Ukrainian officials familiar with the negotiations over the minerals deal told the Financial Times that great progress has been made on the most controversial U.S. demands that could have prevented the Verkhovna Rada from ratifying the agreement. I am not surprised that none of the Ukrainian media outlets were the first to report this. It is too gullible to talk about progress with reference to the words of an anonymous Ukrainian official, without knowing what the text looks like now and how it differs from the previous draft published by Yevropeiska Pravda . It's another thing to quote the respected Financial Times, absolving yourself of all responsibility for the content. We are more addicted to quotes from the Western press than America is to fentanyl, and we reprint (or air) almost every article from the Washington Post, New York Times, Axios, Bloomberg, Politico, Le Monde that has at least a hint of insight. For some reason, the English-language press gets ten times more of these insights than the domestic press, which is instead noted in videos of the General Staff as potentially responsible for Russian missile strikes. There is a lot to be said for the incomparability of domestic (three times dead!) and Western (still alive!) journalism, or to accept the fact that insights are mostly fed either by foreign publications or telegram channels. For some, this is a conscious strategy, for others it is a consistent copying of it: the less the Ukrainian press gets its own information, the less influence it will have, and officials themselves become newsmakers, because in the age of social media, anyone can report news. And it is very convenient that until recently the main democratizer of the world, the United States, which paid a lot of money (compared to our modest budgets) to build the free press around the world (how helpful those US grants were and who got them can be debated for a long time, but we agree that the vector was quite clear to everyone), is now setting an example of how to compete with this institution. First of all, all American reputable publications have owners (not to be confused with oligarchs) who have their own business interests, which subtly influence the editorial policy. Secondly, an exemplary example is demonstrated by the Assosiated Press, which was kicked out of the coverage area close to Donald Trump (both in the White House and on his presidential plane) for asking tough questions and demonstrating unwillingness to call the Gulf of Mexico the American Gulf. In response to the court's decision to grant the Associated Press equal opportunities with other agencies, the White House administration... denied the same access to Reuters and Bloomberg. Thus reducing it for TV journalists around the world who subscribe to these agencies. Perhaps they are also going to negotiate with the owners of the agencies on the sidelines. Perhaps they will start their own agencies. Whatever the case, this is a signal to all those who are uncomfortable with journalists: don't pay attention to what we've been saying for the last couple of decades. It is possible! Look how it is possible!

However, there is indeed progress in words: in the Ukrainian-American memorandum signed overnight (which the parties actually agreed to negotiate over the next week, when Shmyhal will fly to the United States for spring meetings at the IMF and World Bank), a separate paragraph states the United States' respect for Ukraine's intention to "avoid conflicts in developing an agreement with Ukraine's commitments to join the European Union or agreements with international financial institutions and other official creditors." Volodymyr Verbyanyi wrote for Bloomberg about the limitlessness of this respect based on a previous draft: "The U.S. is seeking control of all major future infrastructure and mineral investments in Ukraine, potentially allowing it to veto the participation of Kyiv's other allies and undermine its aspirations for European Union membership." Meanwhile, the cost of American aid (irrevocable, let me remind you, under Joe Biden) in Donald Trump's mouth has decreased from 500 bln of USD to 350 bln, and off camera, has recently been and generally close to real figures. I don't know if we can call this progress, though, because we are seeing rather a return from the chaotic abyss of meaningless demands on camera (from the famous author of The Art of the Deal) to (perhaps! no one has seen the text yet) the plane of technical negotiations, which still do not guarantee the signing of a document favorable to Ukraine. Worse, the political rhetoric surrounding these negotiations does not inspire much hope: the United States recently blocked an attempt by the G7 to condemn Russia for its recent strikes on Ukrainian cities, and after speaking with Trump's Ukraine envoy, the Times published an article describing the division of Ukraine into parts "akin to postwar Germany." Kellogg later said that he was misunderstood, but that all Ukrainians understood him perfectly, because Russians have been calling us fascists ever since they smelled the unacceptable odor of democratic social culture, and given Trump's own rhetoric (he refused to call Putin a dictator, but was happy to call Zelenskyy a dictator), it is not surprising that even the most pro-Ukrainian members of his entourage easily use such comparisons

During Donald Trump's meeting with Giorgia Meloni, which turned into an impromptu press briefing, as he likes to do, an Italian journalist asked the Italian prime minister how she felt about Donald Trump holding the Ukrainian president responsible for starting a full-scale war. Hearing a vague diplomatic response (Putin invaded Ukraine, violating its sovereignty, Russia started the war, but now we are all trying to achieve a lasting, just peace), Trump said it was beautiful, but immediately asked for a translation of the beautiful words into Italian, a language he understood. The prime minister's interpreter was visibly embarrassed and began to recount the first part of Meloni’s answer about Italy's military budget, but Meloni eventually cut her off and began to explain to Trump in English, without ever touching on the Ukrainian topic. "I don't know," Trump replied, "whether Zelensky is responsible or not, but I'm not a fan of his. And he began to talk about the destroyed Ukrainian cities because of the war, which would never have started if he had been president. The American president never called himself “not a Putin fan," and he was surprisingly honest in front of the cameras.

Trump's chief diplomat, Marco Rubio, departing from Paris, where British, French, German and Ukrainian representatives met with Americans, expressed himself more clearly: if the White House does not see a way to end the war in Ukraine "in the coming days" the United States "should move." Let me remind you that during the previous Trump administration, the United States did the same thing with North and South Korea. It all started with an application for the Nobel Peace Prize with a trip to the 38th parallel and the first step of the American president into the territory of the DPRK, a handshake with Kim Jong-un and a long intimate conversation. But it ended in nothing. Realizing that he would not be able to achieve a real breakthrough in relations between the once united state, whose fragments were conserved in the authoritarian rhetoric of the 1950s, Trump pretended that the Koreas were to blame for everything and went on to other things. He was impeached at home for blackmailing Ukrainian President Zelensky with military aid to Ukraine. When the Republicans defended their president in the Senate and did not allow him to be fired early, no one remembered Trump's attempt to make history at the expense of Korea. But unlike South Korea, whose capital, Seoul, is as far from the DPRK as Kharkiv and Sumy are from Russia, Ukraine is not suffering from a hypothetical threat (and does not have one of the most powerful military industries in the world), but has been waging war for twelve years in a row against a much larger and stronger aggressor. Therefore, for us, Rubio's warning from Le Bourget Airport translates as direct blackmail. It is much easier to put pressure on Ukraine than on Russia, so we should not expect anything but increased American pressure in the coming week - until the next scheduled meeting in a similar format in London.