By Scott Graber
It is Tuesday, early, and I’m sitting at my pine-planked dining room table trying to divine whether there is actual movement on the Ukraine peace deal — a topic I thought I understood.
I thought I understood because I spent a year (1962) in postwar Germany, then called West Germany, where the U.S. Army was slated to take-on the Red Army and their Polish, Hungarian and Czechoslovak allies who were estimated to have about 50,000 topped-off T-54/55 tanks ready to roll through the Fulda Gap.
Like most of my teen-aged friends, I had a youthful interest in Soviet armor, infantry and nuclear weapons knowing that the U.S. Forces (in Germany) would only slow down this onslaught. We were, in fact, told that USAEUR would buy time, but would not stop this enormous concentration of Soviet fire-power.
Last week, in this space, I wrote about Ukraine’s troubled history — man-made famines and occupation by mongols — trying to explain why a lesser number of Ukrainian teenagers continue to defy hundreds of thousands of Russian parolees. This information, by the way, is all over the Internet.
One can also dial up the F-16, the Su-57 or the Leopard 1 A 5 and get videos detailing their capabilities. And, of course, there is the Institute for the Study of War that gives one interactive maps showing the daily disposition of the Russian and Ukrainian forces.
But this past week I learned — we all learned — that knowing the battlefield dispositions is not enough, not nearly enough, to appreciate the Administration’s peace proposal.
Up until last Monday I thought this was a three-dimensional chess game complicated by a man, Vladimir Putin, who sees himself as a reincarnation of Catherine the Great. On Monday, Dec. 1, 2025 — thanks to the Wall Street Journal — I learned I was wrong.
The Journal’s front page story tells us that Poland’s Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, is the one person who actually understands what is going on at the moment.
“We know this is not about peace. It’s about business.”
“Business! What has business got to do with slicing and dicing-up of Donbas and Donetsk?”
Apparently Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and Kirill Dmitriev have been meeting (mostly in Florida) and looking at a plan “for U.S. Companies to tap the roughly $300 billion of Russian Central bank assets, frozen in Europe, for U.S.-Russian investment projects and U.S.-led reconstruction in Ukraine.”
“U.S. and Russian companies could join to exploit the vast mineral wealth in the Arctic. There were no limits to what the two longtime adversaries could achieve, Dmitriev had argued. Their rival space industries, which raced one another during the Cold War, could even pursue a joint mission to Mars with Elon Musk’s SpaceX,” so said the Wall Street Journal last Monday.
Now, I suppose this kind of pre-settlement discussion of post-war business opportunity might be an acceptable stepping stone for mellowing-out Vladimir and tamping-down his dreams of greatness. However, these opportunities also involve Vladimir’s closest hometown friends, Gennady Timchenko, Yuri Kovalchuk and the Rotenburg brothers, Arcady and Boris.
These billionaire oligarchs “have sent representatives to quietly meet American companies to explore rare-earth mining and energy deals, according to people familiar with the meetings and European security officials. That includes reviving the giant Nord Stream pipeline, sabotaged by Ukrainian tactical divers …”
And, of course, there are those on our side of the fence who are also seeking business opportunities.
“Exxon, billionaire investor Todd Boehly and others have explored buying assets owned by Lukoil, Russia’s 2nd largest oil producer. The U.S.-sanctioned Lukoil in October to increase pressure on Moscow, prompting the company to put its overseas assets up for sale.
“Gentry Beach, a college friend of Donald Trump Jr., and campaign donor to his father, has been in talks to acquire a Russian Arctic gas project if it is released from sanctions.”
It seems that a sharing of the Arctic gas reserves, the joint rebuilding of the Nord Stream pipeline, gas concessions in the Sea of Okhotsk and nickel mines in Siberia are as important as the re-naming of Ukrainian geography.
I can, as I write these words, hear my friends saying, “Grow up, Scott. Your quaint notions of Ukrainian self-determination — of Ukraine breaking away from a man who targets women, children and apartment blocks — are antique and, frankly, tiresome.”
“Forget about sovereignty and freedom, let’s make a little money on this Russian aggression!”
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
