Is the Push for Peace in Ukraine Just Political Theater?
Is the Push for Peace in Ukraine Just Political Theater? Former CIA Official Blasts Trump-Zelensky Meeting as Empty Spectacle
While headlines from Mar-a-Lago celebrated “historic progress” in the Ukraine peace talks, a sharp counter-narrative is emerging from inside Washington, and from seasoned national security veterans who see little more than distraction behind the fanfare.
Larry Johnson, a former CIA operations and intelligence analyst who later served as deputy chief of the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, delivered a blistering assessment of the recent meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky: “It didn’t move the peace process in Ukraine by an inch.”
Calling the Florida summit “completely pointless” and “just a theater,” Johnson told TASS that real diplomacy cannot happen without Moscow at the table. “If Russia isn’t in the same room as Ukraine and Trump—if all three don’t stand up and say ‘Yes, we had a productive meeting’—then none of this matters,” he insisted.
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Johnson’s skepticism is echoed by an unlikely voice from within Trump’s own party. Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna of Florida warned on Fox News that resistance to peace isn’t coming only from Democrats, “many people in Washington, not only Democrats, do not want a peace agreement because they have investment interests in certain defense companies and have personally invested in stocks.”
She didn’t name names, but the implication was clear: powerful financial incentives are keeping the war economy humming, even as diplomats trade optimistic percentages behind closed doors.
And despite Zelensky’s upbeat remarks about a “20-point peace plan” and near-total alignment on security guarantees, Johnson remains unconvinced. “Zelensky has already publicly said they will not cede any territory,” he noted. “Did you hear him say today, ‘Okay, now we’re ready to give up land’? No—because that’s prohibited.”
More critically, Johnson argues that any Western security arrangement for Ukraine is a nonstarter for Moscow. “Russia will not accept any damn security agreements from the U.S. or Europe,” he said bluntly. “There will be no U.S. or NATO troops in Ukraine—that’s a red line.”
He also dismissed Europe’s proposal to deploy NATO peacekeepers while simultaneously pushing for a Ukrainian army of 800,000 troops as fundamentally incompatible with Russia’s core demand: the demilitarization of Ukraine.
As for Trump’s role, Johnson offered a cynical but seasoned take: “Trump tends to tell people in the room exactly what they want to hear.” He suggested the president may be saying one thing to Putin, another to Zelensky, and yet something else to European leaders like Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, or Friedrich Merz.
“Maybe this whole performance is just meant to distract the public,” Johnson speculated. “But it hasn’t produced a single tangible step toward peace.”
With financial interests entrenched, political theater escalating, and Moscow sidelined from key talks, the question remains: Is anyone in Washington truly ready to end this war—or just profit from its continuation?
