Trump's "strange and tepid wording"

From the CNN:

"Trump’s own strange and tepid wording illustrates his one-sided Ukraine peace plan

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, Fri April 25

President Donald Trump’s intense pressure on Ukraine and deference to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is extinguishing any lingering notion that the United States is an evenhanded peace broker.

The US effort leans heavily toward Russia’s positions, even though Moscow started the war with its unprovoked invasion. This stems from Trump’s view of a war in which Kyiv “has no cards to play.”...

The unbalanced nature of the US peace effort can be seen in Trump’s deliberately unspecific language about the conflict and the strange, even bizarre ways that he’s talking about the war.

Early Thursday morning, Russia shot 70 missiles and launched 145 drones toward Ukraine. Most raced to Kyiv in the most murderous attack on the capital in nine months. At least 12 people were killed and 90 were injured as casualties were trapped under the rubble of residential buildings. The capital’s terrified residents were forced back into their air raid shelters — some taking their small kids and pets with them. 

Trump’s response to this resumption of terror? A tepid posting on his Truth Social account that seemed most concerned with when the attacks took place than with the carnage wreaked on defenseless civilians. “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP!” Trump wrote. “Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!”

The president expanded on his post during an Oval Office appearance later in the day.

“I didn’t like last night. I wasn’t happy with it, and we’re in the midst of talking peace, and missiles were fired, and I was not happy with it,” Trump said, noticeably using a passive tense and not blaming Putin directly.

Another US president might have offered condolences to the victims, pointed out that deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime and threatened consequences. But Trump’s response was consistent with his long practice of refusing to connect the results of horrific attacks with the leader who ordered them.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who blasted Putin as a “thug” and a “gangster” during his 2016 presidential campaign, was on the Oval Office sofa Thursday afternoon. He adopted Trump’s obfuscatory tenses in a way that almost implied Russian missiles ended up in Kyiv all by themselves. “What happened last night with those missile strikes should remind everybody why this war needs to end,” Rubio said. “It’s horrible, those missiles landed, but what’s even worse is there are … people that were alive yesterday that are not alive today because this war continues.”

The administration’s limp language about Putin contrasted with the fierce dressing-down of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in that same Oval Office in March. Trump went after the Ukrainian president again this week after Zelensky ruled out recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

On Truth Social, Trump complained about “Inflammatory statements like Zelensky’s that makes it so difficult to settle this War. He has nothing to boast about! The situation for Ukraine is dire — He can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country.”

The contrast in the president’s tone toward the two leaders is remarkable.

“When Zelensky dares to speak the truth, Trump truly slams him,” John Herbst, the former US ambassador to Ukraine told Paula Newton on CNN International. “When Putin murders civilians with ballistic missiles he’s merely corrected. Or slightly chastised.” 

Trump got defensive on Thursday, when he was asked what concessions Russia had made in the conflict, compared to his constant pressure on Ukraine.

“Stopping the war, stopping taking the whole country. Pretty big concession,” Trump said.

This answer betrays a strange misunderstanding of what happened in the war and shows just how comprehensively Trump views the war through Putin’s lens.

The reason a Russian-backed president is not running Ukraine now is that the country’s armed forces performed a heroic rearguard action that shocked the world at the start of the war and saved the capital. And years of arms and ammunition transfers from the US and its European allies kept it that way.

“It is absolutely no concession,” Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on “The Brief.” “From my perspective at least, it is absolutely absurd to say something like that.”

Trump insisted that he’d been plenty tough on Putin — although there’s very little evidence that the Russian leader has paid any price for ignoring Trump’s ceasefire plans and for continuing attacks on civilians as peace talks drag on inconclusively.

“You don’t know what pressure I’m putting on Russia,” he told a reporter. “We’re putting a lot of pressure on Russia, and Russia knows that, and some people that are close to it know or he wouldn’t be talking right now.”

Sources familiar with the peace discussions told CNN on Thursday that Trump is privately frustrated with his failure to broker an end to the war. But so far, his impatience hasn’t prompted any efforts to coerce Russia into accepting exceedingly generous terms. Trump could, for instance, rush arms to Ukraine to increase the price of the war for Russia’s forces. He could send Patriot anti-missile systems to Kyiv or provide defense against ballistic missiles. The president could also impose secondary sanctions on nations that continue to buy Russian oil and bankroll its war effort.

