In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, Zelensky claimed that “Russian narratives are prevailing in the US” and that Moscow has “enormous influence” on the administration of US President Donald Trump and its policies.

Responding in a conversation with the UnHerd outlet published on Tuesday, Vance described Zelensky’s remarks as “certainly not productive.”

“I think it is sort of absurd for Zelensky to tell the [US] government, which is currently keeping his entire government and war effort together, that we are somehow on the side of the Russians,” he stressed.

“If you want to end the conflict, you have to try to understand where both the Russians and the Ukrainians see their strategic objectives,” Vance added.

“That does not mean you morally support the Russian cause, or that you support the full-scale invasion, but you do have to try to understand what are their strategic red lines, in the same way that you have to try to understand what the Ukrainians are trying to get out of the conflict,” he said.

Members of the Trump administration “are not on anybody’s side. We are on America’s side,” Vance insisted.

Trump and Vance publicly clashed with Zelensky during his visit to the White House in late February, accusing the Ukrainian leader of disrespect toward the US, failing to appreciate American aid, and not being interested in achieving peace with Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Kommersant newspaper in an interview published on Tuesday that Moscow appreciates that “the Trump administration is trying to get to the bottom of the issue and, most importantly, understand the root cause” of the Ukraine conflict.

Lavrov also noted that Trump “has repeatedly said that the colossal mistake which led to the current events in Ukraine was the Biden administration’s decision to drag Ukraine into NATO.”

Ukrainian neutrality remains one of Moscow’s key demands for a settlement of the conflict, along with the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine and recognition by Kiev that Crimea, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and Kherson and Zaporozhye regions are part of Russia.

In an interview with the French daily Le Figaro published on Wednesday, Zelensky identified the emotion as one of his three key psychological drivers since the escalation of the conflict in February 2022.

Zelensky said he hated “Russians who killed so many Ukrainian citizens,” adding that he considered such an attitude appropriate in wartime. His other motivations included a sense of national dignity and the desire for his descendants to live “in the free world.”

Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of being a historic oppressor while  Zelensky has previously touted Ukrainians’ “love of freedom” as a trait that distinguishes them from Russians.

Zelensky, whose presidential term expired last year, was elected in 2019 on a platform of defusing tensions with Moscow and reconciling ethnic Russian Ukrainians in Donbass, many of whom opposed the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev. However, his initial diplomatic efforts were thwarted by radical Ukrainian nationalists in the body politic.

Since the coup, Kiev has enacted various policies undermining the rights of ethnic minorities, with Russians as the primary target. Moscow has accused Zelensky of intensifying the crackdown, particularly by attacking the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the country’s largest religious denomination, which now faces potential prohibition for having historic links with Russia.

In a recent interview, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asserted that Zelensky caters to “the segment of the population that holds radical, ultra-right, revanchist, Banderite views,” as his image as a national leader increasingly deteriorates.

“Zelensky does not want to display weakness, as he realizes that his days are numbered,” the Russian official claimed.

In a widely neglected article for the Asia Times on April 19, 2022, I reported that,

…US involvement goes deeper than arms sales and intelligence sharing. A Pentagon official who requested anonymity told me it is “likely we have a limited footprint on the ground in Ukraine, but under Title 50, not Title 10,” meaning US intelligence operatives and paramilitaries – but not regular military.”

In the same report I quoted Bruce Fein, a former associate attorney general during the Reagan administration, who described the behavior of the US and its allies as “systematic or substantial violations of a neutral’s duties of impartiality and non-participation in the conflict.”

If nothing else, Entous’ report demonstrates the troubling extent of our co-belligerency in a war against nuclear-armed Russia, and inadvertently revealed the depths of deceit to which Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan, Lloyd Austin and Antony Blinken sunk to keep America’s involvement from public view.

Having started a war he clearly believes he was provoked* into fighting after being serially misled by France and Germany during the Minsk process (2015-2022) Russia’s Vladimir Putin is in no mood to compromise.

On March 27th, in a meeting in Murmansk with sailors from the nuclear submarine Arkhangelsk, Putin spoke about the state of the war, noting that:

We are gradually, not as quickly as some would like, but nevertheless persistently and confidently moving towards achieving all the goals declared at the beginning of this operation.

Along the entire line of combat contact, our troops have the strategic initiative. I said just recently: We will finish them off. There is reason to believe that we will finish them off.

