AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with the high-level talks between Russian and U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia, where they’re meeting to discuss a possible end to the war in Ukraine and ways to improve ties between Washington and Moscow. The talks include U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and might pave the way for a possible meeting between President Trump and Russian [President] Vladimir Putin. Today’s talks come less than a week after Trump held a 90-minute call with Putin.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who will be in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday on a separate state visit, was not invited to attend the U.S.-Russian talks. Zelensky spoke to reporters Monday.

PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY: [translated] Ukraine will not take part in the talks in Saudi Arabia. Ukraine did not know anything about them. Ukraine regards any negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine as ones that have no result, and we cannot recognize any agreements about us made without us, and will not recognize such agreements.

AMY GOODMAN: Zelensky also rejected a demand by the Trump administration for Ukraine to give the United States ownership of half of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as compensation for past and future aid to Ukraine. He called for stronger American security guarantees as part of any minerals deal.

Meanwhile, at an emergency European summit on Ukraine held in Paris Monday, European leaders were divided on proposals for European troops to be deployed inside Ukraine in the event of a peace deal. While German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was highly inappropriate to be discussing sending troops before a peace deal is reached, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer offered to send British troops to Ukraine.

PRIME MINISTER KEIR STARMER: At stake is not just the future of Ukraine. It is an existential question for Europe as a whole, and therefore vital for Britain’s national interest. … Europe must play its role, and I’m prepared to consider committing British forces on the ground, alongside others, if there is a lasting peace agreement.

AMY GOODMAN: Commenting on the meeting, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she was concerned about what she called “Russia’s imperial dreams.”

PRIME MINISTER METTE FREDERIKSEN: I am very concerned about making a fast ceasefire, because it can actually give Putin and Russia a better possibility to go back to Russia and to reramp and to mobilize again, attacking Ukraine or another country in Europe.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on all of this, we’re joined by two guests.

From Washington, D.C., Matt Duss is with us, executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy, former foreign policy adviser for Senator Bernie Sanders. His latest piece for The Guardian, “Democrats have become the part of war. Americans are tired of it.” Matt Duss’s recent Foreign Policy piece is “It’s Time for Ukraine to Make the Best Peace It Can.”

And in Brussels, we’re joined by Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He’s served as adviser to three U.N. secretaries-general, is now a sustainable development solutions advocate under Secretary-General António Guterres. His piece for Common Dreams is headlined “The War in Ukraine Was Provoked — and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace.”

Let’s begin with Professor Sachs in Brussels. You’re going to be involved with an event in Brussels tomorrow, “The Geopolitics of Peace.” Can you talk about what’s happening right now in Saudi Arabia? You have the representatives of President Trump and President Putin who have just been involved with four hours of negotiations. You have Zelensky meeting with the Turkish president and now headed to Saudi Arabia for different meetings. And he said “nothing about us without us.” But can you talk about what’s happening now in Saudi Arabia and the possibility of peace?

JEFFREY SACHS: Good morning, Amy. Good morning, Matt.

What’s happening in Saudi Arabia is potentially very good news. It could mean the end of a war in which perhaps a million Ukrainians have died or been wounded gravely up until now. This is a war that never should have happened. It came about because of several provocative U.S. actions over 30 years, notably the expansion of NATO eastward against commitments made back in 1990, the U.S. participation in a violent coup in Ukraine in February 2014, the U.S.-Ukraine agreement to discard a U.N. Security Council-backed Minsk II agreement and the failure of the Biden administration to negotiate with President Putin in December 2021 and January 2022. I was personally involved in watching closely all of those events over the past 30 years. This war never should have happened.

It could have been averted at many times. It could have ended in negotiation in March 2022, saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. I urged it. The Ukrainians walked away from the table because the British and the Americans told them to. This is so tragic. And everyone will understand this as the historians make all of this very clear. Again, I flew to Ankara in the spring of 2022 to understand exactly how these negotiations had broken down. And the United States and Britain were behind it, because, as Keir Starmer said in the clip that you played, this is about Europe’s security. They’re using Ukraine. This is the bottom line.

So, what’s happening, in short, in Saudi Arabia is the most positive news for Ukrainians that there has been in years. President Trump understands — and, unfortunately, previous presidents did not — that the U.S. provocations need to stop, so this war stops, so the deaths stop. That is the bottom line.