But he’s done none of that. And his uneven approach threatens to further punish the war’s victim."

ISW: Putin not taking all Ukraine is no concession

The Institute for the Study of War contradicts Trump about the alleged concession by Russia to not take all of Ukraine:

"Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 25, 2025

...That the Kremlin is not formally demanding that Ukraine cede most or all of its territory to Russia at this time is not a significant Russian concession, however. The initial full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine aimed to seize Kyiv in February and March 2022 in order to force Ukraine to capitulate fully, depose the current Ukrainian government, and disarm the Ukrainian military, amounting to the total defeat of Ukraine. Russia failed to achieve this objective because the Ukrainian military, with limited Western support, defeated the Russian attack on Kyiv and stalled Russian offensives in the east and south. Ukrainian forces forced Russian forces to withdraw from Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy oblasts in early April 2022 and from most of Kharkiv Oblast and all of west-bank Kherson Oblast later in 2022.[16] Russian forces remain unable to launch an offensive operation that could seize Kyiv or recross the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine at this time, and spent 2024 fighting desperately to seize an area nine-tenths the size of Rhode Island. Russia does not have the military power to seize the rest of Ukraine absent a full-scale mobilization of Russian society, and possibly not then, as long as Western support to Ukraine continues.

The Kremlin has not abandoned its maximalist objectives, moreover. Kremlin mouthpieces, including Russian Security Council Secretary Dmitry Medvedev, have laid the rhetorical groundwork for Russia to eventually lay claim to most or all of Ukraine.[17] Russian officials have also doubled down on their demands for regime change in Ukraine and rhetoric intended to undermine the legitimacy of the current Ukrainian government as recently as April 24.[18] Both of these efforts in concert indicate that Putin retains his objective of controlling all of Ukraine, but is limited by Russia's inability to achieve this objective militarily.

Russian officials continue to intensify narratives used to justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine in order to set conditions to justify future Russian aggression against European states and control European defense policy in the Kremlin's reflexive control campaign. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) published a report on April 25 entitled "80 Years After the Great Victory: The Shadow of Nazism Has Again Covered Europe," which accuses European states and officials of reviving Nazi ideology and creating policies that discriminate against Russian-speaking populations, especially in Lithuania, Lativa, and Estonia.[19] Russian MFA Spokesperson Maria Zakharova amplified this report and claimed that European states are preventing Russia from achieving its long-held objectives of demilitarization and "denazification" of Ukraine due to this alleged support of Naziism.[20] Russian officials regularly invoke "denazification" to call for regime change in Ukraine and the installation of a pro-Russian puppet government.[21] Zakharova specifically accused the Baltic States and Poland of justifying and reviving Nazism.

Russian officials have notably leveraged accusations of neo-Nazi ideology to justify Russia's invasions of Ukraine, and Russian officials leveraging these narratives against European states - especially the Baltics and Poland - supports ISW's assessment that Russia may be setting informational conditions to justify future aggression against these states as well.[22] Russian officials are likely attempting to discredit European states more broadly in order to deter them from providing further assistance to Ukraine and revitalizing their defense industries in order to set conditions for future Russian aggression against a weakened Europe.[23]

[16] https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Russian%20Operations%20Assessments%20April%203.pdf

[17] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-18-2025; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-13-2023; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-22-2024; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-4-2024;

[18] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-24-2025; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-7-2025; https://isw.pub/UkrWar011125 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar011425; https://isw.pub/UkrWar041825; https://isw.pub/UkrWar040725; https://isw.pub/UkrWar122624

[19] https://mid dot ru/ru/activity/ko-dny-pobedy/2011501/?lang=ru ; https://t.me/MID_Russia/56232

[20] https://t.me/MID_Russia/56233

[21] https://isw.pub/UkrWar041525

[22] https://isw.pub/UkrWar042425 ; https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-24-2025 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar042025 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar04172025 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar041525 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar041025 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar031325

[23] https://isw.pub/UkrWar041525"

Trump's forgotten promise

From an April 25 column in the Obozrevatel, by Vitaly Portnikov:

"By now, nobody in Washington remembers Trump's campaign promise to deprive Ukraine of aid if it renounces peace, and vice versa, to give Ukraine as much weaponry as needed and bring oil prices down if Russia renounces peace... Therefore Trump is applying his usual approach, that is, blackmail multiplied by incompetence."