Later on, Putin broached the idea of a new government in Ukraine “within the framework of the United Nations peacekeeping operations.”

“In principle,” he continued, “it would indeed be possible to discuss, under UN auspices with the United States and even European countries – and certainly with our partners and allies – the possibility of establishing a temporary administration in Ukraine.”

In Putin’s view, the Zelensky regime is, thanks to its ties, and indeed reliance on, avowedly neo-Nazi militias within the country, unable and unwilling to act as a serious interlocutor on talks to end the war. As has been widely reported, Putin’s recent comments about Zelensky have angered Donald Trump.

Another sign that the Russians are in this for the long haul is their ongoing effort to strengthen their partnership with China. Today, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and assistant foreign minister Liu Bin met with Putin, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and presidential aide Yury Ushakov in Moscow. Among other things, it was confirmed that Chinese president Xi Jinping will meet next month with Putin in Moscow to mark Victory Day, the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

In comments that ought to worry both Zelensky and Trump, Wang told the Russian media outlet RIA Novosti that while he viewed Trump’s push to end the war as “worth taking” he added that peace, in his view, was still “far away” and that “the causes of the crisis are extremely complex.”

He continued,

…We advocate eradicating the causes of the crisis through dialogue and negotiations, and ultimately achieving a fair, long-term, binding peace agreement acceptable to all parties involved.”

Trump’s dreams of a Nobel Prize will collide with a number of factors including China’s support for Russia; Putin’s view of Zelensky as illegitimate; and, not least, the reality on the ground—a reality that is starkly at odds with jejune narratives crafted by the Pentagon (then laundered through the New York Times) which claim Russia has lost upwards of 700,000 men and its economy is teetering on the precipice of catastrophe.

No evidence exists for such claims: In 2024, Russia’s economy grew by 4.1 percent, the EU’s economy grew by 1 percent; a realistic discussion about casualty rates can be found here.

In the end, Russia is winning the war and Putin’s demand for regime change in Kiev is one which Trump might accede to if he wants the fighting to end any time soon. If and when an honest account of this period is written, Zelensky will emerge not as the Churchill of his time but as Eastern Europe’s Diem; a vain leader held hostage to forces at home and abroad over which he has little control.

Notes:

* On numerous occasions in the lead up to the invasion, Putin spoke about the clear and present danger growing on Russia’s border with Ukraine, see: Geoffery Roberts’ classic ‘Now or Never’: Putin’s Decision for War with Ukraine, link here: https://jmss.org/article/view/76584/56335?s=03

James W. Carden is editor of TRR and a contributing editor at The American Conservative.

He was not the only Cassandra issuing a warning about this. Many people inside and outside the government predicted that Ukraine, and to a lesser extent, the region of Georgia, was a trip wire for the Russians, and it did not matter who the leader in Moscow was. In fact, years ago, National Security Council Russian specialist Fiona Hill advised against bringing Georgia and Ukraine into the western alliance. She warned Vice President Dick Cheney against it. Why? Because so many of our allies in Europe opposed it and the Russians would regard it as a provocation. (Scott Horton, Provoked, p. 446)

Defense Secretary Robert Gates also opposed marching NATO east to Ukraine and Georgia. He specifically pointed out that the NATO agreement rotating troops through bases in Romania and Bulgaria was a taunting type of mistake. With that example, Ukraine and Georgia would be needlessly overreaching. Russian scholar Michael Mandelbaum wrote that this Ukraine policy was irrelevant and at worst counterproductive. He also labeled it political in nature. (Foreign Affairs, May/June 1995)

Another former Secretary of Defense, William Perry also complained about an unwise eastward policy. He said it would be provocative to the Russians. The reply Perry got on this is revealing of the arrogance motivating this movement: “Who cares what they think? They’re a third rate power.” As he then added, that message got through to Moscow. (Guardian, March 9, 2016, story by Julian Borger)

French president Jacques Chirac warned, “We have humiliated them too much. One day there will be a dangerous nationalist backlash.” (Meeting memo by Anthony Lake, 1/1/96) Veteran diplomat Dennis Ross said the same thing: this would be too humiliating for Russia, and the nationalists would have a field day in Moscow. (Horton, p. 130) Perhaps the wisest and most experienced Russian expert in America, former USSR diplomat George Kennan, was also formally against it. In the New York Times he called this movement east no less than “A Fateful Error”. (2/5/97) He told reporter Thomas Friedman, “I think NATO expansion is the beginning of a new Cold War.” (Friedman, NY Times, 5/2/98)

