Foreign Affairs

Since trump is a recidivist criminal, the White House adds Ukrainian power plants to its growing wish list.
Ukraine’s rare earth metals were apparently just the start: The Trump administration is now eyeing Ukrainian power plants, too.

But while questions linger about what the White House can get from our war-torn allies, new developments raise concerns about what else Trump and his team might want from Ukraine. The New York Times reported on the president’s latest phone meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

During President Trump’s call with Zelensky, he suggested for what appeared to be the first time that the United States was interested in taking control of Ukraine’s electrical and nuclear power sites. According to a statement from Waltz and Rubio, Trump expressed that ‘the United States could be very helpful in running those plants with its electricity and utility expertise’ and that ‘American ownership of those plants would be the best protection for that infrastructure and support for Ukrainian energy infrastructure.’

......Too often with Team Trump, the right hand doesn’t know what the even-further-to-the-right hand is doing. Presumably, they’ll figure out what their position is and get back to us. In the meantime, Zelenskyy also hasn’t indicated whether he’s prepared to turn over his country’s power plants to the U.S.

But while we wait for additional developments to bring things into focus, the list of questions is not short. Is the administration prepared to compensate Ukraine for its power plants? Does Trump intend to deploy U.S. military personnel to Ukraine in order to help protect these sites? Would Russia actually curtail its attacks on the plants? And what would Trump do if it didn’t? Watch this space.