After I watched Donald Trump and JD Vance try to pressure Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into surrendering to Putin I felt sick. Trump wants Zelenskyy to agree to a ceasefire with no security guarantees and to “trust” Putin to honor his word. Zelenskyy knows Putin can’t be trusted, because Putin proved it with his 2014 invasion of Crimea and his 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and at all points in between when he murdered critics and disappeared rivals. When Zelenskyy tried to explain this basic history to Trump andVance, they accused him of “being disrespectful” and “trying to relitigate” the morals of the war for the cameras—cameras Trump arranged.
Putin has made his imperial ambitions clear. He is trying to rebuild the Soviet Empire, which includes not only Ukraine but Belarus, and possibly Poland. Any child can understand that a ceasefire with no U.S. security guarantees will give Putin time to replenish his military and attack again, which means a bad deal for Ukraine would be more deadly than no deal.