Trump praises Putin for not taking all Ukraine

From the Independent / Yahoo!News:

"Trump says Russia has made ‘pretty big concession’ to peace by not seizing whole of Ukraine

Andrew Feinberg, April 24, 2025

President Donald Trump on Thursday said Russia’s failure to forcibly seize and occupy the entirety of Ukraine’s territory amounts to a “pretty big concession” to Kyiv as he continues to push for Russia and Ukraine to come to a settlement to end the war Moscow started three years ago.

Speaking in the Oval Office during a bilateral meeting with Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Trump insisted to reporters that he is putting pressure on Russian president Vladimir Putin behind the scenes as reporters asked him what he would ask the Russian leader to give up to match the massive territorial concessions he has asked Ukraine to make as a way to find an end to Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the end of the Second World War.

Trump replied: “Stopping the war, stopping [from] taking the whole country.”

He added that not seizing all of Ukraine’s sovereign land — the goal Putin had laid out when he launched the war in February 2022 and which was foiled by Ukraine’s military resistance — was a “pretty big concession” in his view.

Trump’s bizarre and nonsensical comment glossed over the fact that Putin had always wanted to occupy and control Ukraine’s land and erase it from the map as an independent nation, thereby reassembling a large portion of the former Soviet Union and Russian empire. The reason Russia has not succeeded in that aim isn’t because Moscow has magnanimously declined to carry out an occupation, but because Ukrainian forces have kept Russian troops from advancing through most of the country...

Trump, who appeared upset about Zelensky refusing to recognize Russia’s theft of his country’s territory as part of a Trump-brokered peace deal where Russia would end the war in exchange for having their wartime gains legitimized, said Crimea “was lost years ago” to Ukraine and said it was “not even a point of discussion” in a separate Truth Social post.

Trump also taunted Zelensky in the same post, writing that Zelensky had “no cards to play” and accusing him of making it “so difficult to settle this war.”

“He has nothing to boast about! The situation for Ukraine is dire — He can have Peace or he can fight for another three years before losing the whole country,” he said.

Trump, who has had a rocky history with Zelensky dating back to his attempt to blackmail the Ukrainian leader into announcing sham investigations into then-former vice president Joe Biden and his son ahead of the 2020 presidential election, has repeatedly — and falsely — accused Zelensky of having started the war while pressuring him to make broad concessions and asking nothing of the sort from Putin.

He, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have threatened to “walk away” from efforts to broker a settlement between Moscow and Kyiv over what they describe as Zelensky’s intransigence, even though it is Russia that has repeatedly broken previously announced ceasefire agreements... Vance again suggested that the U.S. would abandon the process unless Kyiv agreed to massive territorial concessions of a scope not seen since the 1938 Munich agreement that legitimized Nazi Germany’s annexation of part of what was then Czechoslovakia..."

 

 

Putin and his gang cannot believe their luck with Trump

From the New Republic / Yahoo!News:

"Putin Allies Can’t Believe How Much Trump Is Groveling to Them

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, April 24, 2025

Russian propagandists were practically giddy as they celebrated top U.S. officials—including Donald Trump—bending to the Kremlin’s demands.

“No one could have imagined we would live to see the day where the correct answer about to whom Crimea belongs would come from the president of the United States, and he will not only give it but will also teach the president of Ukraine what this correct answer is,” said business daily Kommersant writer Sergey Strokan on the Russian broadcast program 60 Minutes Wednesday night.

“April 23, 2025, can be confidently written into textbooks on modern history as a special date,” Strokan said. “It changed many things.”...

