Since Donald Trump’s name with Vladimir Putin on 12 February and a sequence of different diplomatic strikes geared toward kicking off Russia–Ukraine peace talks, the warfare in Ukraine has returned to the highest of the worldwide media agenda.
For outsiders, observing the warfare from a secure distance like an more and more monotonous TV sequence, the plot has acquired lastly a brand new flip, reviving flagging curiosity and sparking intense debate. However for Ukrainians, Trump’s ‘peacemaking’ initiatives are simply one other reminder of their subaltern, ‘pawn’ position on the geopolitical chessboard.
The writing was already on the wall after Trump recommended that Ukraine ‘may be Russian someday’ (a purpose to take advantage of Ukrainian uncommon earth minerals prematurely); after vp JD Vance insisted that ‘this war is between Russia and Ukraine’ (and that US army interference wouldn’t ‘advance American interests and security’); and after defence secretary Pete Hegseth said that Ukraine ought to abandon its push to reclaim all Russian-occupied territory and overlook about becoming a member of NATO.
So as to add insult to harm, the US responded to Volodymyr Zelensky’s earlier supply of privileged entry to Ukraine’s uncommon earth minerals in return for help with a nearly colonial demand for nearly every thing for nearly nothing in return. The Day by day Telegraph, which obtained a draft of the pre-decisional contract, referred to as it ‘a new Versailles’: ‘If this draft were accepted, Trump’s calls for would quantity to the next share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany on the Versailles Treaty.’
Volodymyr Zelensky in Munich, February 14, 2025. Official State Division photograph by Freddie Everett. Supply: Wikimedia Commons
Usually, the paper identified, such phrases are imposed on aggressor states defeated in warfare. However Trump ‘seems willing to let Russia of the hook entirely’. Apart from the purely financial points, there was additionally the ethical query whether or not it might be ‘honourable to treat a victim nation in this fashion after it has held the battle line for the liberal democracies at enormous sacrifice for three years. Who really has a debt to whom, may one ask?’
Trump’s fantasy $500bn
The US contract appears to have been written by non-public legal professionals somewhat than the US Division of State or Commerce. It requires, in accordance with the leaked doc, a $500bn ‘payback’ from Ukraine that goes far past US management over the nation’s crucial minerals, to cowl ports, infrastructure, deposits of oil and gasoline, and different assets. It is extremely unlikely that Ukraine will be capable of pay $500bn in any foreseeable future, however there’s much more daunting challenge that the contract fails to handle: safety ensures for Ukraine. This was the final straw for Zelensky, who cancelled the settlement regardless of heavy US strain bordering on blackmail.
Ukrainians’ considerations with safety are hardly exaggerated. On the one facet, they’re confronted with a rogue state that violates all potential guidelines and legal guidelines, and that can not be trusted, no matter its leaders could say or signal. On the opposite facet, they’ve wavering western companions with lofty beliefs however ambiguous practices and really lengthy information of avoidance and betrayal, of looking for excuses as a substitute of options. Ukrainians bear in mind fairly effectively that neither the US nor the UK lived as much as their obligations to guard Ukraine beneath the 1994 Budapest settlement, signed when Ukraine gave up the Soviet nuclear weapons on its territory. Based on the New York Occasions, the expansiveness of the newest US proposal, and the tense negotiations round it, ‘demonstrate the widening chasm between Kyiv and Washington over both continued US support and a potential end to the war. For many, Trump’s supply reeks of colonialism, an period when western international locations exploited smaller or weaker nations for commodities.’
Equally upsetting are Trump’s manipulations of figures. ‘Every time Zelenskyy comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion. I think he’s the best salesman on Earth’, Trump (in)famously stated final September, forgetting to say that for half a yr his personal social gathering had been blocking a a lot smaller sum of help allotted to Ukraine by the Biden authorities. Now, he claims that the US has spent $300bn on the warfare to date, and that it might be ‘stupid’ at hand over any extra. The truth is, specialists preserve that the 5 packages to date agreed by Congress have totalled $175bn, of which $70bn was spent within the US on weapons manufacturing. A few of it’s within the type of humanitarian grants, however a lot of it’s lend-lease cash that have to be repaid.
The Kiel Institute for the World Economic system, which runs a database on all kinds of help supplied by varied international locations to Ukraine, gives much more sobering figures: US help to Ukraine really delivered by December 2024 totalled $114.2bn, in comparison with the $132.3bn delivered by European nations. Whereas US help certainly exceeds all different nations when it comes to army, monetary and humanitarian allocations, these allocations make up solely 0.5% of American GDP, whereas plenty of European international locations allocate up two per cent of their GDP to assist Ukraine. Based on the Kiel Institute, ‘the effective cost to Europeans has in fact been far higher, since sanctions on Russia mattered far more to European economies than to the US economy’.
It is usually price noting, as Timothy Snyder does, that ‘in general, the weapons the US has sent to Ukraine were obsolescent and would have been destroyed, at costs to the US taxpayer, without ever being used … In resisting Russia, Ukraine has also provided tremendous economic and security benefits to the United States. What the United States has learned from Ukrainians about modern warfare – and that is just one of many benefits – easily justifies the costs, even in the most narrow security terms.’