Kennan’s last comment accented the real problem. Combined with the sneering at what America thought was now a third rate power, marching NATO up to the Russian border was, in essence, igniting Cold War 2. Nixon/Reagan speechwriter Pat Buchanan—a former violent Cold Warrior—warned that it could cause the replacement of the compliant Boris Yeltsin with an anti-American nationalist. If that happened the blame “must rest squarely with a haughty US elite that has done its best to humiliate Russia.” He then pointedly asked: “Why are we doing this….the Soviet empire is dead….a friendly Russia is far more critical to US security than any alliance with Warsaw or Prague.” (Horton, p. 121)

In the face of all these warnings—and many more– what made this irresistible motion east so questionable was this: Russia asked to join NATO thrice. The first time was Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev to Secretary of State James Baker, the second was under Bill Clinton and the third was under Bush 2. All three offers were either ignored or sloughed off. (Ibid, p. 63, pp. 329-339) Would not this puzzling “everybody but us” action, make Moscow wonder–as Kennan and Buchanan suggested—that the motive for the march was to revive the Cold War? Except this time Moscow’s former allies in the Warsaw Pact would be arrayed against them. And this time the march would lead right up to the Russian border. Jack Matlock, former ambassador to the USSR, warned against precisely that. (Responsible Statecraft, 2/15/2022)

Giving all this a multiplier effect were the lies involved in the step by step encroachment eastward. It began with the collapse of the Berlin Wall. That milestone caused the neoconservative movement to puff itself up into Goliath type dimensions. As the late journalist and author Charles Krauthammer wrote, now with the USSR gone, it was America’s unipolar moment, the USA could remake the world as its leaders saw fit. (Foreign Affairs, 1/1/90) He was not alone. Journalist and publisher Bill Kristol and columnist Robert Kagan labeled it the moment of “benevolent global hegemony.” (Foreign Affairs, July/August 1996) Undersecretary of Defense for Obama, Michele Flournoy, talked about a military posture of Full Spectrum Dominance. (Horton, p. 40) In his book The Grand Chessboard, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, said it was a moment of predominance.

Make no mistake, this attitude was prevalent in the halls of power under people working Russian affairs in the State Department. A prime example being diplomat Victoria Nuland, Kagan’s wife. (Horton, p. 443) And also in congress, with men like senators John McCain and Joe Biden. It was the time to stomp on Russia. (The Hill, 3//16/17, story by Daniel Depetris; NY Times, 3/30/98 story by Eric Schmitt)

All this is to show that America was not going into this dangerous march toward Ukraine with eyes shut. We were doing it with ample warnings. The neocons, and I am including Hillary Clinton under that rubric, won out in the end. But because of all these red flags, the US tried to hide its real motives. In some cases it outright lied.

The lies began with the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Krauthammer saw this as a wedge to move the world: “I suggest we go all the way and stop at nothing short of universal domination.” (The National Interest, Winter 1989/90). The neocons thought German unification could mark the start of the American dominion of all Europe through NATO. But if that was to occur, Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev would have to get his troops out of eastern Europe and dissolve the Warsaw Pact. Margaret Thatcher of Britain was against German unification because she knew Gorbachev was hesitant to do it. (Irish Times, 12/28/19, story by Harry McGee)

President George H. W Bush and Secretary of State James Baker went around Thatcher. They cajoled Gorbachev into doing those things with the promise that once Germany was one, NATO would not move east at all. That this was agreed to was proven by notes posted at George Washington University in both 2017 and 2018. (Svetlana Savranskaya “NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard”, National Security Archive, December 12, 2017). This pledge came from the president himself. (op. cit. Matlock). And in February of 1990, at a joint press conference, Baker and West German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich stated that NATO had no intention of moving toward the East. (UPI story by Jim Anderson of 2/2/90). This pledge was made from Baker to Gorbachev no less than six times.(Horton, p. 50). When on November 26, 2009 the German magazine Der Spiegel reviewed the record, they concluded:

….there was no doubt that the West did everything it could to give the Soviets the impression that NATO membership was out of the question for countries like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia.

