Donald Trump was given his marching orders in Alaska on Friday by Vladimir Putin, the Russian dictator and warmonger.
The US President has summoned Ukraine’s President Zelensky to Washington today to inform him of the actions required to allow Trump and Putin to announce their version of peace.
If Zelensky resists, he is likely to face repercussions similar to those he experienced in February when he was last at the Oval Office with Trump and Vice-President JD Vance.
Many are puzzled. Why is Trump so eager to fulfill Putin’s wishes? People suspect that the Kremlin possesses compromising information on Trump, leading him to assist Putin willingly.
In fact, it’s much simpler than that: when it comes to Ukraine Trump and Putin are effectively singing from the same song sheet.
Trump seeks to withdraw from Ukraine. Similarly, Putin desires America’s exit. Putin believes that Ukraine, relying solely on a weak and divided Europe, would eventually succumb to Russia. Trump appears indifferent to this outcome.
He does not perceive the future of Ukraine as a critical American issue. Whether Ukraine is allowed to grow into a thriving, prosperous European democracy—Europe’s goal—or is left to languish under Moscow’s influence—Putin’s aim—seems inconsequential to him.
Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump met last week in Alaska to decide the fate of Ukraine
Mr. Trump has an admiration for authoritarian leaders and aspires to be one himself. He has openly praised not only Putin but other strongmen, including China’s president Xi.
Trump doesn’t much like Europe. Bar Britain, for which he retains a residual affection because of his mother’s Scottish roots and his liking of the Royal Family. But mainland Europe doesn’t really interest him. It’s too messy and complicated.
He sees the European Union as a conspiracy to cheat America when it comes to international trade. Rather than a collection of essential allies for the US he sees the EU as a gang of less-than-friendly rivals.
Previous US presidents would have balked at the idea of Eastern Europe once again coming under the dead hand of Kremlin influence, or even control, which is its likely fate should Putin get his way in Ukraine. But not Trump.
The 47th President thinks Putin’s imperial ambitions to reassert Russian control over what Moscow calls its ‘near abroad’ – those border territories once under the sway of Imperialist Russia, like Ukraine – entirely reasonable for a smart ‘strongman’ like Putin.
If the Europeans don’t like it then they should do something about it, says Trump in private. It’s really their problem, not his. It makes little difference to America who runs Ukraine, he thinks. Whoever controls Kyiv is no threat to US security or economic might.
It’s a ‘second order’ issue, say those around Trump. America has bigger geopolitical fish to fry in the 21st century.
Trump, of course, has always had a soft spot for strongmen. He aspires to be one himself. He has been glowing in his praise not just of Putin but of other strongmen, including China’s President Xi. He often sounds envious of their power.
He knows it’s harder to be one in a democracy. But not impossible. After all Hungary’s Viktor Orban, India’s Narendra Modi and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro – three tough guys Trump much admires – are all managing, or have managed, it.
Trump understands why Putin is obsessed with retaking control of Russia’s near abroad. Let’s not forget the US President began his second administration with threatening talk about Greenland, Canada and Panama. Strongmen know the importance of controlling their own backyard.
Mr Trump shakes hands with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in the Oval Office earlier this year
Last February, Mr Trump berated Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House
Yes, Putin invaded Ukraine. But Trump wants to seize Greenland, absorb Canada and colonise Panama.
There was a time when a US president prepared to abandon Europe would face huge domestic push back. No longer.
It plays to Trump’s isolationist MAGA base, of which Vance is increasingly the authentic voice, which doesn’t see why, 80 years after the end of the Second World War and 35 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, US tax dollars are still paying for the defence of a continent clearly prosperous enough to pay its own way, if only it had the gumption and will to do so.
Trump is not an aberration. The status quo ante in US-European relations will not be restored when he’s done and gone.
The need for America to pivot from Europe to the Pacific is pretty much a consensus in Washington these days.
There is broad agreement that America needs to reconfigure its resources to deal with the rise of China in the Pacific and that it cannot afford to do that credibly and continue to prop up Europe’s defences. If Europeans are now feeling alone, even unloved, they should get used to it.
And so we come to Trump’s parley with Zelensky today. Those who thought the failure of the Alaskan summit in the snow to produce a peace deal was the end of the matter couldn’t be more wrong.
The next 24 to 48 hours are fraught with danger for Ukraine and its European allies, whose most important leaders (including our own Keir Starmer) have decided to travel to Washington to join Zelensky.
In many ways it’s a remarkable show of solidarity by Europe. It might inhibit Trump from bullying Zelensky the way he did last February. But, equally, it might embolden Trump to throw his toys out the pram.
‘You don’t like what I’m proposing,’ I could hear him saying. ‘Fair enough. You take charge. I’m out of here.’ Then we would see exactly what that European solidarity is made of.
Trump has already sided with Putin in agreeing to peace talks without a ceasefire, thereby allowing Russia to continue the war while ‘talking’ peace. It is hard to see what incentive Putin now has to make peace while his summer offensive, which has already made modest gains, still has weeks to run.
On the other hand, Trump says he now favours post-war security guarantees for Ukraine, which could even include some unspecified US involvement. But nobody really knows what Trump means by this. US boots on the ground look distinctly unlikely.
American backing for European boots – including British boots – on the ground sounds vague if not flaky.
Zelensky will be pressed by Trump to make major concessions even as Russia increases its onslaught across the Ukrainian frontline.
Alaska has given Trump a pretty good idea what Putin wants and Trump is anxious to deliver. After all, as well as an exit from Ukraine, that Nobel Peace Prize beckons.
The stakes for Ukraine and Europe could not be higher. It is not just territory. Kyiv accepts it cannot expect the return of land the Russians already occupy except at the margins in some land swaps.
What matters is the 80 per cent of Ukraine that, in any reasonable peace deal, would remain unoccupied by Russia.
The 20:80 partition of Ukraine might be inevitable. But is it partition with protection, in which the 80 per cent that is free Ukraine is allowed a powerful military, protected by cast-iron security guarantees from America, Nato and Europe, with the freedom to develop into a prosperous European-style democracy?
Or is it partition with subordination, in which Ukraine’s military is reduced to a rump at Putin’s request, the security guarantees are a fig-leaf and, with huge Russian forces still massed on its eastern border, Ukraine gradually succumbs to the status of a Russian satellite state, in which no government could rule in Ukraine without Kremlin approval?
I doubt Putin could countenance partition with Western protection. It flies in the face of his historic imperial mission. Yet partition with subordination is defeat by another name for Ukraine.
My fear is that Trump is now aligned with Putin to deliver just that, so keen is he to wash his hands of the matter. In which case the 21st century march of the autocrats would continue unimpeded – now aided and abetted by the President of the United States.
