Bluesky

It is long past time to bring the brutal war between Russia and Ukraine to an end. Now, just as both countries seem open to serious negotiations, Donald Trump perversely seems intent on giving peace a bad name.

Even as his amateur emissaries—real estate investors Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law—launched separate discussions with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Trump decided to tilt the board for Putin. He lashed out at Zelensky, saying Ukraine needed a new president. For domestic midterms consumption, he announced an “energy ceasefire” that neither combatant had heard of, temporarily approved the purchase of Russian diesel oil, and shelved the intensified sanctions contained in legislation he had signed. He delusionally claimed that “Russia, frankly, had been fine on Ukraine. They haven’t been doing much,” even as Russia’s attacks on Ukraine intensified. Witkoff risibly hailed Putin as a “humanitarian,” while salivating over economic deals that the United States could cut with Russia when the war ends. Trump embraced Putin’s suggestion of a tripartite summit—Putin, Xi, and Trump—to settle the war, although Trump said it should focus on nuclear weapons, not Ukraine.

Delivery of defensive Patriot missiles paid for by the Europeans has been mysteriously held up. And although Trump denied that he was responsible, Ukraine suffered sudden restrictions on its use of Starshield, the Starlink satellite program vital to providing early warning of Russian missile attacks, restrictions that Elon Musk claimed only the White House could order.

Not surprisingly, these actions spurred outrage in Europe and condemnation in the US, even echoed by some Republican senators. They also inevitably triggered the Trump derangement syndrome that muddles liberal analysis. The New York Times editorial page indicted Trump for “helping Mr. Putin wage war,” and called on the West to “continue to punish Mr. Putin, the oligarchs who support him, and Russia’s war-making economy,” ignoring the terrible price Ukrainians are paying. At stake, the Times intoned, is “whether the West can rally to protect democracy and innocent lives,” although the Times carefully noted that in this “defense of democracy,” only Ukraine should put troops and civilians at risk, and Europe should bear most of the cost.

Hillary Clinton weighed in, painting Trump once more as “a willing Putin puppet,” warning that “Putin’s not going to stop with Ukraine.” She charged that Trump wants to “divide the world: He gets the Western Hemisphere, Putin gets Russia and Europe, and Xi Jinping gets the rest of the world,” a fantasy that makes the unlikely assumption that Trump would accept the smallest piece of the world and ignores European and other nations that might have something to say about the division. In contrast, the popular liberal historian Heather Cox Richardson scorned Russia as a “minor economic player whose military is flailing at its attempt to absorb its neighbor,” charging that Trump is “openly embracing Putin and is working to destroy the strongest and most successful alliance in human history to cement that partnership, apparently with an eye to enriching himself.”

Trump’s scorn for our allies and solicitude for strongmen like Mr. Putin and Xi Jinping are notorious. And his brazen use of his office to enrich himself is contemptible. Offering bribes to Putin while undermining Zelensky is more likely to undermine than facilitate negotiations.

That said, the understandable fury at Trump’s antics should not blind us to reality. This is a war that needs to come to an end.

For both Russia and Ukraine, the war has taken a staggering toll. Russia has suffered an estimated 1.5 million casualties; Ukraine, 500,000. Both find it harder to replace the losses. A million Russians have fled the country, disproportionately the most educated and skilled of the young. Over 20 percent of the Ukrainian population has been displaced, with over 5 million leaving the country. The Russian Navy has been driven out of the Black Sea; the key Ukrainian port of Odesa, center of its grain trade, has been shut down. Ukraine, with 80 percent of its power generation and 90 percent of its food logistics infrastructure destroyed, faces a brutal winter. Russia is suffering far greater damage than Putin would have imagined. Recent attacks on its oil industry have shut down some 30 percent of its refining capacity.