Who Holds the Trump Cards in Ukraine?

Michael Froman is president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

“You don’t have the cards right now,” U.S. President Donald Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a fiery Oval Office press conference last Friday. “With us, you start having cards.”

“I’m not playing cards,” Zelenskyy replied. “I’m very serious, Mr. President.”

While the war in Ukraine is no mere card game, it’s worth taking stock of everyone’s hand, not least because that’s how Trump will approach negotiations as his envoys meet with their Ukrainian counterparts in Saudi Arabia next week and beyond.

Ukraine has the weakest hand at the table. As Trump and his emissaries have made clear, Washington is not inclined to indefinitely support Kyiv. Trump’s main objectives are to get a return on the investment the United States has made in supporting Ukraine and to secure a swift end to the war that does not entail further U.S. involvement. This leaves Ukraine with only a few cards to play, including signing a critical minerals deal (billed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as an “economic partnership”) and publicly praising Trump. Ukraine may also seek to gain more leverage by getting more European support, but the Europeans can only do so much, at least in the near term.

Suffice it to say, Zelenskyy is struggling to play the weak hand he’s been dealt. Last week, the White House expected he would sign a deal to grant the United States access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth. Hopes that Ukraine might be able to leverage its mineral wealth into a broader discussion of security guarantees were dashed by Zelenskyy’s Oval Office brouhaha with Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance. The Ukrainian delegation was told to leave the White House, and the deal was left unsigned.

Days later, however, Zelenskyy backpedaled, sending a conciliatory letter to Trump. In the letter, which Trump read aloud during his joint address to Congress on Tuesday, Zelenskyy thanked the United States for its support, declared that Ukraine was “ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts,” and promised that his country was ready to sign a minerals deal “at any time that is convenient for you.”

Ukraine’s mineral wealth is considerable: according to UN data, the country holds 5 percent of the world’s total reserves of rare earth minerals. (The United States, by comparison, holds just 1–2 percent, even though it is twelve times as large.) Ukraine also has substantial reserves of titanium, which is critical to aviation and other military uses. One challenge: much of the mineral wealth is in or near the Russian-controlled portions of the country. The private sector is reluctant to invest in mining and related infrastructure on land that is occupied or could soon be.

Still, the agreement offers Ukraine a chance to play a card and ensure that the U.S. government has a stake in Ukraine’s economic prosperity. In one of the clearest articulations of Trump’s foreign policy, General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy for Ukraine and Russia, said at CFR on Thursday that the president’s America First “transactional diplomacy” model prioritizes “economics as the foundation and driving force behind international affairs.” In Kellogg’s view, “if the United States has direct economic interest in Ukraine, then the United States has a direct and vested interest to protect its economic interests as well—which serves, in fact, as a de facto … security guarantee for Ukraine.”  

For now, in the absence of a deal, the Trump administration remains committed to using the United States’ tremendous leverage over Ukraine to force it not only to sign an economic deal with the United States but also to accede to certain Russian demands at the negotiating table. Hence the president’s pause on all U.S. military aid and intelligence support for Ukraine. The pause is expected to remain in effect until the Ukrainians sign the mineral deal and provide their best and final “term sheet” for negotiations with Russia. While this pause won’t lead to an immediate collapse of the front lines, Kellogg described it as equivalent to “hitting a mule with a 2x4 across the nose—you got their attention.”

The military situation in Ukraine has stabilized in some ways despite fears that it would be a disastrous winter. But the Ukrainian military is fast burning through its stocks of Patriot air defense missiles, which it uses to defend major cities and critical infrastructure. If more such munitions are not supplied soon, the consequences could be devastating.

The pause in intelligence support will also be a major pain point for the Ukrainians. The Trump administration suspended the sharing of intelligence that Ukraine depends on to protect itself from Russian long-range missile and drone strikes and to pinpoint high-value targets inside Russia—severely limiting Ukraine’s ability to fight. That decision seems to be at odds with another priority of the Trump administration: to end the human suffering of this war. Certainly, more Ukrainians will die and be injured if they cannot defend themselves.