Gorbachev acted on these supposed pledges. Russian troops were moved out of eastern Europe and the Warsaw Pact was disbanded in 1991. Turned out it was all a smoke screen. For in July of 1990 Baker alluded to the expansion of NATO for those who wanted out of the Warsaw pact. (Horton, p. 64) Just a few days after German unification was complete, in a private NATO memo in advance of a meeting, this statement appeared: “Should the United States and NATO now signal to the new democracies of Eastern Europe NATO’s readiness to contemplate their future membership?” (ibid, p. 66)

What makes this dual track even worse is that on August 1, 1991—the eve of Ukraine declaring independence– President Bush specifically said he would not participate in choosing between Gorbachev and independence leaders in order “to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism.” So quite naturally not only did Gorbachev buy into the overt promises, so did his successor Boris Yeltsin. To the point he thought Russia could join NATO down the line. (LA Times, 12/21/91, story by William Tuohy and Norman Kempster) But to be fair, its an open question whether or not Bush and Baker ever considered extending NATO as far east as Ukraine.

There is little question that the Clinton administration, especially under Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, did consider it. Bill Clinton had an opportunity to snuff out the embers of any kind of Cold War 2. He did not. This despite Moscow pulling its troops out of Eastern Europe and downsizing its army by 70% during the Clinton years. (Congressional Research Staff report of 9/4/97) In fact it was under Clinton that NATO began moving dramatically east with the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary joining in 1999. Clinton did this over strenuous objections by Yeltsin. In so doing Yeltsin reminded the new president of the previous promises made by the prior White House. (Yeltsin letter of 9/15/93) Secretary of State Warren Christopher assured Yeltsin Clinton would not expand the NATO alliance. (Horton, p. 102) Again, as with Bush I, this was a conscious ruse. For the decision to move eastward was made around the same time. (Albright, Madam Secretary: A Memoir, p. 167)

On January 12, 1994 the mask was dropped. In Prague, Clinton stated, “The question is no longer whether NATO will take on new members, but when and how.” Yeltsin was enraged, and when he saw Clinton two days later he told him, if such were the case, then Russia had to join first. Clinton ignored the request. (US Embassy cable to State, 1/14/94) Six months later, Clinton said the same thing in a speech in Warsaw. Again, Yeltsin said Russia was to join first. Again, this plea was ignored.

Question: Considering this repeated pattern—announcement, a request and then denial– how could Moscow not think that expansion was aimed at them?

In fact a State Department official admitted to the Poles that fooling Russia with feints was the intent. The falsity began with Germany and would now be extended to Eastern Europe. National Security Advisor Anthony Lake admitted the same: it was a charade designed to contain Russia. And it would lead up to a possible membership for Ukraine. (Horton, p. 108)

By 1995, Yeltsin finally understood Clinton was lying. He told him directly that he could not agree to expanding NATO to the borders of Russia. It would be a betrayal of the Russian people and it would constitute nothing but humiliation if it happened. It would be a new form of encirclement. He concluded with the most crucial question: Why do you want to do this? (Summary of meeting at Kremlin May 10, 1995)

The other problem was: how could anyone say that NATO was simply a defensive alliance? Not after the massive and continuous bombings of Kosovo and then Libya. And it was the Clintons—Bill and then Hillary—who were behind those two assaults. Just like it was Hillary Clinton who pushed NATO expansionist Madeleine Albright on her husband for Secretary of State.

As we know, first three new states joined NATO in 1999. Then seven in 2004; two more in 2009 and finally Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020. In other words, after the Cold War had ended, NATO doubled its membership. This, even though the ostensible reason for its existence–a communist threat from the USSR–did not exist anymore. Russia was not a communist country and the USSR had broken up. Russia was shrinking not expanding.

As early as 1997, Clinton began a process for considering Ukraine as a member of NATO. This was 4 months after Yeltsin had told him specifically not to do so. (Memorandum of Helsinki meeting 3/21/97)

Things got worse under Bush II. He withdrew from the ABM Treaty of 1972. He then announced that he would place defensive missiles in Romania and Poland, and radars in the Czech Republic. When asked what these were for, with a straight face, he said Iran. (Corey Flintoff, NPR News, 10/28/ 2007) What made this worse was that these defensive systems, the MK 41, are capable of being switched to offensive Tomahawk cruise missiles which can he armed with H bombs. (Posted at Foreign Policy web site, January 12, 2022, article by Jack Detsch) Then there was the planned stationing of F-16’s in the Baltics, now also part of NATO. (Steven Myers, NY Times, 4/3/2004)

What happened to empathy in diplomacy? When the time was ripe for a real détente, Clinton had abused Yeltsin and humiliated Russia. Now Bush 2 was arming an eastward NATO, a grouping his father promised would never exist. As the NY Times wrote, “To Russia, at least, the meaning is clear: the alliance still views it as a potential enemy rather than a partner.” (Thom Shanker, NY Times, 8/15/2004)

As Pat Buchanan predicted, this is what led to the rise of Vladimir Putin.