I think it’s important for everybody to understand also that on October 5th, 2022, Zelensky ruled out any negotiations. He said it’s illegal. This was a declaration of the Ukrainian government. So, the government of Ukraine, sadly, really unwisely — I tried many, many times to explain to them — they ruled out negotiations. They ruled them out until today. This is tragic for them. Now they say, “We want a seat at the table.” They said, “We don’t want any table,” all along. And Zelensky rules by martial law, by decree, when the opinion surveys show that a majority of Ukrainians want peace right now even at the cost of territorial concessions.

So, my bottom line, Amy, is that while the Trump administration does some pretty weird things, like demanding mineral rights — this is absurd, this is completely bizarre — at the same time, the Trump administration, for the first time, is telling the truth about the fundamental causes of this war and how it can end. And that is the best news possible for Ukraine, first and foremost, and for the United States, for Russia and for the world, that peace could come to Ukraine very, very shortly. So, this, I think, is the bottom line.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I’d like to bring in Matt Duss into the conversation. Matt, your reaction to the events and the Trump administration’s complete reversal of the previous administration’s policy, and this whole issue of whether there could have been peace earlier on but that the Biden administration and the British scuttled the developing peace plan back two years ago?

MATT DUSS: Well, I mean, first off, and again, great to be with you and great to be here with Professor Sachs.

I mean, I think, you know, the story that Professor Sachs just told, there are elements of truth to it, but there are also — it’s a great deal in there that’s misleading and, frankly, completely one-sided, absolving Vladimir Putin of any responsibility. Vladimir Putin is the one who chose to invade Ukraine, let’s remember. It’s important to understand the history, important to understand that the role that NATO expansion has played as being seen as a threat to Russia, that is real. That, however, does not explain Vladimir Putin’s decision to illegally invade, annex and occupy parts of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin himself has told us multiple times what his vision for Ukraine is, and that’s to retake Ukraine and make it once again part of the larger Russian imperium. So, again, important to understand the historical context, but I would really warn against seeing, you know, Vladimir Putin as some kind of innocent victim of American machinations here, which is the story that Professor Sachs seems to be trying to tell.

And lastly, it really denies the Ukrainians any agency, any responsibility for their own independence, for their own democracy. The Ukrainians are not simply being treated as instruments of American power here. The Ukrainians have made decisions on their own. Some of them have been wise, some of them very admirable, some of them less so. I think we can discuss that, as well. But they have played a major role here, and I think that is what’s concerning about these talks going on in Saudi Arabia, is that they are not — they are not there, and they are not included. And they have said, President Zelensky has said, that they will not be bound by any decisions made without their participation, which I think we can all agree is quite a legitimate position.

Now, having said that, you know, this is not the first time you’ve had a U.S. administration engaging with the government of Vladimir Putin. Of course, President Biden met with Putin in June 2021. They had a summit, trying to address some issues of tension in the U.S.-Russia relationship. And I think this also goes to the point that President Biden did not seek a conflict with Russia. There were efforts made to avert the invasion. There was very intensive diplomacy between the U.S. and Russia, also between the U.S.'s allies — Germany, France, U.K. — and Russia leading up to the February 2022 invasion. And I think it's worth taking that into account. Now, should more have been done? Perhaps. We can’t know. But I think Vladimir Putin has told us repeatedly about his very expansive goals and what he really hopes to achieve in Ukraine, and it’s not just about NATO. I mean, this should not be news to anyone here.

Again, getting back to the talks in Saudi Arabia, if there is a workable peace agreement to be had, that’s good. But I do think even the fact that these talks are happening between the United States and Russia, that is a victory for Putin. We have to understand that. Putin’s vision for Russia’s role and for the eventual dispensation for Ukraine is that this is something to be worked out between Russia and the United States, between these two great powers. He sees Russia as a rising force. Again, he’s trying to kind of reestablish Russia as a great empire, a great force in global affairs. And his vision of how global affairs should work is that the great powers make decisions, and the lesser powers just have to deal with it. Their concerns are of very little concern. And unfortunately, I think that is something we’ve seen from the Trump administration, too, whether it’s Ukraine, whether it’s Gaza. It’s that the powerful make decisions, and the weak just deal with it. I don’t think that’s just. And more importantly, I don’t think that’s going to lead to a sustainable peace. So, listen, if they do — if they do come out of these talks with a workable and sustainable and durable peace agreement for Ukraine, one that protects Ukraine’s democracy, one that protects Ukraine’s sovereignty, we should all support that. But without the participation of Ukraine, I’m very, very skeptical that we’re going to get anything like that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jeff Sachs, what about that? It is the Ukrainians who are actually fighting against Russia, and yet the Trump administration seems to feel that it can negotiate without Ukrainians present. And in addition to that, I wanted to ask you another issue. There’s been a lot of emphasis on these rare earth minerals that Trump raised, but there has been, according to many reports, massive buying of Ukrainian land by American agribusiness companies. Can you tell us anything about that, the validity of these claims?