Putin, for his part, has good cards; more important, he may believe that time is on his side. Russia holds some 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, and Putin hasn’t modified his demands of Ukraine in more than three years: keeping it out of NATO and holding on to the Ukrainian territory Russia controls.

It’s true that Russian progress on the battlefield has been slow and costly despite the assistance of North Korean troops on the ground. But just today, Russia carried out an intense assault to retake territory in its Kursk province, an attack that appears to have broken through Ukrainian lines and could spell the end of Zelenskyy’s gambit to maintain a Ukrainian beachhead on Russian soil. The Russian economy is struggling, but by no means on the brink of collapse.

And in recent weeks, Putin was dealt a powerful new card: the Trump administration has begun to openly tease the possibility of a great reset in U.S.-Russian relations to strike a quick deal and perhaps pry Putin away from his “best friend,” Chinese President Xi Jinping. To this end, the Trump administration voted alongside Russia and North Korea at the UN to stymie an effort to explicitly condemn Putin’s regime for the 2022 invasion.  

Putin can only press his advantage so far, however. After a devastating barrage of Russian cruise and ballistic missiles hit Ukrainian energy infrastructure last night, Trump issued a rare public threat against Russia on Truth Social, saying he was “strongly considering” sanctions and tariffs on Russia to force it to the negotiating table. Tariffs, of course, would have limited reach. The United States only imported some $3 billion of goods from Russia last year and already has extensive sanctions on Russia. If Trump doesn’t extract any concessions from the Russians, he might undercut his own deal-making, even risking the chance of deadlock.

Then there are the Europeans. With the United States pulling back from its longtime commitments, Europe is trying to fill the void, not only in Ukraine but also in the continent at large. It has awakened to the reality that Putin’s aggression, together with Trump’s commitment to “America First,” might finally require Europe to pursue the reforms—of the economy, regulation, and defense spending—that have long been needed but never accomplished. 

On Thursday, European Union (EU) leaders met for an emergency summit in Brussels, where they endorsed a proposal to lend up to €150 billion to EU governments to spur a multi-year rearmament program, which, if coupled with proposed changes to the EU’s strict fiscal rules, could lead to upwards of €850 billion in new European defense spending. Friedrich Merz, who is expected to become Germany’s next chancellor, has called for defense spending to be exempt from his country’s longstanding “debt brake,” a strict constitutional rule limiting new government borrowing. Germany has not made changes to the debt brake after Russia’s 2022 invasion, apart from a special fund for the German Armed Forces, but now it is willing to do so. Countries bordering Russia are also making big moves. Yesterday, Norway announced it would more than double its aid to Ukraine in 2025 to nearly $8 billion, and Polish President Donald Tusk announced that he wants to mandate military training for all able-bodied Polish men.  

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron is conferring with other top EU leaders about the possibility of extending his country’s nuclear deterrent to cover other European states from Russian threats, as a new, added guarantee on top of any U.S. commitment. Telling tactical shifts are also underway. For example, European governments are rushing to deploy Eutelsat terminals in Ukraine to reduce the country’s dependence on Elon Musk's Starlink for internet access.

To bolster a future cease-fire agreement, European leaders are finally starting to seriously discuss seizing more than €200 billion of frozen Russian central bank assets as a response to potential Russian violations. They have declined to take this step so far, citing legal and economic concerns. But as British Foreign Minister David Lammy has put it, it may be time to move from “freezing the assets to seizing the assets.” 

Now comes time for a new round of betting. What is Ukraine’s bottom line, both with the United States and with Russia? What American chips is Trump willing to wager to strike not just any deal, but a deal that creates a just and durable peace? What is Europe’s real appetite for reform, rearmament, and the deployment of boots on the ground and planes in the air over Ukraine? And what, if any, ground is Putin willing to give? Now is not the time to bluff. 

For more analysis, check out CFR’s full symposium on “Securing Ukraine’s Future,” which also featured Margaret Brennan, Philip Breedlove, Fiona Hill, Pavlo Klimkin, Alina Polyakova, Liana Fix, Natalie Jaresko, Vladyslav Rashkovan, and Heidi Crebo-Rediker.