Donald Trump, in his second four-year term as president, is upending the United States’ alliance with Ukraine in favor of a rapprochement with Ukraine’s mortal enemy, Russia.
Some might say he is ruthlessly and shamelessly abandoning Ukraine in its hour of duress.
In recent days, Trump, an admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has blamed Ukraine for igniting the war with Russia and accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of being a dictator.
These are baseless and absurd accusations. As Zelensky has correctly said, Trump is cynically turning reality on its head to suit his own geopolitical agenda. He is rewriting history.
Let’s get the facts straight before we proceed any further.
Europe’s biggest armed conflict since World War II broke out when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Since then, Russia has captured about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, while Ukraine has occupied a small portion of Russian land in the Kursk border region. Of late, the tide has turned ominously against Ukraine, raising questions whether it can continue resisting Russian advances.
The fighting, bearing a similarity to the barbaric trench warfare of World War I, has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 soldiers on both sides and virtually wiped out a generation of young Russian and Ukrainian men. It is a conflict that is totally wasteful in blood and treasure.
Russia’s invasion, described by Moscow as a “special military operation” intended to “demilitarize and denazify” a nation whose president is Jewish, is nothing more than an imperialist land grab.
Judging by his own words, Putin rejects Ukrainian statehood and believes that Ukraine should be part of Russia, as it was during the lengthy Soviet interregnum. Putin’s views are grounded in his sincere but misguided belief that Ukrainians are really Russians in terms of their ethnicity, religion, cultural traditions, and historical experiences.
Apart from these factors, what most probably drovePutin to egregiously violate Ukraine’s sovereignty was his fear that Ukraine is a stalking horse for an expansion of the NATO military alliance. Putin seemed convinced that Ukraine posed a military threat to his country, which is patently untrue.
As far as the United States and its allies were concerned, Putin’s rationales for invading Ukraine were specious, prompting Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, to rush to Ukraine’s defence. During Biden’s presidency, the U.S. sent weapons and economic aid to Ukraine to the tune of billions of dollars and supported United Nations resolutions condemning Russia’s aggression.
NATO members such as Canada, Poland, France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Romania pitched in, knowing full well that Russia’s attempt to wipe out Ukraine as an independent nation was unconscionable and unacceptable.
Trump has no such compunctions. In what may be seen as a stunning volte face, he seems ready to sacrifice Ukraine on the altar of realpolitik.
Trump’s policy is based on his conviction that the Russia-Ukraine war should be ended as quickly as possible. It is a laudable goal, but at what price?
Negotiations have not even begun, yet Trump and his secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, already have foolishly handed Russia sweeping concessions on a silver platter.
They have declared that Ukraine should not join NATO. They have implied that Ukraine will have to cede Ukrainian territories seized by Russia and its ethnic Russian allies since 2014. They have indicated that the U.S. will no longer bear the brunt of supplying weapons and munitions to Ukraine.
Most recently, in accordance with Trump’s cold-blooded transactional style of colonial diplomacy, the Trump administration demanded half of Ukraine’s revenues from natural resources — minerals, gas and oil — and its earnings from ports and other infrastructure in exchange for a measure of political, economic and military support.
Trump’s desire to improve U.S. relations with Russia, a nuclear-armed superpower that should not be taken for granted, is understandable and overdue. But he should not cozy up to Russia by betraying Ukraine.
Russia cannot be permitted to keep the occupied areas it has conquered in the past three years. Realistically, though, Ukraine should forget about recovering Crimea.
If a durable peace is to prevail, the United States and the European powers must offer Ukraine firm security guarantees that its territory will not be violated again by Russia.
If Russian national interests are to be respected, which should be the case, NATO must definitively deny Ukraine membership. Russia should not be made to feel that the West is encroaching on its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Ukraine should declare neutrality, but Ukraine should be eligible for a place in the European Union.
These are the fundamental principles that the United States should accept to preserve peace and stability in that unsettled region.
The United States has a critical role to play in achieving these objectives, but if Trump rewards Russia for its aggression at Ukraine’s expense, he will likely be seen as a Russian pawn, with all its attendant consequences.
On another front, the Trump administration has stumbled badly.
In a disturbing speech at the Munich Security Conference at February 14, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance suggested that the Alternative for Germany, an extreme right-wing party in Germany that may fare well in today’s general election, should be welcomed into the German political mainstream.
This was a shocking proposal, since Germany’s traditional parties, from left to right, have boycotted the AfD and excluded it from coalition governments largely on the grounds that some of its members have downplayed Nazi atrocities and sought to minimize Holocaust memorialization.
Proceeding from the assumption that free speech is “in retreat” in Europe, Vance said that “old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words” cannot tolerate “an alternative viewpoint.”
He added, “What German democracy — what no democracy, American, German or European — will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief, are invalid or unworthy of even being considered. Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There’s no room for firewalls.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned Vance’s speech, which was a cringe-worthy apologia for the AfD.
During his trip, Vance met Alice Weidel, the AfD’s candidate for chancellor. She was recently interviewed by Trump’s adviser, Elon Musk, who has praised the AfD and interviewed Weidel on X, his social media platform.
Vance’s decision to sugarcoat the AfD was unwise and telling. It may haunt him and the Trump administration for years to come.