Painful as it is to recall at this juncture, it was not so very long ago that Donald Trump – as candidate and then as president-elect – bragged that he could end the war in Ukraine “in a day” – or, just to emphasise the spurious precision and seriousness of his outlandish claim, “within 24 hours”. Perhaps the president was speaking figuratively, after all.
Since he took power almost 100 days ago, it is fair to say that progress has been slow, and that what little has been achieved by the various rounds of peace talks – often with Ukraine cruelly absent – has not been sustained.
Even Mr Trump has declared himself “very angry” and “pissed off” at the delays, which have usually been caused by Russia playing for time in a fairly blatant manner. Yet that was a month ago, and even a threat (which turned out to be empty) to sanction Russia’s oil export trade failed to push Moscow along the path towards peace.
The partial ceasefire agreed to protect “civilian infrastructure” was a genuine breakthrough – but it lasted about an hour, and was unequivocally smashed when Russian missiles and drones struck the town centre of Sumy as people gathered to attend prayers on Palm Sunday. Reportedly, 35 people were killed and 119 injured, with children among the dead and wounded – the worst civilian casualty figures this year.
Mr Trump was informed by the Kremlin that the attack was “a mistake”. From the usually vengeful US president, there was no retribution, and not much criticism. Indeed, Mr Trump has since – sometimes angrily – repeated his false claim that Ukraine started the war, albeit tempered most recently when spoken in the Oval Office in front of Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s leader and a fiercely loyal ally of Volodymyr Zelensky.
Now the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio – the least “Trumpian” member of the cabinet – is expressing the frustrations of the administration more freely. Emerging from talks with European leaders in Paris, Secretary Rubio said: “We’re not going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end. So we need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks.” So much for the “art of the deal”.
If America does walk away, then the principal beneficiary will, once again, be Vladimir Putin, who can press on with his offensives while Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron try to scramble their “coalition of the willing” to bolster the resistance. If peace talks are abandoned, then American defence and security assistance to Kyiv will probably cease, and Elon Musk might turn off access to the Starlink satellites the Ukrainian military needs to function. That would suit Putin nicely.
No surprise, then, that the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, fobbed Mr Rubio off with an invitation to waste further time and make even more concessions: “SV Lavrov confirmed Moscow’s readiness to continue joint work with American colleagues with the aim of eliminating the original causes of the Ukrainian crisis,” in the traditionally stilted language of the official Kremlin communiqué.
Part of the reason for the abject failure of President Trump’s peace initiative is that he has dispatched the most inexperienced and amateurish team of negotiators to deal with the craftiest gang to run the Kremlin since Joseph Stalin and his henchmen. With no qualifications beyond a successful career in real estate, the president’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, has proved a particular embarrassment, getting nothing out of his recent session with Putin in Moscow, and telling senior French diplomats that the Elysee Palace, a world heritage treasure older than the United States, is so lovely that it could have been designed by the master architect of the universe, Donald Trump himself.
Nothing much has been heard of ambassador Keith Kellogg, nominated as the president’s special envoy to Russia and Ukraine, since his first trip to Kyiv in February, when he accidentally outed himself as being too pro-Zelensky. The Russians complained and he was swiftly sidelined.
Mr Rubio is far more able than anyone else in the president’s circle, but if he is not allowed to exert real pressure on the Russians, he will also fail. He at least has the self-awareness to recognise the impossibility of the negotiating position he and his country have been left in by Mr Trump’s tactics, and the grim consequences this could have for Ukraine and for European security – as well as for America’s long-term interests.
Well-camouflaged by an instinct for political survival, Mr Rubio is too smart to have sincerely abandoned Atlanticism, but his hands are tied by his boss. Which leaves the blame for the agonising betrayal of Ukraine where it belongs – with Donald Trump.
When Mr Trump was first elected in 2016, the Russians cannot have believed their luck that such an easy “mark” would be gifted to them by the American people. For reasons unknown, Mr Trump went to the Helsinki summit in 2018 and disowned his own intelligence service in front of a smiling Putin. Since his second inauguration, Mr Trump has systematically destroyed America’s most precious alliances and trading relationships, dividing old friends and shoving the American economy towards recession. Meanwhile, China and Russia are extending their global influence.
All that is left of the president’s peace plan is the highly exploitative minerals deal with Ukraine, which will take years to fully establish and will guarantee precisely nothing. Given America’s technological, economic and military superiority over Russia, Mr Trump should virtually be able to dictate its terms. But, mesmerised by the attractions of “strongman” diplomacy, Mr Trump is all too obviously (and somewhat inexplicably) desperate for an alliance with Russia.
Quite simply, Donald Trump and Steve Witkoff are no match for the manipulative Vladimir Putin, former KGB lieutenant colonel – or for the wily Sergei Lavrov, with his 20 years’ experience of diplomacy at the highest level. Soon it will be the turn of the Europeans to try to save Ukraine. At least they understand what they’re up against.
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