At the same time, Zelensky remains adamant about obtaining NATO-style security guarantees from the US and other NATO states, which, he said, are “definitely needed… Otherwise, Putin will come again with war.”

Overlooked disclosures from Western and Ukrainian sources underscore that it is not just Russia that Zelensky is fearful of.

At home, Zelensky faces the traditional obstacle of Ukraine’s radical and heavily armed far-right, which remains steadfastly opposed to any negotiated solution with Russia. According to a 2024 survey, fifteen percent of soldiers and veterans would join an armed revolt if Ukraine and Russia reached a peace deal on unfavorable terms.

As the Financial Times noted last year, Zelensky’s “biggest domestic problem… might come from a nationalist minority opposed to any compromise, some of whom are now armed and trained to fight.” Entering “any negotiation” with Russia, a Ukrainian official said, “could be a trigger for social instability. Zelensky knows this very well.” Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a member of Zelensky’s political party, was even more blunt. “There will always be a radical segment of Ukrainian society that will call any negotiation capitulation. The far right in Ukraine is growing. The right wing is a danger to democracy,” Merezhko said.

The view that Ukrainian extremists pose an obstacle to peace has newly been confirmed by an unlikely source. In a recent interview, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson acknowledged that Zelensky was undercut by radicals who stood in the way of the Minsk Accords, the UN Security Council-endorsed pact for ending the post-2014 Maidan coup civil war. Zelensky, Johnson explained, “was elected as a peacenik,” and “in 2019, he tried to do a deal with Putin.” But “his basic problem was that Ukrainian nationalists couldn’t accept the compromise.” That compromise was predicated on granting the Russian-backed Donbas rebels limited autonomy inside of Ukraine and effectively abandoning hopes of joining NATO. [https://x.com/aaronjmate/status/1901663404776960096]

Johnson’s admission was ill-timed for Zelensky, who recently blew up a White House meeting with Donald Trump and JD Vance over his insistence that Putin can’t be negotiated with. As I wrote earlier this month, Zelensky falsely blamed Putin for the failure of their December 2019 agreement – an argument that has now been deflated by Johnson, who is arguably Zelensky’s most vocal foreign champion.

What Johnson failed to acknowledge is that both his government and the US also failed to “accept the compromise” and sided with the same nationalists who undermined it. Even as the radicals threatened Zelensky with regime change or even death if he went ahead with Minsk, the US and UK never used their critical influence to back him up. In fact, when Zelensky took limited steps to pursue Minsk, he was discouraged by people like William Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine, who told him it was “a terrible idea.”

Western rejectionism continued even after the Russian invasion, when Johnson flew to Kyiv and advised Zelensky to walk away from the peace deal that his negotiators had brokered with Russia in Istanbul. To underscore his commitment to compromise-refusing Ukrainian radicals, Johnson later hosted members of what he called “the heroes of the Azov Brigade” – a neo-Nazi militia – and urged NATO states to give them more weapons.

In an overlooked disclosure after the Istanbul talks collapsed, a senior member of the Ukrainian negotiating team revealed that the US and UK had not only opposed the peace deal with Russia, but deceived Zelensky into walking away. According to veteran Ukrainian diplomat Oleksandr Chalyi, the US and UK told Zelensky that Ukraine would receive security guarantees only if he abandoned negotiations with Russia. But when Zelensky complied, the US and UK immediately abandoned their promise.

In the post-invasion talks, Chalyi writes, “Ukraine insisted on… effective and reliable security guarantees for Ukraine from the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including the Russian Federation.” Because Kyiv held that Russia had violated its pledges under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and refrain from violence against it, Ukrainian negotiators insisted that any new security guarantees “be as close as possible and equal to the security guarantees set forth” under the NATO charter, which constitute a mutual defense pact. This demand “was a key Ukrainian requirement during all the negotiations,” and Russia did not oppose it. In fact, he writes, “Russia fully agreed with the position of Ukraine on this issue,” a stance reflected in the jointly drafted Istanbul Communiqué of late-March 2022.

