True to form, Donald Trump has again launched into victim-shaming Ukraine’s president and taking Vladimir Putin’s side after Volodymyr Zelensky repeated that Crimea can never be given to Russia.
The US president was right when he said in his latest post on social media that “there’s nothing to talk about here” when it comes to Crimea – but not for the reasons that he lays out in his characteristic rant.
Zelensky “will not legally recognise the [Russian] occupation of Crimea”, not because he’s intransigent, but because constitutionally he cannot do so.
But that nuance has escaped Trump, who has left US scholars warning of a potential constitutional crisis after he issued a record-breaking number of executive orders during his first 100 days of office.
From Ukraine’s perspective, what the US president does at home does not matter. But what he does to Ukraine could be strategically disastrous.
The last time Trump snarled at Zelensky, he also suspended military aid to Ukraine and later cut the flow of real-time intelligence. The latter came at the same time as Russia launched a largely successful campaign to drive Ukrainian troops out of the Kursk salient inside Russian territory.
Trump said Zelensky’s insistence on hanging on to Crimea was “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”.
Well, it is a point of discussion. Russia’s invasion and illegal annexation of the peninsula were a violation of international law, and are still considered as such by the US, along with most nations across the planet.
“Nobody is asking Zelensky to recognise Crimea as Russian territory, but if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it 11 years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?” Trump asked.
But Zelensky wasn’t president back then, and there were powerful fifth-column forces inside Ukraine’s political and security fabric that undermined an effort at defence. On top of that, Ukraine was entitled to defensive support from the US and UK under the terms of the Budapest memorandum when it gave up its vast nuclear arsenal. Instead, both countries turned away and even blocked lethal aid for years.
Ukraine, meanwhile, cobbled a military together and fought Russian-backed troops and invading forces across the Donbas before the front lines became largely frozen in 2015.
But this doesn’t matter to Trump, because he sees Crimea, and much of the east of Ukraine, as naturally Russian. Partly because it’s been conquered, and partly because the Russians say they want it.
“The area also houses, for many years before ‘the Obama handover’, major Russian submarine bases,” he continued. By that token, Warsaw, Prague and Tallinn are also Russian territory – which is what Putin thinks.
“It’s inflammatory statements like Zelensky’s that make it so difficult to settle this war,” Trump said. “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.”
Militarily, Ukraine is better off than it was when Trump last turned off the military aid and intelligence spigots a couple of months back. This is because Europe, including the European Union, have been preparing for the moment when Trump throws a tantrum again. They are now bigger donors than the US is to Ukraine, and have been rushing to fill future gaps in intelligence, telecommunications, and arms.
Russia, meanwhile, has been losing momentum on the battlefield. The Kremlin is now sending cold and lost legions of African and Chinese mercenaries to fight in a drone war where Ukraine has the edge. Trump was flat-out wrong when he said Zelensky is a man “with no cards”.
A ceasefire at this time best suits Russia.
Trump said: “I have nothing to do with Russia, but have much to do with wanting to save, on average, 5,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week who are dying for no reason whatsoever.” If that was his real view, then backing Ukraine with the power it needed to end the war by breaking the back of Russia’s military machine would save Ukrainian and, in the end, Russian and European lives.
Trump has adopted Russia’s terms as his own in every aspect of his so-called peace process.
Ukraine knows that. Europe knows that. His best option, now, is to walk away from his abortive talks on behalf of the Kremlin, and keep the military aid flowing. He can at least then say: “I tried.” And history will be gentle over his attempts to end what he calls a “total MESS”.