A brand new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact
Unsurprisingly, Trump’s ‘peacemaking’ initiatives had been met in Ukraine with a mix of anger, despair and black humour. Zelensky cancelled his go to to Saudi Arabia, scheduled for 20 February, two days after the Rubio–Lavrov assembly in Riyadh. He said brazenly that he didn’t need to legitimize that assembly and its ‘decisions’. The truth that he was not invited to those talks, nor even consulted by the American companions beforehand, doesn’t bode effectively for Ukraine’s eventual position in ‘big boys’ dialog. As an previous saying goes, ‘if you are not at the table then you are on the menu’.
Whereas Zelensky tries to maintain a courageous face in dangerous sport, Ukrainian media are overwhelmed with sarcasm, metaphors (the copulation of a frog with a snake is likely to be essentially the most graphic) and caustic cartoons. One among them – that includes Trump as a bride and Putin as a groom – bore a putting resemblance to cartoons displaying a newly-wed Hitler and Stalin in 1939. As a Ukrainian publicist put it succinctly: ‘It’s not Munich 2.0. It’s extra like a brand new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.’ ‘We are entering a difficult, surreal state’, declared Olga Rudenko, the editor-in-chief of the Kyiv Unbiased. ‘Our key ally, led by Donald Trump’s new administration, is popping in opposition to us and siding with our enemy.’
However the hazard of Trump’s reckless cowboy diplomacy goes far past the destiny of simply Ukraine. His susceptibility to Putin’s arguments (partly due to ignorance, partly due to affinity) threaten the entire European continent if not the worldwide order as a complete. After Vance’s speech in Munich and Trump’s smug and nonsensical statements the day after, Europeans can not neglect a accountability that they’ve habitually outsourced to American companions. How far and the way successfully this motley crew of thirty-plus nations will transfer stays to be seen. However at the very least it offers Ukraine an opportunity to outlive within the new atmosphere, regardless that it might require much more painful efforts – each diplomatic and army. To this point, the Ukrainians haven’t blinked – as each Zelensky’s and society’s response to the mounting challenges point out.
The dictatorial mindset
The one nation that clearly advantages from Trump’s ‘peacemaking’ is Russia. Whatever the final outcomes, the actual fact {that a} US chief engaged in diplomacy with an indicted warfare prison, a dictator waging a genocidal warfare of aggression in opposition to a peaceable sovereign neighbour, conveys an enormous symbolical which means. Little shock that Trump’s curtsy to Putin was celebrated in Moscow like ‘Christmas, Easter, and New Year’s all rolled into one’.
Putin has definitely scored a number of factors over Trump, in addition to the paramount reality of breaking the worldwide isolation. First, he has realized that, with out having needed to make any concessions, American peacekeeping troops is not going to be despatched to Ukraine – the identical present that Biden made him in December 2021, utterly ignoring the significance of strategic uncertainty in geopolitical rivalry. Second, once more with no concessions, the American president gave the nod to Putin’s claims to the occupied Ukrainian territories, and to his demand that Ukraine be barred from NATO. Third, he heard not solely that American sanctions could be eliminated, but additionally that the US president believes Europeans ought to do the identical. Lastly, Putin positioned the entire set of fraudulent Kremlin narratives in Trump’s gullible head, starting from the outrageous declare that Ukraine shares equal accountability with Russia for the continued warfare, to casting Zelensky’s democratic legitimacy into doubt and demanding war-time elections, regardless that Ukraine’s structure explicitly prohibits this.
Trump claimed Zelensky’s recognition had declined to a meagre 4%. Nobody may have supplied him such an odd knowledge aside from the Russians, in fact. However he has a workforce that might have simply checked it. There are a number of nationwide and worldwide pollster corporations that function in Ukraine. None of them positioned Zelensky’s recognition under 50%. In style belief has certainly fallen from 90% in Could 2022 to 60% final yr, however stays firmly at 50+ factors; the newest ballot (at the start of February) signifies 57%. Ukrainians is likely to be crucial of Zelensky and plenty of will in all probability not vote for him after the warfare, however they don’t want the Russians or the People to undermine the legitimacy of their democratically elected president. In all opinion surveys, an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians oppose elections in warfare time, being completely conscious that they wouldn’t profit anyone however Moscow.
Ignorance about Ukraine and the area typically is one thing that Trump shares with most worldwide politicians and intellectuals educated within the framework of Russian ‘imperial knowledge’, which is normalized in each worldwide academia and common tradition. A a lot greater downside, nonetheless, is Trump’s mindset, which has little to do with rule of legislation and liberal democracy and rather a lot with the realpolitik favoured by dictators assured that may makes proper, and that worldwide politics is primarily about accumulation of energy and wealth. Ignorance might be enlightened and mitigated, however cynical authoritarianism may be very unlikely to vary. Which means moralistic discussions with Trump and his lieutenants is not going to assist Volodymyr Zelensky and his European companions. As an alternative, they have to converse from a place of power. That is maybe the one level on which they absolutely agree with the American president.
An earlier model of this text was first revealed in RAAM
