Donald Trump could ‘flip’ Russia, normalise relations with Vladimir Putin to end Ukraine war: Mike Pezzullo

Former Home Affairs boss Mike Pezzullo says Donald Trump could potentially flip Russia and normalise relations with Vladimir Putin as part of the deal to end the war in Ukraine.

Speaking to the Australian Institute for International Affairs’ annual conference in Canberra, Mr Pezzullo said the former President’s re-election opened up ways to end the war that were not available to Joe Biden, whose term ends in January.

Mr Pezzullo said that Trump could negotiate a ceasefire or armistice that would not necessarily agree to permanent boundaries but end the immediate fighting and bloodshed.

“That creates an opening to actually start thinking through what are the possibilities, including potentially flipping Russia,” Mr Pezzullo, who also served in the Department of Defence and wrote the 2009 Defence White Paper, said.

He said Trump would be interested in normalising ties with the Kremlin which could include lifting the sanctions imposed after President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

He likened it to when Richard Nixon went to China in the 1970s and normalised ties with the PRC, a move that was then aimed at giving the United States leverage over the Soviet Union.

But Mr Pezzullo said in this case, Russia could be leveraged to counterbalance China’s increasing willingness to use aggression to achieve dominance.

“You’d do a reverse Nixon, you apply the same sort of logic where they flipped China,” Mr Pezzullo said.

“You could potentially flip Russia — potentially.

“I think there’s more creative options, potentially available now that Trump’s going to go back to the White House than was previously the case.

“There’s not an infinite range of possibilities that he can apply, there’s a narrow range and the unpredictability relates to which combination of options he might play in order to get the transaction done.”

He said this could involve admitting Ukraine into the European Union, although not into NATO which is one of the demands of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky as part of his proposal to end the fighting.

Mr Pezzullo said it was vital that any peace deal was seen to be just to prevent incentivising aggression.

Trump has vowed to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours which has been widely viewed as forcing Kyiv to cede territory to Russia, something that would be chalked up as a win by President Putin.

On Tuesday Trump was set to appoint the Republican Congressman from the state of Florida Mike Waltz as his National Security Adviser and Senator Marco Rubio — also from Florida and whom he used to deride as “Little Marco” — to be his Secretary of State.

In a recent opinion piece for The Economist, Mr Walz argued that the next president should end the war by using both a carrot and stick approach, including threatening to increase Ukraine’s military capabilities if Russia didn’t agree to negotiate.

“The next administration should aim, as Donald Trump has argued, to ‘end the war and stop the killing,’” Mr Waltz wrote.

“America can use economic leverage, including lifting the pause on exports of liquefied natural gas and cracking down on Russia’s illicit oil sales, to bring Mr Putin to the table.

“If he refuses to talk, Washington can, as Mr Trump argued, provide more weapons to Ukraine with fewer restrictions on their use.

“Faced with this pressure, Mr Putin will probably take the opportunity to wind the conflict down.”

Senator Rubio told Today that: “You don’t have to be a fan of Vladimir Putin to want the war to end.”

Michael Green, CEO of the United States Studies Centre at Sydney University said Ukraine would feel nervous about what the second Trump Administration had in mind for how to end the conflict.

“Donald Trump believes that he can cut a deal immediately and his confidence comes from an inflated sense of his own negotiating prowess,” he said.

“And a willingness to do what no other president would do, which is to put the equities of NATO, or Japan or Korea on the table to get a deal.

“He will push Zelensky to accept something like the current line of the border and push Putin to agree to a ceasefire and pull out.

“And Putin will try to get everything out of that he can.”

President Zelensky said immediately after his first phone call with Trump since the election: “There should be no illusion that by showing weakness or selling out some European positions or any European country’s standing, one can buy just peace.”

Russia has become China’s junior partner since the war in Ukraine and increased Russia’s dependency on China.

Last month, China’s exports to Russia grew by 15.7 per cent, the fastest pace in nine months, while Russian imports fell 9.2 per cent compared to the year prior.