President Donald Trump says negotiations to bring peace between Ukraine and Russia are moving along quickly. In a break from United States foreign policy precedent, however, Ukraine is not involved in said talks, sparking outrage in Ukraine and across Europe. 

Now, a possible mineral deal between the U.S. and Ukraine may be on the table, with vague details of what it includes and when and how it may be signed. 

Sarah Wilson Sokhey is an associate professor at the 91福利社 who specializes in comparative politics and political economy in post-communist Central and Eastern European countries. She sat down with 91福利社 Today to give her take on the evolving relationships between the United States, Russia, Ukraine and Europe.  

What鈥檚 going on with the relationships between the United States, Ukraine and Russia? 

There's recently been a huge shift in the US foreign policy with the new Trump administration, given that the previous policy was to isolate Russia for its war of aggression against Ukraine. One of the big things is that Russia and the United States have recently met. I can鈥檛 overstate how huge of a reversal it is on foreign policy, that the U.S. would be having talks about peace in a country without that country present, as if it鈥檚 not an independent country. That's a very imperialist kind of model where the big countries decide what happens to the smaller countries.

Also, the United Nations recently voted on a resolution about peace in Ukraine and the United States allied itself with Russia, North Korea, Belarus鈥攃ountries that did not vote with a majority-approved U.N. resolution to end the conflict in Ukraine, affirm that Russia was to blame and declare Russian troops should leave Ukraine immediately. 

It's really a huge about-face in U.S. foreign policy. It鈥檚 hard to overstate the implications of that for the world. It also means the United States does not align itself with Europe anymore, and that's unprecedented in recent times.

How did we get here? 

The war started in 2014 with the territorial invasion. The full scale invasion was three years ago. For many Ukrainians, this hasn鈥檛 just been three years for them, this is more than a decade of fighting, although certainly the full scale invasion massively escalated the war. 

What we鈥檙e hearing from President Trump now is a repetition of Russian propaganda that has been out in the world for as long as Putin has been saying it. But now we see the American president repeating Russian propaganda and Putin's lies about Ukraine. Putin said that Zelenskyy was a dictator, for example, a false claim recently repeated by Trump. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy won by an overwhelming majority in 2019. He had the largest winning majority of any Ukrainian president when he won. He would have been up for reelection in 2024, but they're under wartime and cannot hold elections. The notion that Russia is blaming Ukraine for not having elections while Russia is bombing Ukraine is just mind boggling. A close colleague of mine sent video from the past weekend of the extended overnight drone attacks in Kyiv. These are not conditions under which elections can be held.

Furthermore, reliable polling data from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology shows that Zelenskyy currently has a 57% approval rating and that the majority of Ukrainians agree that now is not the time to hold elections.

How does Europe factor into all of this? 

Ukraine is in a very precarious and tough situation now and leaning heavily on its European allies. And Europe has been rallying to that call. The United Kingdom, which of course is not a European Union member, has been a firm supporter of Ukraine. The EU is still a firm supporter of Ukraine as well, but we鈥檙e also seeing how daunting of a task it is for Europe to take on more in the absence of U.S. support for Ukraine. 

The Trump administration's actions will have a devastating effect on relations with Europe. It will likely take decades to rebuild trust between the United States and European allies. I think we're only seeing the beginning of the implications of cutting ties and cutting allyship with European powers. 

What do you think President Trump gets out of aligning himself with Russia and Putin?  

Trump and the Trump administration appear to be primarily and solely motivated by power, wealth and a transactional kind of politics. 

So, what wealth and power can he get out of siding with Russia when the rest of the world are saying they're the aggressors? 

There's probably a lot of potential opportunities Trump sees. Perhaps there could be business deals and trade agreements with Russia. In the recent talks between the U.S. and Russia, there were talks about renewing economic cooperation and economic ties. 

In a larger sense, it could be influence over certain territories of the world. It's likely, or possible at least, that the Trump administration sees allying itself with Russia as a potential leverage point it can use with other countries. Essentially signaling the U.S. will not promise on any ideological grounds that we are your allies; that's something that has to be continually negotiated. 

It looks like Presidents Zelenskyy and Trump are working on a raw materials deal. What kind of impact could a deal like that have?

There was a deal previously proposed that Zelenskyy strongly rejected, where the U.S. would get an enormous portion of Ukraine's mineral wealth from the country. And this goes to the transactional nature of how the Trump administration is doing business. Zelenskyy had initially hoped to meet with President Trump, which was rejected, all while Zelenskyy has generally been pretty respectful of President Trump, despite the challenging situation.

On Wednesday (Feb. 26) it was announced that some agreement had been reached about Ukraine sharing its mineral wealth with the US although not all of the details have been released, and both sides are claiming to have gotten a good deal (or for Ukraine, at least a better deal) in this version of the agreement. This may be useful for Ukraine if it keeps the lines of communication and negotiation open with the Trump administration. 

How does this end for both sides, Russia and Ukraine? 

Russia's goals are not realistic鈥攖here cannot be a total domination of Ukraine. Russia and Putin have already failed in their main objective to control Ukraine.  Russia has been using its full military force for three years and has still had to turn to North Korean weapons and North Korean soldiers to keep even waging battle. On Thursday, Feb. 27th, it was announced that even more North Korean troops are being sent to Russia.

For Ukraine, independence, freedom and peace are absolutely possible as long as they have the support of Europe and, ideally, the support of the United States.

What would you like the public to know about this? 