The joint Ukrainian-Russian agreement on the paramount issue of security guarantees then ran into an obstacle. In “mid-April 2022”, after allegations of Russian war crimes in Bucha and other areas, Chalyi recounts, “the United States and Great Britain declared that it was unacceptable for their states to participate” in an agreement “together with the Russian Federation.” However, the US and UK offered Ukraine a way out: “At the same time, they assured that they were ready to give security guarantees to Ukraine independently or in a multilateral format without the participation of the Russian Federation.”

The US-UK insistence on excluding Russia from any deal made “the provision of joint security guarantees… fundamentally impossible,” Chalyi concludes. Therefore, “the relevant negotiations with the Russian Federation were terminated.”

But that was not the only termination. When Ukraine then followed up with the US and UK on those promised security guarantees — including by submitting a new draft “Treaty on Guarantees of Ukraine’s Security” — the US and UK balked. According to Chalyi, Ukraine was told in early May 2022 – right after it walked away from the Istanbul deal — that Western allies would provide “only a set of soft security guarantees in the form of military and defence assistance, but which completely excluded hard security guarantees, i.e. any possibility the use of their armed forces to restore and maintain security of Ukraine.” Moreover, “even with regard to soft security guarantees for Ukraine, they were not ready to give them the form of legally binding agreements.”

In short, the US and UK got Zelensky to abandon his team’s peace deal with Russia by baiting him with a promise of security guarantees that they immediately abandoned. This betrayal has cost Ukraine hundreds of thousands of lives and now left Zelensky even more vulnerable to the far-right extremists who have undermined peace for more than a decade.

In this context, it is no wonder that Zelensky is now desperate for a security guarantee to safeguard Ukraine not only from Russia and his own country’s extremists, but another Western betrayal.

But Zelensky’s moment is quickly passing into history. A growing constituency of his own people and of Ukraine’s political elite are calling for new elections and a swift end to the war. And the imminent collapse of the Kursk incursion – widely seen as Zelensky’s brainchild – will focus those calls into a clamour. 

It will be convenient to blame the coming massacre and capture of Ukrainian soldiers on Trump’s cutoff of military aid and intelligence sharing. But in truth things have been bleak well before the recent Trump-Zelensky meltdown.  

Yesterday prominent Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko called for peace with Russia after three years of passionate defiance. He called on Zelensky to stop claiming to be “saving” Europe and concentrate on saving Ukraine. Indeed, for all the recent talk of Ukraine standing as a shield to Putin’s aggression, Honcharenko pointed out the simple geographical truth that it is not Ukraine that stands between Russia and Poland but the close Kremlin ally Belarus.

Some claim that Zelensky reaped an electoral boost after his Oval Office humiliation by Donald Trump and JD Vance. With polling in wartime patchy and unreliable, that is hard to prove either way. But what is in no doubt is that in the wake of the Oval Office row Ukraine’s parliament came out with a joint statement strongly supporting the US and implicitly condemning Zelensky. 

The leaders of the Rada’s parties wrote the following statement:  “The Ukrainian people desire peace more than anyone else in the world and believe that the personal role of President Donald Trump and his peacekeeping efforts will be decisive in the swift cessation of hostilities.”

And the polls? It depends on what question you ask. Zelensky supporters point to recent polls that show a healthy 61 per cent “trust” rating. But when it comes to future voting intentions, the answers are very different. Just 16 per cent of Ukrainian voters said that they would vote Zelensky back into power in a survey conducted by Socis, a major Kyiv-based market research company, last month. 

There is also a major vibe shift under way in the Ukrainian elite – including among Zelensky’s former senior colleagues and allies. “I distrust leaders eager to prolong [war],” wrote Iuliia Mendel, Zelensky’s former press secretary. The West, she added, should “unite to halt this horrific devastation of Ukrainians. I stand with the Ukrainian people who live in Ukraine and who want someone smart to finish this war and save the nation.” 

According to one cabinet-level former official who worked closely with Zelensky until 2023: “Ukraine cannot have a president who does not have the confidence of our most powerful ally [the United States] … There is only one serious question in [Kyiv] politics today, who will replace Zelensky and how quickly?”