JEFFREY SACHS: Sure. The American role in this has been quite sordid for a very, very long time. The goal, starting back in 1994, was to expand NATO and surround Russia in the Black Sea region. President Clinton signed off on that in 1994. Zbig Brzezinski wrote about it in The Grand Chessboard in 1997, explaining it, and explaining in a chapter that is completely wrong when you look back at it, said Russia will not be able to resist any of this. In 2002, the U.S. destabilized the relationship by unilaterally abandoning the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In 2008, the United States invited Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO, basically over strong objections by the Europeans, but the Europeans went along in the NATO Bucharest summit in 2008, over Russia’s brightest red lines. This was all known, understood provocations. All of the diplomats knew it. European leaders knew it. I spoke with them at the time. Everybody understood this.

In February 2014, the United States participated actively in a violent coup to overthrow Viktor Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine, who favored neutrality. This is very important to understand. The coup took place on February 22nd, 2014. Again, I saw some of this with my own eyes. It was ugly, the U.S. involvement in this coup. U.S. forces paid for this coup to an important extent. They stirred up this coup. This is all well understood now.

In 2015, the war could have ended with the Minsk II agreements, but the United States and Ukraine, despite the U.N. Security Council backing, said, “No, you don’t have to do that.” That was not a territorial claim on the Donbas by Russia. It was a claim for autonomy that the U.N. Security Council unanimously supported, and the U.S. and the governments in Ukraine, at the U.S. behest, to an important extent, completely dissed.

And then, it’s true that Biden and Putin met in 2021, but in December 2021, President Putin put on the table a draft U.S.-Russia security agreement. It was a completely negotiable document. I spent quite a bit of time speaking with the White House about that document. There should have been negotiations. The U.S. rejected negotiation over the central point, which was non-NATO enlargement to Ukraine. Biden knew what he was doing. It was a terrible mistake, terrible mistake of the Democrats, let me say, and of President Biden and his team.

Then, in March 2022, just days after the start of Russia’s invasion — but, by the way, the war had been going on for years, but this escalation in — starting February 22nd, 2022. Just days after that, they went to the negotiating table. And they came very close to an agreement, until the U.S. and Britain stopped it. BoJo, Boris Johnson, one of the most irresponsible politicians in our modern time, explained it explicitly later. He said this is a war about preserving Western hegemony. Yes, this was a proxy war against Russia. This was the plan all along. And the U.S. and U.K. talked — or, told Zelensky, basically, “Leave.”

Now, again, as I said earlier, I went to Ankara to discuss this in detail with the diplomats. I know the details of what happened. Ukraine left the negotiations that could have ended this in March 2022 with few deaths. And instead, there have been nearly a million deaths since then. This has been, unfortunately, a game of the United States for 30 years that Zbig Brzezinski spelled out in 1997. The U.S. thought they had the upper hand at every time. It was the economic sanctions or the weapons that were going to bring Russia to its knees. It was incredibly naive. I said so for many, many years. I said Ukraine — 

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Sachs?

JEFFREY SACHS: I said Ukraine will become the Afghanistan of Europe. And so it has. Now, today, in Saudi Arabia, maybe Ukraine can be saved from what the U.S. deep state set along the path of the last 25 years.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Sachs?

JEFFREY SACHS: And this is the biggest hope of today.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Sachs, Matt Duss said he agreed with a lot of what you said. And I was wondering if you agree with him in condemning Russia’s invasion in 2022.

JEFFREY SACHS: Of course I condemn Russia’s invasion. And of course I condemn the reasons for the provocation. I condemn the destabilization of the nuclear framework, which was the most important element of all in this. The United States walked out of the ABM Treaty and the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty unilaterally and would not negotiate with the Russians over this. The United States overthrew a government in Ukraine. The United States refused to negotiate with the Russians over basic security issues. This is a tragedy.

