Despite falling short of his electoral campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine within his first 24 hours in office, Donald Trump seems determined to broker a peace agreement in the region – but would doing so warrant a Nobel Peace Prize? The US President met his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for ultimately unfruitful negotiations last week and will host European leaders, including Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, at the White House on Monday. Reports from the Alaskan summit between Trump and Putin suggested the latter demanded full control of Donetsk and Luhansk, two Ukrainian regions partially occupied by Russian troops, as a condition for ending the war, and in exchange for handing back other territories.
Despite fears that Trump may have been swayed by Putin’s demands for ending the war on Friday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer commended his “commitment to providing security guarantees” for Ukraine ahead of today’s meeting. The president’s longtime rival Hillary Clinton said she would personally nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize if he could broker a deal hat didn’t “capitulate” to Putin – but do you think winning one of the world’s most famous awards is in Trump’s future?
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Trump has not been reticent about his desire to win the elusive diplomatic award, which was won by then-President Barack Obama in 2009 for his promotion of non-nuclear proliferation and “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy”.
Referencing Trump’s efforts to end the disputes between India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran and Cambodia and Thailand, among others, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said he had “brokered, on average, about one peace deal or ceasefire per month during his [first] six months in office”.
“It’s well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,” she added.
Trump’s competitor in the 2016 presidential race, Mrs Clinton, said a win should only accompany a peace deal in Ukraine that involved “really standing up” to Putin, however.
“I understand, from everything I read, that he would very much like to receive the Nobel Peace Prize,” she told the Raging Moderates podcast. “If he could end it, without putting Ukraine in a position where it had to concede its territory to the aggressor, had to, in a way, validate Putin’s vision of greater Russia, but instead could really stand up to Putin… I’d nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize.”
