Three years ago, I was on a train headed across the Ukraine border to Kiev. Three years later, I'm on the same train, and things have changed. President Trump is back in office, and he has signaled that this war is to come to an end. He has dispatched his envoys across the continent of Europe to the NATO conference in Brussels, J.D. Vance is on his way to the security conference in Munich, and Scott Besant is on the train headed to Ukraine.
00:01:34.480President Trump has signaled that this war is to come to an end.
00:01:40.960And he has now dispatched his envoys across the continent of Europe.
00:01:47.280So Pete Hegseth is on his way to the NATO conference in Brussels.
00:01:52.420J.D. Vance is going to be finishing things up in Munich at the security conference, which is Davos for defense.
00:02:00.840And that Scott Besant is on this very train right now.
00:02:05.020The secretary of the treasury is going to be going across to Kiev to present Zelensky a sweetheart deal, a deal that he can't refuse, a five-part deal.
00:02:17.420The deal that President Trump has come up with for Ukraine is hugely predicated on not only securing the peace, keeping Ukraine out of NATO, which, of course, has always been Russia's red line.
00:02:38.720There's going to be, obviously, a land swap.
00:02:43.740So a question of Ukrainian territory, which is currently held by Russia, some Russian territory in the Kurds region that's currently held by Ukraine that will be swapped back.
00:02:54.100But then, of course, generally diplomatic recognition and full international recognition for the Russian annexed territories.
00:03:01.140And, of course, the final border lines for that remain to be seen.
00:03:04.600We're also likely going to see a sort of Syrianization of the conflict, whereby they're calling for a demilitarized zone to be adjacent to the border region of the Donbass.
00:03:17.760And bringing in troops who aren't necessarily U.S. troops, but NATO, British, other European and even non-European troops like the Indians, for example, bring them here.
00:03:30.760Potentially even the Chinese, we will see.
00:03:32.580That's not something that I've been privy to, but that's the general scope of the discussions right now for what we know in terms of the peace deal that, of course, this is already leaked by Keith Kellogg, from Keith Kellogg, and leaked a few days before his trip.
00:03:49.760And so you have the diplomatic peace, you have the military peace, which includes Ukraine not going into NATO, and this bit of the DMZ and the international force that's going to secure the DMZ.
00:04:05.260But then what Scott Besson is here to do is he is going to be presenting to Zelensky this new idea of economic, U.S. economic investment into Ukraine.
00:04:17.400This is President Trump's idea. It goes along the lines of the Sovereign Wealth Fund.
00:04:22.320So looking at, as you know, publicly reported already, the rare earth minerals, as well as energy, and including infrastructure, sort of the rebuilding of Ukraine, having U.S. investment into that, and potentially even U.S. ownership, or at least that ownership stake in it, in terms of the Sovereign Wealth Fund.
00:04:44.200The idea is that that's also going to provide a sort of security and a sort of stability whereby in, okay, Ukraine's not going to be a part of NATO, but if the U.S. has those interests and ownership stake in that area, particularly even something that may be looking at the port of Odessa,
00:05:03.900that this could be a huge game changer for the Americans, so there would be an economic interest, vital economic interest, as well as potentially a reason for both Ukraine, the United States, and Russia to think twice about another military conflict in the area.
00:05:23.960Again, all of this is subject to negotiation, but this is the current deal that President Trump is going to be offering through Secretary Scott Besson to Zelensky.
00:05:33.400In fact, a piece of that, that I had the opportunity to ask about, was regarding U.S. LNG and U.S. refining capacity.
00:05:42.840So, one piece of the equation is, as we know, Ukraine certainly has their nuclear facilities, the nuclear power plants, but will Ukraine be able to produce its own energy through the refining process?
00:05:56.360And obviously, that's something where U.S. firms could want to be looking into, again, as we say in the show all the time.
00:06:18.300They have their pipeline infrastructure and their pipeline platforms.
00:06:20.720But, of course, that's always been used for Russian oil to be able to pass through Ukraine into Europe.
00:06:27.600And I would certainly not be surprised if that were part of something that Russia wants to turn back on.
00:06:33.720We already know one big key to the puzzle, as we're recording this, is that Russia has already been given the green light by Denmark to start patching up pieces of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that connected Russia and Germany.
00:06:51.740That's potential billions and billions of revenue flowing through there every single day for the Russian Federation.
00:06:59.800Now, when the U.S. comes back in, from the deal side, President Trump, as we know, has been looking to lower the price of oil, not just for Americans, but also as a foreign policy instrument that can be used in these negotiations.
00:07:15.080He's pointed out again and again that the only reason that Russia would be able to fund this war was because of the high oil prices that existed in the Biden regime.
