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 president forcibly denied on Thursday that he has a dog in the fight, saying he was simply motivated by a desire to end a war that has killed thousands of civilians.
“I have no allegiance to anybody. I have allegiance to saving lives, and I want to save a lot of lives, a lot of young people’s — mostly young people,” the president said.
But 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.
‘Vladimir, STOP!’
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.”
Russia’s big concession? Not taking all of Ukraine
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.
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