What if Washington did not wait for the war in Ukraine to end before doing business with Moscow?
That is the idea now being explored inside the Trump administration: begin with smaller transactions — release prisoners, ease selected sanctions, reopen economic channels — and use each deal to create room for the next one. The approach is being pushed by John Coale, Donald Trump’s special envoy to Belarus, who has spent the past year testing a similar model with Alexander Lukashenko’s government.
Coale’s argument is that diplomacy does not have to begin with a grand settlement.
“The more interaction, the more trade-offs — either economic, prisoner, or whatever — leads step by step toward, hopefully, peace,” he told The Atlantic. The magazine reports that Trump has approved applying the same basic idea to Russia.
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| President Donald Trump meets Russian President Vladimir Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025, during a U.S.-Russia summit focused on the war in Ukraine and bilateral relations. Photo: Daniel Torok / The White House via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public Domain, U.S. Government work. |
The Belarus experiment
The model comes from Minsk.
Since 2025, Coale has negotiated a series of prisoner releases with Belarus while the United States gradually eased some sanctions. He has said those talks helped secure the freedom of roughly 700 to 800 detainees, and Reuters reported this month that additional prisoners were released as negotiations continued.
The exchanges were never simply humanitarian gestures. Sanctions relief, frozen assets and broader economic normalization were part of the same conversation. In September, Coale pledged U.S. support for efforts to unfreeze tens of millions of dollars in Belarusian assets held in American banks while continuing to press for more prisoner releases.
Belarusian opposition figures and human-rights activists have challenged the broader effect of that approach. Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski, who was himself released after years in prison, told Reuters that repression had continued even as detainees were freed, with new arrests offsetting some of the releases.
Still, the Trump administration now appears interested in using the same sequence with a much larger and more consequential target: Russia.
First, the prisoners
According to The Atlantic, Coale is compiling lists of Americans, Russian dissidents and journalists held in Russia who could become part of future negotiations with Moscow. The logic is familiar: start with an issue where a limited exchange may be possible, then build toward sanctions relief and economic engagement.
That would reverse the order usually expected in wartime diplomacy.
Rather than requiring a peace agreement before reopening economic relations, the proposal would allow selected transactions while the war is still unresolved — on the theory that repeated deals could create incentives for broader cooperation.
The possible areas of business go well beyond prisoner exchanges.
The Atlantic reports that Russian oil, diesel, rare-earth minerals and other commodities are among the sectors being discussed as possible channels for future U.S.-Russia trade.
For Moscow, those discussions would come while Western sanctions still restrict large parts of Russia’s energy and financial system. Russia has simultaneously tightened restrictions on the publication of energy and refining data, a move Reuters says is intended in part to make sanctions enforcement more difficult.
Diplomacy is moving on another track too
The economic idea is developing alongside a renewed U.S. effort to restart negotiations over Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelensky told Axios that the Trump administration is pushing several near-term steps: a ceasefire covering energy infrastructure, the reopening of the Black Sea grain corridor and another round of trilateral U.S.-Russia-Ukraine talks, potentially in Abu Dhabi.
Washington’s immediate focus also includes Ukrainian strikes on Russian diesel infrastructure. Those attacks have become part of a wider dispute over energy prices and the economic cost of the war.
A second diplomatic opportunity could come in December.
Trump has invited Vladimir Putin to attend the G20 summit in Miami. If Putin travels, it would create a rare opportunity for direct contact at a time when formal negotiations over Ukraine remain limited. The Kremlin has indicated that Putin could attend personally or send another representative.
That does not mean a leaders’ meeting is agreed, nor that a larger settlement is close. But it puts several pieces of diplomacy on the calendar at the same time.
The argument for deals before peace
Coale’s approach rests on a simple assumption: countries that are making trades, exchanging prisoners and discussing money may have more reasons to keep talking.
Under that logic, the first agreement does not need to solve the war. It only needs to make the second agreement easier.
That is what Washington believes it achieved, at least in part, in Belarus. Prisoner releases were followed by sanctions adjustments, discussions over frozen funds and now talk of deeper commercial ties. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko this week even proposed U.S. participation in a fertilizer project involving Russia’s Gazprom, another sign of how far the economic conversation has moved since Washington reopened contact with Minsk.
Applying the same formula to Russia would be far more complicated.
The sanctions imposed on Moscow are tied not only to detained Americans or bilateral disputes, but to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, territorial control and a much larger Western pressure campaign. Easing them in exchange for limited concessions would therefore raise a different set of political and strategic questions.
The Atlantic reports that Ukrainian officials and some Western diplomats worry that reopening trade too early could provide Russia with new revenue before the war is settled. Zelensky has also argued that economic pressure should remain part of the effort to constrain Moscow’s ability to continue the war.
The Trump administration is exploring the opposite sequence.
Not peace, then business.
Business, prisoners and smaller bargains first — and peace, perhaps, somewhere further down the road.
Whether Russia sees enough value in that ladder of deals to climb it is now the question.
Sources
- The Atlantic — Trump administration discussions around prisoner releases, sanctions relief and possible U.S.-Russia business ties.
- Reuters — John Coale’s Belarus diplomacy and the release of roughly 700–800 prisoners.
- Reuters — latest Belarus prisoner releases and sanctions negotiations.
- Axios — renewed U.S.-Russia-Ukraine diplomacy, possible Abu Dhabi talks and the Miami G20 invitation to Putin.