Now that Donald Trump is the President of the USA, how can he end the Ukraine War as promised in his elections campaign?
Most people are talking about "making Putin and Zelensky sit at the Negotiating Table".
Negotiations are suitable for commercial transactions, where neither party is obliged or forced to accept the others terms, but is free to accept the terms offered by the other side, to make a counter offer, or walk away from the offer.
But the logic of ending wars is not the "deal or no deal" logic of commercial transactions, because in wars the parties are using force to compel the other to accept their conditions.
So, if in commercial negotiations one of the parties does not accept the others conditions, the negotiations simply end without the proposed transaction taking place, but in peace negotiations, if one of the parties does not accept the other's conditions, the war continues and wars can last for decades, or even centuries. The only sure way to end a war is to remove the causes which make the parties fight each other.
To remove the causes of a war one needs to determine who are the parties to the war and why they are fighting.
The party to the Ukraine War on the Ukrainian side are Volodimir Zelensky and the governments and NGOs of the NATO countries providing material, ideological and diplomatic support for continuation of the war. For brevity we shall refer to this side hereafter as "Ukraine".
The party on the side of the Russian Federation are the governments of the Russian Federation and of the countries providing material support to the Russian Federation in that war. For brevity we shall refer to this side hereafter as "RF" (not "the RF").
The aims of Ukraine are (1) to "win" the war by forcing RF to withdraw its presence to the RF side of the 1991 border between Ukraine and RF, (2) to accept Ukraine's membership of NATO, (3) to weaken and humiliate RF, and (3) eventually to cause disintegration of the Russian Federation into smaller entities governed by "liberal" "pro-Western" politicians, like Zelensky.
The above aims were articulated by various members of the Ukrainian side.
As RF is not willing to let Ukraine to attain its aims, the only hope for Ukraine is to continue and escalate the war with increased support from the US and European NATO countries. But continuation of the war, so far, has only lead to more territorial losses by Ukraine. And without increased "western" support Ukraine will "lose" the war, as admitted by Zelensky himself.
The aims of RF is: (1) to retain the areas within the 1991 borders of Ukraine which joined the Russian Federation after 2014, (2) to make Ukraine safe for the RF by preventing it from joining NATO, demilitarization, and abandoning all hostilities towards the RF.
As Ukraine continues to assault the RF with long range weapons, RF is taking more territory from Ukraine, and will continue to do so as long as the war continues. But, if Ukraine accepts the present de facto borders and makes permanent peace as per (2) above, RF would be willing to end the war and make peace.
Given the above situation, to stop the war, President Trump needs to stop all support for Ukraine, withdraw from NATO, and impose sanctions on those European countries which will continue to support the Ukraine War.
This will force Zelensky to accept the RF conditions, and the war will end.