As President Donald Trump attempts to engage Russia to end the conflict in Ukraine, supporters of the proxy war in Washington, Europe, and Ukraine claim that President Vladimir Putin is an evil dictator who cannot be trusted. The implication is that talking with the Kremlin is equivalent to surrender for Kiev because Putin wants all of Ukraine, and will use any pause in fighting to gear up for the next invasion.
However, history disproves that assertion. For Moscow, the war was never about seizing Ukrainian territory or attempting to reconstitute the USSR, but pushing back on NATO expansion after the bloc threatened to add Kiev as a member.
Before the invasion and in the early months of the war, Putin made serious offers to both Washington and Kiev to allow eastern and southern Ukraine to remain under Kiev’s control if the country agreed not to join NATO.
The Joe Biden administration outright refused to negotiate on those terms, even if they were acceptable to Kiev. Preventing those talks from occurring first provoked the Russian invasion, then prevented it from ending within a few months.
Hellbound and Down 