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“Donald Trump said both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed a desire for peace in separate phone calls with him on Wednesday, and Trump ordered top U.S. officials to begin talks on ending the war in Ukraine…
“Earlier on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered the new administration's bluntest statement so far on its approach to the war, saying Kyiv could not realistically hope to return to previous borders or join NATO. ‘We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. But we must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,’ Hegseth told a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels. ‘Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.’…
“Hegseth said any durable peace must include ‘robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again’. But he said U.S. troops would not be deployed to Ukraine as part of such guarantees. Zelenskiy, hoping to keep Trump interested in continuing to support his country, has lately proposed a deal under which the United States would invest in minerals in Ukraine.” Reuters
The left is generally critical of both Trump and Hegseth’s comments.
“This so-called strongman is actually a weak man when it comes to confronting the hostile authoritarians of this world. In just one day, he has made four large, unnecessary and damaging concessions. First, he has not just initiated exploratory talks with Putin via an intermediary, which would be defensible, but personally given the Russian dictator fulsome and sycophantic recognition as a world leader…
“Second, he has offered the Russian leader a bilateral US-Russian negotiation over the heads of the Ukrainians… Third and fourth, he has declared that Ukraine will almost certainly have to concede territory and that the US will not support its membership of Nato. Both those things have been said privately in Washington and other western capitals for some time, but publicly conceding them upfront is a masterclass in how not to practise the ‘art of the deal’.”
Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian
“[Moscow] now has public confirmation from the Trump administration that it won’t provide Ukraine with security guarantees by admitting it to NATO, or by stationing US troops on its territory, or by boosting US military aid, or by covering any European peace keeping force with an Article 5 guarantee that the US would come to their defense if attacked. As Zelenskiy said in response, there can be no genuine security guarantee for Ukraine without US participation…
“As if to underscore his lack of commitment to a sovereign Ukraine, Trump mused in an interview with Fox News that Ukraine may or may not make a deal, and that ‘they may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday.’… He also seemed to argue that Kyiv shouldn’t have fought back against Putin’s invasion in the first place, saying that this ‘wasn’t a good war to get into.’… The Kremlin also now has in Trump a US president who seems to accept its narratives.”
Marc Champion, Bloomberg
Some argue, “[the Trump administration's approach to NATO is] a rational response to changed political realities. The Greatest Generation that fought World War II and produced presidents who understood the dangers of a power vacuum in Europe is gone. Any American who has an adult memory of the Cold War against the Soviet Union is in their mid 50s at least. And the most powerful competitor to the United States is in Asia not Europe…
“So, it’s fair for Trump to ask why the continent has still not taken over its own self-defense 80 years after the defeat of the Nazis. Successive American presidents and European leaders have failed to rethink NATO for the 21st century. In retrospect, the transatlantic alliance left itself badly exposed to the most transactional and nationalist American president since the 19th Century.”
Stephen Collinson, CNN
The right is divided about Ukraine and Hegseth’s comments.
The right is divided about Ukraine and Hegseth’s comments.
“These years have crushed Russia’s economy; Putin desperately needs to be able to sell his energy to the West again… So Vlad will take a deal that lets him preserve face and offers security that what he sees as Western efforts to undermine Moscow’s power in its ‘near abroad’ will cease. In return, he must accept the voice of Volodymyr Zelensky in the peace talks…
“Trump, too, must recognize that Zelensky is key to a stable future: If Ukraine’s president is seen as being dictated to in some ‘peace in our time’ farce, the whole country will look and feel weak — and Putin’s tanks are all too likely to get rolling again soon. Similarly, doing a deal with Kyiv on rare earths is a savvy move by Trump in securing US support for Ukraine and for peace: The public sees America finally ‘getting something’ for standing with Ukraine, and it establishes a clear US interest that any future Putin aggression would threaten — thereby bolstering Kyiv’s security.”
Editorial Board, New York Post
“Although he attempted to walk both of these back the next day, Hegseth’s conclusions are on point. Ukraine has waited nearly seventeen years to become a full member of the alliance; it’s still waiting today. You might hear a lot of wishy-washy pablum from US and European elites about Ukraine eventually joining the Western military bloc at some undefined date in the future, but the passage of time reveals the blunt reality: the US and Europe don’t want to fight and die for the Ukrainians…
“As far as Ukraine not reclaiming all of its land… The Ukrainian army has exceeded everybody’s grandest expectations and prevented the much larger Russian military from turning the entire country into a satellite. But Kyiv isn’t strong enough to kick Russian forces out of Ukraine entirely… Even Zelensky acknowledged [this] back in December.”
Daniel DePetris, Spectator World
Others argue, “We can only hope [America’s enemies and allies] did not hear Hegseth throw his hands up in a tacit acknowledgment that Vladimir Putin’s adventurism had already redrawn the map of Europe by virtue of the facts on the ground. The West should not be in the business of legitimizing territorial expansionism via force of arms — not unless we want to see more of that sort of thing…
“As for taking NATO membership off the table, it’s equally unclear what this act of radical honesty provides Western negotiators save for the relief it grants Putin. But Putin likely doesn’t need more inducements to get to the negotiating table… [Finally] Hegseth’s rhetoric would appear to confirm that Ukraine’s ‘security guarantees’ won’t be backed by NATO’s security architecture, which should leave observers wondering what credible deterrent the West could bring to bear.”
Noah Rothman, National Review
These last-minute Valentine’s Day gifts scream ‘I didn’t forget!’
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