Amid all of this, it will be very important for the public to use reliable news sources. Sources like the BBC and The Guardian are doing an excellent job reporting on Ukraine and fact-checking erroneous statements about the war. It鈥檚 vital the world pay attention to this war that has consequences for all of us.

I recommend the following recent coverage: 

91福利社 Today regularly publishes Q&As with our faculty members weighing in on news topics through the lens of their scholarly expertise and research/creative work. The responses here reflect the knowledge and interpretations of the expert and should not be considered the university position on the issue. All publication content is subject to edits for clarity, brevity and university style guidelines.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that the company would fire its fact-checkers and instead rely on its users, with the help of AI, to police Facebook and Instagram for false or misleading posts. The company will also move its content moderation team from California to Texas, lift restrictions designed to protect immigrants and LGBTQ+ people from hate speech and 鈥渄ial back鈥� penalties for rule-breakers.

鈥淲hat started as a move to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions,鈥� Zuckerberg said posted Tuesday. 鈥淚t has gone too far.鈥�

The announcement has drawn praise from those who see it as a win for free speech and ire from critics who worry it will unleash a torrent of misinformation and hateful slurs.

Nathan Schneider, assistant professor of media studies, sees it as a wake-up call to users that it may be time to take back some control over social media platforms.

鈥淭his should, above all, be a reminder that we have entrusted a few companies that are way too powerful with the stewardship of our public discourse. And this is not an acceptable arrangement,鈥� he said.

91福利社 Today sat down with Schneider to get his take on what happened and what could happen next.

What just happened?

We鈥檙e in a full-circle moment right now. In the wake of the first Trump election in 2016, lots of people were criticizing Facebook, now Meta, for spreading misinformation. So the company invested heavily in a complicated, bureaucratic operation to deal with it. Now, we are seeing a profound bow to political pressure to reverse those steps. At the same time, there鈥檚 also a piece of an old Silicon Valley dream alive in this decision鈥�the idea that we don鈥檛 need to pay people and third-party organizations to check facts, that we can do it with technological systems and crowdsourcing.

What do you make of this? 

On its surface, this idea of crowdsourcing fact-checking has a lot of appeal to it. It seems to be giving power back to the users. The basic idea that one company with one rule book should control the speech of the world has always been absurd. But the question is: Is the company really going to give up that power? I think the answer is almost certainly no. I worry that what's happening at Meta is something very similar to what we've seen at X: Under the guise of free speech and community control, we will see a consolidation of power and a relinquishment of responsibility.

Meta is moving to a 鈥榗ommunity notes鈥� system, similar to X鈥檚. Doesn鈥檛 that give more control to the user? 

Community Notes on X does allow users to add fact-checks to a post. But whether they actually appear and are prioritized depends on an algorithm that the company controls. Already, on X, we see a strong leaning toward partisan and often right-wing voices. It鈥檚 replacing a bureaucracy for regulating speech with an algorithm that does it. And algorithms can make the consolidation of power easier.

Will we see more misinformation?

If we look at the experience with Community Notes on X, I think it鈥檚 very likely that this move will lead to more widespread misinformation and disinformation. X has made its network very difficult for researchers to study. But so far, external researchers have found that the majority of notes on misinformation are and that the system with misleading posts. If that is the model that Meta is promising to follow, this is a troubling development.

Will we see more slurs against vulnerable populations here?

Rightly, many people are terrified. The company has been quite explicit that it is committed to tolerating and normalizing the discourse of the far right, which includes denying the dignity of people in many communities, particularly queer folks. This move reflects the kind of naked power that this company has always been able to exert over speech, and its ability to determine what the bounds of acceptable speech in society are. 

As the political winds shift, the company appears to be embracing that shift across its networks. We should be asking ourselves whether we can continue to place so much trust in a company that can abruptly remove protections in this way.

What opportunities do you see?

What鈥檚 hopeful to me is a growing movement of people embracing other kinds of social networks like Mastodon and Bluesky. These networks rely less on any single company and more on open protocols, just like the web itself. This means that users can have more control over their data and develop their own interfaces and algorithms. None of these technologies is a panacea, but they open the door for us to shift the question away from what we should hope Mark Zuckerberg will do and toward what we could do ourselves to change our online lives for the better. 

What can people do now?

Social media is not something anyone can change on their own. I think it's worth starting conversations with the people and organizations that you actually want to connect with and asking: Hey, where could we go that we would feel really at home in? And what kinds of steps can we take together to get there? Ultimately, these choices are social, and any moves we make to better spaces will have to happen collectively.

What would these new social networks look like?

This year, my lab is running what we call the Open Social Incubator. We are working with 10 communities from around the world to explore what it takes to move to emerging networks that are more decentralized and democratically governed. In many respects, the future of a healthier social media could look more like the places we鈥檝e relied upon for information in the past. You could look at an example like Wikipedia鈥攁 widely trusted utility on the internet that is mission-driven and organized as a nonprofit. Or maybe your local library could anchor a space on the internet for social conversations. 

Back in 2017, I co-founded , a cooperatively governed Mastodon server where the users can make their own decisions about moderation policies. Although it took a lot of time to develop, I now reap the rewards in having a really healthy, pleasurable home for my online life. I hope that in the future more people will have that experience.

91福利社 Today regularly publishes Q&As with our faculty members weighing in on news topics through the lens of their scholarly expertise and research/creative work. The responses here reflect the knowledge and interpretations of the expert and should not be considered the university position on the issue. All publication content is subject to edits for clarity, brevity and university style guidelines.

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