On almost the three-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has seen tens of thousands of Ukrainians killed, hundreds of thousands flee and many parts of the country face unrelenting bombardment, US president Donald Trump suggested Ukraine was responsible for the conflict.
As Lara Marlowe writes this weekend, Trump, via a 90-minute phone call, has aligned the US with Russian president Vladimir Putin and betrayed Ukraine, a country so eager to join the West that it enshrined the twin goals of Nato and EU membership in its constitution. “It was to foil that ambition that Russia seized Crimea and much of the Donbas region in 2014 and launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.”
She writes that the betrayal started with Trump’s defence secretary Pete Hegseth telling a meeting in Brussels that Ukraine will not be allowed to join Nato.
“Under US leadership, the alliance had twice promised future membership to Ukraine. It was “unrealistic” to think that Ukraine could return to its pre-invasion borders, Hegseth said. Nor would the US send troops to prevent further Russian aggression.”
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As Marlowe notes, in one fell swoop Hegseth had granted three of Putin’s main demands before ceasefire negotiations even started.
When Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he would not accept an agreement concluded without Ukraine, Trump accused him of having started the war, a blatant lie.
A second betrayal are the demands by Trump for $500 billion in “payback” for past US assistance. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Europe has allocated $138 billion to the Ukraine war effort; the US, $119 billion.
Trump is not the first western leader to betray Ukraine. The US and Britain were guarantors of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine relinquished its nuclear weapons in exchange for promises of security. Neither budged when Russia seized Crimea. French and German leaders sought to placate Putin.
“But no western failings in the 34-year history of independent Ukraine compare to Trump’s bullying. An agreement that would grant impunity for Russian war crimes, lift sanctions and dispense with reparations, recognise Russian sovereignty over occupied territory or leave Ukraine defenceless against further aggression would signify not peace, but surrender.”
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