00:07:25.440These were conditions that Biden and Jake Sullivan absolutely created.
00:07:29.080So, they would never have been able to do that, the Iranians would never have been able to fund operations across the Middle East, and the Saudis never would have been able to buy up half of the PGA, as a matter of fact.
00:07:41.280And again, a lot of that's predicated on national sovereign wealth fund, which is something that President Trump wants to put the U.S. in the driver's seat on for having our own sovereign wealth fund.
00:07:52.360Obviously, as you can tell, I'm here on the Treasury trip, so we're learning a lot about economics.
00:07:59.080So, a huge piece of that that I asked the Secretary was, well, why not have U.S. LNG be sold to Ukraine and have that be a part of the deal?
00:08:09.120One of the questions they had, they said, was, well, Ukraine doesn't have the infrastructure facilities for receiving the LNG.
00:08:16.520They don't have an LNG platform, and I pointed out, well, Poland has an LNG platform, so couldn't some of those pipelines or potentially some of that pipeline infrastructure simply flow in the other direction?
00:08:27.020And so, instead of the Russian oil flowing to Europe, you have American LNG coming through Poland and flowing to Ukraine.
00:08:36.480There may be a way for that to take place, so we'll see if that happens, we'll see how the negotiations go.
00:08:42.740So, when we embarked on this trip, they didn't have it set up already, and it certainly wasn't public.
00:08:49.180Of course, if you're listening to this, it's only because they're already safely out of the territory of Ukraine.
00:08:56.300And look, when it comes down to it, the idea here is that for operational security purposes,
00:09:01.120we're not going to be putting that out publicly because we don't post anything when we're in a high-risk area unless we're already out of that high-risk area.
00:09:13.020So, of course, I'd like to maintain that operational security while I make my way to the NATO conference in the coming days.
00:09:19.580So, looking forward to all of this, we have to understand, and Zelensky has to understand,
00:09:26.320that the first deal is always going to be the best one.
00:09:28.960The first deal is absolutely, this is the Gucci deal, this is President Trump coming in and saying,
00:09:34.580I want to end this war, and also look at this economically.
00:09:38.360I want there to be an economic benefit for the American people, but also I want to stop the killing.
00:09:44.540So, how can the American people achieve anything?
00:09:49.000How can the American people actually get something that they want and something that will help them out of this?
00:09:55.340So, rather than putting tariffs on just countries that we trade with,
00:09:59.940why not also increase U.S. investment stake, increase U.S. direct investment through the sovereign wealth fund,
00:12:17.620We are on the outskirts of Kiev, Ukraine.
00:12:20.080We have come through, spent the night here on the train.
00:12:25.300We have relational accommodations, as you can see.
00:12:32.300Just about 20 minutes now from arriving at Kiev Central Station.
00:12:38.440We are here, Human Events Daily, just about three months into the outbreak of the Ukraine-Russian war.
00:12:50.120And now we are here again, three years later.
00:12:54.300We are here at the start, and hopefully, here, what should be at the end.
00:13:04.580You can see the frost on the ground, some snow, not too much, smoke coming up from the chimneys as we pass by the villages and settlements outside of Kiev.
00:13:17.640Later today, Secretary Besant will be meeting with President Zelensky, presenting that new deal to him from President Trump.
00:13:32.100In person, by the way, not going to Munich, not going to Vienna or Brussels, one of those places.
00:13:39.780Now, we've come all the way here to Kiev, to the center of things, to the heart of the matter, to directly get down to business.
00:13:51.460So, that's where we're going to go today.
00:13:55.460The house is now starting to get a bit larger, getting closer and closer into Kiev proper.
00:14:12.460We are here in Kiev, loaded up on our way to go and see President Zelensky.
00:14:19.460As well as a number of other government officials here in the city.
00:14:28.460Here in Kiev, just had Secretary Besant meet with the Prime Minister of Ukraine, discussed the economic deal that he's looking to put forward for Ukraine and the United States.
00:14:40.460He said he wants to intertwine the economy's continued material support for Ukraine from the United States side.
00:14:49.460That signaled both to the Ukrainian leadership and the Russian leadership that America does intend to support a fully independent Ukraine.
00:14:58.460The United States is committed to Ukraine's independence and is also committed that the American people will also understand what we're doing here.
00:15:07.460The President Trump has a plan to end this war and that we would like an economic cooperation agreement.
00:15:17.460And in exchange for this agreement, the U.S. will continue to provide material support for the Ukraine, for the people, and we believe that this agreement will be a strong signal to Russian leadership of the U.S. commitment that we have here.
00:15:38.460And we think it will be a strong signal to the American people that the money that is coming to Ukraine, we have shared values, we have shared security, and we look to increase our shared economic development.