Trump’s response to the land debate was seen as a massive win for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies. In a post on Truth Social Wednesday, Trump claimed that the territory was “lost years ago” and “and is not even a point of discussion” in the peace talks. Trump further threatened that Zelenskiy should give up Crimea or risk “losing the whole Country,” and said that the Ukrainian leader’s rejection of the peace deal would “do nothing but prolong the ‘killing field.’”

The Russian talking heads interpreted that message in just one way: that the U.S. had rescinded its international military dominance and aligned itself with Moscow, practically signing Ukraine’s death warrant and that of Europe’s protection along with it.

“The United States may withdraw its entire military contingent from Europe and remove American tactical nuclear weapons from the European NATO bases,” predicted military expert Igor Korotchenko. “We will see a totally new political reality, when Europe will be left one-on-one with Russia.”

Another state-backed TV show, The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, saw its host “prancing and grinning” as the U.S. cowered in submission, according to The Daily Beast.

Allowing Russia to keep Crimea is an incredible reversal of long-standing U.S. policy—and comes as a new approach for the Trump administration. In 2018, Trump’s former State Secretary Mike Pompeo called Russia to end its annexation of the Black Sea peninsula. 

But in a White House press conference Thursday, Trump couldn’t muster a coherent explanation for the switch-up, only further deflecting responsibility for the ongoing conflict.

“This isn’t my war. This is Biden’s war,” Trump said. Earlier on Thursday—nearly 100 days into his second term—Trump had resorted to begging Putin to end the violence.

During the press briefing, Trump further claimed that Russia had offered major concessions in a possible peace deal. Those concessions, however, amounted to “stopping taking the whole country.”

“Pretty big concession,” Trump added."

 

  

 

Boris Johnson criticizing Trump's peace plan

From the Guardian / Yahoo!News:

"Ukraine gets nothing in Trump’s proposals for peace, says Boris Johnson

Jessica Elgot Deputy, April 25, 2025

Boris Johnson has issued stern criticism of Donald Trump’s Ukraine peace proposals in one of his first apparent censures of the US president, saying under his terms the Ukrainians would “get nothing”.

The former British prime minister, a strong supporter of Ukraine who remains close to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has previously said there is “method in the madness” of Trump’s approach and that he believed the US president could bring peace.

But in a post on X, Johnson criticised the apparent terms of a deal that Trump is pushing Kyiv to accept.

On Wednesday, Trump accused Zelenskyy of jeopardising what he claimed was an imminent peace deal to end the war in Ukraine as he gave the clearest hint yet that the US would be willing to formally recognise Russia’s seizure of Crimea as part of any agreement.

Russia then carried out one of the most devastating air attacks against the capital for months, with Kharkiv and other cities also targeted.

“Putin indiscriminately butchers more Ukrainian civilians, killing and injuring 100 in Kyiv including children,” Johnson posted. “And what is his reward under the latest peace proposals?

“1. The right to keep sovereign Ukrainian territory he has taken by violence and in breach of international law. 2. The right to control Ukraine’s destiny by forbidding Nato membership. 3. The lifting of sanctions against Russia. 4. An economic partnership with America. 5. The chance to rebuild his armed forces for the next attack in a few short years’ time.”

He added: “As for Ukraine – what do they get after three years of heroic resistance against a brutal and unprovoked invasion? What is their reward for the appalling sacrifices they have made – for the sake, as they have endlessly been told, of freedom and democracy around the world?

“Apart from the right to share their natural resources with the United States they get nothing. What is there in this deal that can realistically stop a third Russian invasion? Nothing. If we are to prevent more atrocities by Putin then we must have a long-term, credible and above all properly funded security guarantee for Ukraine – a guarantee issued by the UK, the US and all western allies.”...

Johnson has previously criticised some of Trump’s language about Zelenskyy, including during their White House fallout, saying it was “ghastly to hear some of the language that’s been coming from Washington about who started the war and Zelenskyy being a dictator”.

But in the aftermath of the row, Johnson defended Trump again in a column for the Mail, saying the war of words “was not meant to happen” and that the US president did have a viable plan for peace."

