Trump might really be a ‘peacemaker’ in Ukraine

In a move likely to mark the beginning of the end of the Ukraine war, Donald Trump today announced that he had begun talks with Vladimir Putin. Trump has already held a ‘lengthy and highly productive phone call’ with Putin, he announced in a post on Truth Social, adding that they agreed to ‘have our respective teams start negotiations immediately’.

The Biden administration promised repeatedly that no peace deal would be negotiated over the heads of the Ukrainians. But that was always, frankly, a lie. Trump at least has sufficient respect for Ukraine to be honest that the endgame of the war was always going to be decided in Washington, not in Kyiv. 

Over the course of a tempestuous first month in office, Trump’s every utterance has blown some fundamental piety or other to smithereens. Ukraine is no exception. Since Putin’s ill-starred and disastrous full-scale invasion in February 2022, almost every western leader has claimed to believe that Russia’s forces can be decisively thrown back to the prewar borders, and promised to support Ukraine in that effort for ‘as long as its takes.’