Zelensky’s diehard supporters – including many European leaders – see the hand of the Trump White House behind talk of regime change in Kyiv. Trump wants to please Putin at any cost, the conspiracy theory runs, and throwing Zelensky under the bus is a small price to pay. 

By this logic the Oval Office meeting was a calculated ambush. And we now know that top White House officials met Ukraine’s former president Petro Poroshenko and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the days before the Zelensky visit. Both Ukrainians denied that the meeting was a plot to oust Zelensky. But they have admitted they discussed with Trump the mechanics of holding early elections.

Is Trump gunning for Zelensky personally? The truth seems to lie somewhere in the murky middle. Trump’s personal beef with Zelensky goes all the way back to 2019 with a phone call in which the American president allegedly threatened to withdraw US military aid unless Zelensky dished dirt on Hunter Biden. That incident became the basis for Trump’s second impeachment in Congress (though it was vetoed in the Senate). 

But at the same time Trump was absolutely serious about signing a deal for Ukraine’s strategic minerals in the Oval Office last month. Lunch was waiting on trolleys for the Ukrainian delegation, and a lengthy meeting between Zelensky and a group of 16 senators indicated that the signing would proceed without a hitch. 

Instead, it went wrong in the room. Watch the first 42 minutes of the 53 minute Oval Office press conference and all was perfectly cordial – until Zelensky, in Vance’s words, was “disrespectful.” Cue Trump and Vance’s unseemly two-on-one pile on. And Zelensky, whose English is frankly poor, made things worse by being blunt to the point of rudeness. 

Leaving the blame game to historians, what is tangible is that power is ebbing from Ukraine’s president by the day. Zelensky has gone to Riyadh for talks with Mohammed bin Salman, whose government has played a mediating role between Ukraine and Russia. But it will be Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, who will meet the US secretary of state Marco Rubio later this week to thrash out details of a possible ceasefire that Trump will put to Putin. 

For different reasons both Trump and Putin want Zelensky gone – they both speak of him as an illegitimate president.

Can there be fair elections in wartime? There is a provision in Ukraine’s constitution for the speaker of the Rada – Zelensky party member Ruslan Stefanchuk – to temporarily take over from a President who resigns. Some argue that should in fact have happened when Zelensky’s term expired in May 2024.

Is there any way Zelensky would acquiesce to his own defenestration? He told reporters last week that he would be willing to step down in exchange for Nato membership. That was hardly realistic – but the principle is noble. He has shown himself willing resign for the good of his country.

For all of Europe’s bold talk of stepping up to fill America’s absent place as the arsenal of democracy and leader of the free world, the proposals thrashed out last week by Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Zelensky last week in London will be presented not directly to Putin but to Washington. 

And the £672.82 billion for defence that Brussels has announced are magicked out of thin air and wholly based on raising new debt.  

Ultimately, Trump is running this show. Zelensky needs to make one fundamental choice – whether a Trump-brokered ceasefire will be good for his country or not, and whether he will support or oppose it. In other words, is he part of the problem or part of the solution?

The Russo–Ukrainian War is a great tragedy. Primary blame for the conflict lies with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. However, American and European officials recklessly flouted their assurances to Moscow and challenged its security concerns, then denied their complicity after war erupted. They too are drenched in blood.

Now Ukraine is running out of soldiers and the allies are running out of weapons, whereas Moscow has proved willing to pay the price necessary to win. The Biden administration was inclined to risk war by fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian. That policy is now dead. Zelensky continues to push for Kiev’s membership in NATO. Why? Because otherwise, he contends, Russia will attack NATO.

Come again?

At the recent Munich Security Conference, Zelensky spoke of Putin, warning: “I think that he’s preparing the war against NATO countries next year. But it is not 100 percent. God bless we will stop this crazy guy. How to stop him? Security guarantees for us.” He cited a Russian military build-up in Belarus: “They can simply go on the offensive into Ukraine, just like they went in 2022… or they will go to Poland or the Baltic countries.” Indeed, Zelensky told Trump: “Even you. You have [a] nice ocean. And you don’t feel it now. But you will feel it in the future.”