 

 

Fox News analyst mocking Trump

From HuffPost / Yahoo!News:

Top Fox News Analyst: 'I'm Not Exactly Sure What The President's Talking About'

Ron Dicker, April 24, 2025

Brit Hume mocked President Donald Trump’s comment that it’s been “harder” to deal with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy than Russian President Vladimir Putin... 

“I’m not exactly sure what the president’s talking about,” Hume, who’s Fox News’ chief political analyst, said on Wednesday.

Fox News colleague Bret Baier aired a snippet of Trump’s remark regarding Zelenskyy’s refusal to cede territory to Russia in peace negotiations.

“I think we have a deal with Russia,” Trump said. “We have to get a deal with Zelenskyy. I thought it might be easier to deal with Zelenskyy. So far it’s been harder.”

Putin’s troops invaded Ukraine more than three years ago. Trump’s solution has been to strong-arm Zelenskyy, whom he said has “no cards to play,” into surrendering territory to the autocrat who started the war. A reported “final offer” from the U.S. to Ukraine includes the U.S. officially recognizing that Crimea is part of Russia and unofficially recognizing Russian occupation of areas seized in the latest conflict.

“He keeps pounding Zelenskyy and saying it’s harder to deal with him than it is with Putin,” Hume said. “Putin, so far as I can tell, hasn’t agreed to much of anything except, yes, he’d love to annex Crimea, which is part of the proposal that’s before him now. That’s no concession. All that is, is taking a gain.”

“Zelenskyy resists that because Crimea, up until the Russians invaded it 10 years or so ago, was part of Ukraine,” Hume continued. “So, I’m not exactly sure what the president’s talking about when he says that Zelenskyy has been more difficult to deal with than Putin.”

“There’s been a series of ceasefire proposals,” Hume added. “Putin either hasn’t agreed to them or has immediately broken them. I’m not sure what concessions Putin will ever be willing to make.”"

Trump sounds like Putin's avatar

From the New Republic / Yahoo!News:

"Trump Warns Ukraine’s Zelenskiy About Crimea in Blistering Rant

Edith Olmsted, April 23, 2025

Donald Trump’s most recent attack on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy over Crimea couldn’t be more pro-Russian if it had been written by Vladimir Putin himself.

In an angry post on Truth Social Wednesday, Trump criticized Zelenskiy for refusing to recognize Russia’s occupation of Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014, after the U.S. president pushed for a peace deal that would allow Russia to keep all of the territory it had seized from Ukraine.

“This statement is very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia in that Crimea was lost years ago under the auspices of President Barack Hussein Obama, and is not even a point of discussion,” Trump wrote. “Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory but, if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?”

This is coming from the same person who has repeatedly attempted to rewrite history to place Ukraine at fault for Russia’s invasion. Trump has also totally abdicated any responsibility in the situation. During his first term, Trump repeatedly undermined Zelenskiy and emboldened Putin. Crucially, after Trump’s first term, the situation in Ukraine was largely the same as it was under Obama. During peace negotiations, Trump has continued to barter on behalf of Russia, carving out a deal that punishes Ukraine for accepting U.S. military aid..."

Zelensky reminded Trump his better times

 

Trump's "peace efforts" can only cause more wars

From the Telegraph / Yahoo!News:

"Trump’s deal would plunge the world into war

Con Coughlin, April 23, 2025

US president Donald Trump’s seven-point proposal for ending the Ukraine conflict may be many things, but it most certainly is not a peace plan. It is a blueprint for more war.

Surrender, capitulation, betrayal, appeasement, abandonment. These are the words that better describe the egregious apology of a peace deal that the Trump administration is currently hawking around Europe.

For, rather than attempting to address the fundamental causes of the conflict – namely Russia’s unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state – Trump and his band of fellow travellers have reached the perverse conclusion that the best way to achieve peace in Ukraine is by rewarding Russian president Vladimir Putin for his blatant act of military aggression.

That certainly seems to be the essence of the terms presented in the one-page document given to Western diplomats meeting in London yesterday. It proposes allowing Putin to keep nearly all the Ukrainian territory he has seized since launching his initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, while giving the Ukrainians – who are unquestionably the innocent party in the conflict – next to nothing in return.