But the core of the tragedy is U.S. unipolarity, assumed by the neocons as early as 1992, put put in place by Clinton starting in 1994, and it’s been a consistent U.S. policy up until today, basically. And Trump is, actually, amazingly, it seems, trying to change it, which is unbelievable for us. I voted for Biden, of course. I was also an adviser to Bernie Sanders. I just want to be clear. This is a shock to me that it’s coming from this side of the American politics. The Dems became warmongers, period.

AMY GOODMAN: Matt Duss, that certainly also reverberates with your title about the Democrats —

MATT DUSS: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — becoming the party of war. The latest news out of Riyadh, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says officials at U.S.-Russia talks agreed to restore embassy staffing, create a high-level team to negotiate peace in Ukraine, peace, and promote economic cooperation. Your thoughts on this and where this history goes from there?

MATT DUSS: Yeah, I mean, I read that readout. I think it’s interesting. I would also note that, in that, one of those points is not just economic cooperation but, quote, “investment opportunities.” So, again, it really does seem like the Trump administration is not just trying to make peace, but trying to talk about potentially dividing the spoils with Russia. And that is very concerning, because I don’t think that’s going to lead to a sustainable and durable peace agreement. But again, in basic terms, it’s good and fine that the United States and Russia are talking. We need to talk to our adversaries more generally. I think that’s always true. But the details will matter. And again, Ukraine’s buy-in is absolutely necessary for this. This is not an agreement that can be made over their heads.

And I do want to step back and just respond to a couple things that Professor Sachs said in the kind of history that he laid out. It is very interesting to me that the Ukrainians themselves play little, if any, role in the history that Professor Sachs just lays out. This idea that 2014 was just a U.S.-backed coup is false. Yanukovych was overthrown after one of the largest demonstrations in Ukraine’s history, known as the Euromaidan. It was not the case that Yanukovych simply wanted to make Ukraine neutral. He wanted to draw Ukraine closer to Russia in a way that an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians rejected. So, we need to understand the history in all its complexity here. The Ukrainian people played a major role in that event. They played a major role in the decision to resist, quite admirably and courageously, the Russian invasion of their own country.

Now, going back to the negotiations in March of 2022, I think to treat the talks that took place in Turkey as if they would have simply ended the war, again, is not accurate. Now, there were interesting possibilities in those talks. There is little evidence that Putin himself was completely bought in. I’m very skeptical that, having launched a major invasion a month before, he would have been willing simply to end that invasion.

But again, this story that Professor Sachs is telling of the United States as the major manipulator and the key problem, and everyone else is simply reacting to what the United States does, I think, does not really reckon with reality. I’m certainly a critic of U.S. foreign policy. I’m a strong critic of the Biden administration’s foreign policy. But I do think if we want to have a real and honest discussion about where U.S. foreign policy has failed and where it needs to go, we need to reckon with the actual complex history of these events, and it’s not just a story of unending U.S. villainy.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Matt, just briefly, because we’re running out of time for this segment, the Trump administration has also been pushing for increased military expenditures by the NATO countries, from 2% — now he wants 5% of their GDP in terms of military spending. What’s your response? Because, obviously, the United States, as the main producer of weapons in the world, would benefit from such increased military spending by the various countries of Europe.

MATT DUSS: Right. I mean, this is a point that Trump has made repeatedly, and not just Trump. And, I mean, if we remember, Barack Obama was also someone who was pushing NATO member countries to meet their commitments. By raising that commitment is something very interesting from Trump, if he expects that they’ll be buying these weapons from the United States.

But I think one potentially interesting positive consequence of Trump’s approach here is that it — you know, if it really does force the Europeans to finally, at long last, start taking more serious steps to see to their own security. I mean, some of the comments that were played earlier from Keir Starmer, I’m not so sure about the idea of U.K. troops patrolling Ukraine. But just the fact that you see European governments now stepping up and looking much with a bit more urgency about their own responsibilities in their own neighborhood, I do think that could have potential positive consequences for the United States, given the way that, you know, the U.S. security architecture in Europe is something that helps buttress our own military-industrial complex and diminishes and, I think, really corrupts our own democracy. So, anything that weakens the military-industrial complex, I would say, is ultimately good.

AMY GOODMAN: Matt Duss, we want to thank you for being with us, Center for International Policy, former foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont. And economist Jeffrey Sachs is speaking to us from Brussels at the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. We’ll link to all of your articles, both Matt and Jeffrey.

When we come back, we speak with the Palestinian co-director Basel Adra about his Oscar-nominated documentary No Other Land and about Israel’s mass expulsion of Palestinians from his community in the West Bank, what the film is about. Stay with us.