There may come a day when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky regrets taking the bait and, at what may be the conclusion of three years of fighting Russia, being drawn into a verbal war with U.S. President Donald Trump. Over the last few days, Trump has called Zelensky a dictator who started the war, and Zelensky has said that Trump is “caught in a web of disinformation.”
As negotiations are being prepared, and Zelensky needs more than ever to be in the shadow of Trump’s goodwill, this may be the worst time to become entrenched as an enemy of Trump. Vice President J.D. Vance said that Zelensky has been getting “bad advice,” adding “[t]he idea that Zelensky is going to change the president’s mind by badmouthing him in public media… everyone who knows the president will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration.”
The war of words began with Trump scolding Zelensky on his handling of the war, saying Ukraine “should have never started it. You could have made a deal.” Zelensky responded that he “would like to have more truth with the Trump team.”
Trump is wrong about the first point and right about the second. The beginning of the war in Ukraine is complex, and it roots go back many years before the Russian invasion. Despite Western claims of an unprovoked war, Russia was the recipient of multiple serious provocations. Request for their security concerns to be addressed in negotiations went ignored. NATO broke its promise and continued its expansion east to Russia’s borders even promising that Ukraine’s path to membership was irreversible. Ethnic Russians who were citizens of Ukraine were being threatened and their rights were being revoked. 60,000 elite Ukrainian troops massed on the eastern border with Donbas and Ukrainian artillery shelling into the Donbas had dramatically increased. There was genuine alarm in Russia that Ukraine was about to invade the Donbas. But it was Russia that illegally invaded Ukraine. The West provoked Russia, but Russia attacked Ukraine. On this, Trump is wrong.
But he is not wrong that Ukraine could have made a deal. He is wrong to ignore that before Ukraine could have made a deal, the U.S. and NATO could have made a deal instead of ignoring overtures by Putin on the eve of the war to negotiate a new security architecture and taking discussions of NATO membership for Ukraine off the table.
Hellbound and Down 