By far the most outrageous suggestion made in the proposal, which Trump has called his “final offer”, is that, in return for Russia halting hostilities along the current front lines, Washington would agree to de jure recognition of Russian control of Crimea. In addition, Russia will enjoy Washington’s de facto recognition of all the territory in eastern Ukraine that Moscow has captured, occupied and illegally annexed during the past decade or so.

This concession not only rewards Putin’s decade-long military effort to destroy Ukraine’s independence; it is a flagrant breach of one of the key pillars of the post-war international order, which decrees that the sovereign integrity of any nation is inviolable.

If Russia is allowed to drive a coach and horses through such a fundamental premise of international law, then what is to stop China from seizing Taiwan, or Argentina the Falkland Islands? Far from being a prescription for future peace, Trump’s capitulation to Moscow lays the foundations for future conflict.

Other aspects of Trump’s so-called “peace deal” are equally unpalatable to anyone who supports the principle of defending Ukrainian sovereignty from Russian aggression. Apart from requiring Kyiv to surrender its territory, the deal demands that Kyiv abandon its aspirations to join the Nato alliance. In return, an ad hoc collection of European countries – no doubt a reference to Sir Keir Starmer’s “coalition of the willing” – will commit to providing a “robust security guarantee” to protect Ukraine from any future acts of Russian aggression.

As Trump’s deal makes no mention of the US providing any military support for such a force – one of Starmer’s key requirements – the proposition already looks dead in the water...

It almost beggars belief that Trump, who took office vowing to end the Ukraine conflict in “24 hours”, could produce a document that is not just deeply flawed, but one that constitutes such a blatant threat to world peace.

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, apparently produced this mockery of a peace deal having had four hours of talks with Putin in Moscow last week. To judge by the eventual outcome, the most charitable view of the US envoy’s endeavours is that he simply took dictation from the Russian leader.

Putin will certainly claim this deal – assuming he agrees to it – justifies his warmongering in Ukraine which has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and left large tracts of Ukraine uninhabitable.

More importantly, it will allow Russia’s battered and exhausted military to regroup and prepare to engage in future aggressive acts against Europe’s borders, safe in the knowledge that, even if such attacks occurred against Nato member states, he has nothing to fear in terms of an American military response.

Suddenly, Trump’s quip, made during the presidential election campaign, that he would encourage Russia to attack Nato allies in Europe who did not make adequate financial provision for their defence, deserves serious consideration by Washington’s erstwhile European allies...

And if European leaders need any further evidence that they must safeguard their own future security needs, then the Ukrainian “peace deal” devised by Trump’s administration of mavericks should give them all the persuasion they require."

 

More about Trump's "peace plan"

From the Atlantic: 

"Trump’s Plan to Sell Out Ukraine to Russia

By Tom Nichols, April 23, 2025

Donald Trump said on the campaign trail that he would make peace between Ukraine and Russia in a day. Three months later, he’s behind schedule, and his plan now is to end the fighting quickly by selling out Ukraine and its people to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The proposal that Trump, Vice President J. D. Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are pushing is not a framework for peace, but a rich and bloody reward to Moscow for three years of aggression and war crimes. 

The Russians might do some performative caviling, but the Americans are offering Putin a dream of a deal. If Trump has his way, Washington will lift sanctions against Russia; both sides will accept a cease-fire in place (leaving Russian troops on newly conquered Ukrainian territory), and the United States will agree to recognize Crimea as part of Russia (leaving the Kremlin with full ownership of previously conquered territory).

For this, Ukraine gets basically nothing, except a vaporous security guarantee from an American president who has made clear his hostility to Ukraine and its leaders, an animus that became especially clear when Trump and Vance ambushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a White House meeting last month. The Trump “peace” plan is no such thing; it is an instrument of surrender, and the Ukrainians are unlikely to accept it.

