions to Russia and coercion of Ukraine.” Gould-Davies noted that Trump has at times sided with the Ukrainian president — sanctioning Russian oil companies and helping Ukraine target Russian energy infrastructure — but described the overall pattern as “lurching.”
This week, with Americans facing soaring energy costs, Trump announced a plan to import Russian diesel in hopes of bringing down pump prices before next month’s midterm elections. The plan has drawn criticism from European leaders and from a bipartisan group of US senators. The Guardian briefing noted suggestions that the proposal could be illegal under US law and that the quantities being discussed appear too small to actually affect prices, even if the fuel could reach the US ahead of next month’s midterms, as Trump hopes. The diplomat said there are concerns in some diplomatic circles that the diesel deal “is only the visible tip of the iceberg,” with the White House privately pivoting toward a “much more substantial” pro-Russia tilt.
Gould-Davies theorized that Trump could be using Russia as an intermediary to press Iran to ease the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, with the aim of lowering fuel prices before voters head to the polls. Putin’s potential quid pro quo, he said, “could be an easing of America’s sanctions on Russia and an ending to America’s support for Ukraine.” “It’s just a theory,” Gould-Davies acknowledged, “but join the dots and it logically makes sense.”
Diplomatic back channels remain operational, including secret closed-door meetings and off-the-record communications between all sides. But Gould-Davies said these informal discussions may be doing more harm than good. “There is a degree of collective delusion here,” he said — a hope that Russia “can somehow be persuaded” to change course, “for which there is literally no evidence for that whatsoever.” He warned that the back channels could be “actively unhelpful, because they perpetuate the illusion that peace may be around the corner.”
Gould-Davies said European attention has shifted from hostile territory toward Washington itself. When Trump has veered too far off course, European leaders and diplomats have descended on the US capital in what Gould-Davies called an “Avengers assemble” approach. He said this has proved effective in averting “the nightmare scenario” of Trump abandoning America’s old transatlantic partners.
The challenge, he added, is that “right now even ‘the White House’ is an abstraction” — consisting of many different players with views that may differ from Trump’s. He pointed to CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s visit to Moscow this summer, which Gould-Davies said was the subject of “reliable speculation” that Ratcliffe hoped to “warn Russia against escalation into Europe” — a position at odds with Trump’s current posture. “There are people in positions of power and influence still in this administration who understand the problem of Russia in the right way,” Gould-Davies said. Western diplomats will continue to try to shift the balance of influences within the White House, he said, but they remain reliant on what he labeled “White House Kremlinology” — “trying to understand the different views and moods of those around Trump and who will be the last person to whisper in his ear.”
On Wednesday, Zelenskyy accused Trump of restricting Ukrainian access to “military-grade” Starlink services, hampering Ukrainian drone strike missions and air defences. The Guardian led Thursday’s editions with “Zelenskyy blames Trump for loss of protection from Russian raids.” The paper reported that Ukraine’s military has had its access to Starlink terminals suddenly restricted as the Trump administration has increased pressure on Ukraine to immediately halt long-range strikes on Russia’s oil industry.
In London on Wednesday, Andy Burnham hosted Zelenskyy at Downing Street, stating that the UK is doubling down on its support for Ukraine and pointedly calling on others to “follow suit.” Despite Trump’s weekend ceasefire announcement, Russia has continued strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure; Putin, the Guardian reported, “responded by blowing up some Ukrainian power plants” after Trump’s announcement. Photographs published Thursday showed Ukrainian rescuers working at the site of a Russian strike on a residential building in Kharkiv.