Trump’s proposal would functionally destroy Ukraine, which would limp away from the deal as a vulnerable rump state, shorn of some 20 percent of its territory and millions of its citizens. It would cede control over its foreign policy by promising never to join NATO—an ironic Russian demand, given how starkly Putin’s invasion has reminded the world why alliances such as NATO must continue to exist. But NATO membership is a distant issue compared with the immediate problem: If Kyiv agrees to Trump’s proposal, whatever is left of the Ukrainian state will soon be an easy target for the Kremlin. Once the Russian economy recovers and Russia’s forces catch their breath, Putin will finish the job of conquering Ukraine with even greater vengeance and violence. Time and space are on Moscow’s side, and Trump intends to give Putin plenty of both.

The Americans have threatened to walk away from the process if either side refuses Trump’s deal, but no one can believe that this is even a token attempt to pressure Moscow. The White House is aiming its rhetorical fire squarely at Zelensky. Earlier today, Trump ranted at Zelensky on his Truth Social media platform, telling the Ukrainian president that he “can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country. We are very close to a Deal, but the man with ‘no cards to play’ should now, finally, GET IT DONE.” Zelensky, for his part, continues to insist on an “immediate, full, and unconditional cease-fire” before he agrees to further negotiations, a position Trump will likely use as a pretext for abandoning further talks.

Vance, meanwhile, has adopted a classic position of moral equivalence, as if the people shooting at each other—and their reasons for fighting—are indistinguishable. “The only way to really stop the killing,” he said in India today, “is for the armies to both put down their weapons, to freeze this thing, and to get on with the business of actually building a better Russia and a better Ukraine.”

(The vice president might just be toeing Trump’s line, but if his previous statements on international affairs are a guide, he really does seem to have a dismally simplistic understanding of geopolitics. He showcased this strategic shallowness during his embarrassing speech in Munich in February, when he scolded America’s allies about their domestic politics, as if the Europeans were merely a collection of unimportant U.S. congressional delegations.)

We need not invoke World War II comparisons to recognize the moral and political vacuity of the Trump-Vance position. Instead, imagine intervening in other wars of aggression, such as the Korean War in 1950, and telling the embattled southern forces after Pyongyang’s massive invasion that both sides “need to put down their weapons and build a better North and South Korea.” Or perhaps after Iraq attempted to erase Kuwait from the map in 1990, America and the United Nations should have told the states of the Persian Gulf that sometimes countries just disappear, and that both Saddam Hussein’s army and what was left of Kuwait’s forces needed to put their guns down.

Trump is not a fair broker: He is acting as a de facto Russian ally and making demands as Moscow’s proxy. Perhaps Europe and other nations will be able to fill the void left by American cowardice, but no one should blame the Ukrainians if they refuse to bow to Washington’s demand that they accept a grim destiny as Moscow’s newest serfs." 

America's betrayal of Ukraine won't help against China at all

From the Telegraph:

"Beijing is rejoicing at Trump’s Ukraine surrender 

Lisa Haseldine,  24 April 2025

“He can have peace or he can fight for another three years before losing the whole country.” Venting his anger with Volodymyr Zelensky on his platform Truth Social on Wednesday night, Donald Trump has threatened to walk away from his attempt to broker a peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia.

More than anything, the American President famously prides himself on having perfected the “Art of the Deal”. Finally, though, it seems that Trump has revealed once and for all exactly how he likes to negotiate – which is terribly.

Yet again the American President accused Zelensky of prolonging the war in Ukraine. A peace deal with Russia was “very close”, Trump claimed, “but the man with “no cards to play” should now, finally, GET IT DONE.”

But since when is forcing the loser of a conflict – as Trump so obviously sees Zelensky – to his knees the way for its supposedly neutral mediator to bring about a just end to a negotiation?

The reality is that Trump has blown it on securing a just, lasting peace deal for Ukraine – that is if he ever truly cared about achieving this in the first place.

The US President has a lot of leverage over Russia at his disposal to eke meaningful concessions for Ukraine out of Putin. At the start of the month, for example, there had been rumours that if the Russian President continued to drag his heels on meaningfully negotiating, Trump would crack down hard on Moscow’s shadow fleet of oil tankers, until now so vital for funding the war in Ukraine. It’s not too late for Trump to do it, but all talk of further sanctions has evaporated in Washington.