Zelensky is not alone in predicting a Russian rampage. Allied officials, many of whom lied for years about NATO expansion and implementation of the Minsk accords, echo his claims. Putin is a bad guy, but the world is full of dictators who don’t commit aggression. And some democratic states do—the estimates of civilian dead resulting from Washington’s invasion of Iraq alone start in the low 100,000s and race upward. Zelensky’s contention that NATO can prevent Russian aggression against Ukraine but no one else, including America, is obvious nonsense. In fact, Moscow has no reason to attack other states or to expect an easy victory if it did so.

The Europeans are not behaving as if they believe Russia is preparing a Blitzkrieg to the Atlantic. Other than Poland and the Baltics, no European countries are engaging in serious defense buildups. Only last week did the United Kingdom offer a meaningful rearmament program, after shrinking its army to pre-Napoleonic size. France looks serious only compared to other Europeans. Germany’s much acclaimed “Zeitenwende” (historical turning point) was a bust, while Italy and Spain continue to sport large economies but minimal militaries. The Europeans still expect Uncle Sam to play Uncle Sucker.

Anyway, irrespective of Putin’s desires, Russia lacks the capabilities for large-scale aggression. The Soviet Union turned out to be much weaker than the military behemoth promoted in the Pentagon’s propagandistic annual publication Soviet Military Power. After the Soviet breakup the Russian military was but a pale reflection of its predecessor, which explains Moscow’s poor performance against Georgia. Although since reformed, the Russian military again demonstrated its significant limits in Ukraine.

Russia has spent three years battling one nation, even now only slowly gaining ground. Who imagines Moscow conquering Europe, with Russian soldiers overspreading multiple countries, defeating various militaries, occupying ever more territory, and maintaining control over hostile populations? Especially when the U.S. could enable its allies to unleash hell directed at targets in Russia presently beyond Ukraine’s reach.

Moreover, Putin also isn’t acting the part. He originally wasn’t hostile to the West. As a KGB agent stationed in Germany, he was more worldly than most Soviet apparatchiks. He was the first foreign leader to call George W. Bush after 9/11 and just a couple weeks later told the German Bundestag “No one calls in question the great value of Europe’s relations with the United States.”

Alas, he changed his opinion of the US, as he explained in his famous speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference. Even then, he targeted NATO expansion, fueled by bad faith and broken promises, as having no “relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. … And what happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”

In 2008 after the allies committed to induct Georgia and Ukraine, William Burns, then U.S. ambassador to Russia, reported: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). … I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” Intelligence officer Fiona Hill, who later served with Trump’s NSC, predicted “that Mr. Putin would view steps to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO as a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action.”

Even so, Putin responded with violence in Ukraine only after the West sought to realign the country, backing a street putsch against the elected president and threatening Russia’s naval base in Sevastopol. He also limited military action to the Crimea and Donbass, eschewing a full-scale invasion of a much weaker Ukraine. And he engaged in negotiations to end the 2008 conflict, leading to the Minsk agreement which Kiev violated and which allied leaders now say they never intended to keep. He sought talks about the critical issues before invading Ukraine in February 2022, but Washington refused. Just weeks after invading, his government negotiated with Kiev to end the fighting. Putin still bears responsibility for attacking Ukraine, but continental conflict was never his objective.

No doubt, Putin’s war aims might expand. However, his demands so far have been limited. A joint Ukraine/NATO commitment to take alliance membership off the table might have forestalled the invasion. Even now the Putin government emphasizes military limitations, saying it would respect its neighbor’s sovereignty, including Ukraine’s joining the European Union—which remains years away because of European, not Russian, obstacles. Negotiations would be the best way to test Moscow’s ultimate intentions.

Nevertheless, Chatham House’s Keir Giles asserts: “Putin’s intention to take what he (and many Russians) see as rightfully theirs has never been clearer.” Elsewhere Giles insists: “There is no doubt as to the intent, and there is a strong risk that Russia might persuade itself it has the capability too.” Where and when has Putin stated or demonstrated these supposedly obvious intentions?

When asked by Tucker Carlson last September whether he planned to invade his neighbors, Putin responded: “We have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don’t have any interest. It’s just threat mongering.” War with Poland would happen “only in one case: if Poland attacks Russia.” His conduct so far matches his rhetoric. If he desired European conquest, why didn’t he grab the Baltics long ago? Why didn’t he take all of Georgia in 2008? Why didn’t he attack Poland before it began rearming?

Giles goes on to state: “We are once again living in an era where brute military force will determine the lives and futures of millions of people across the continent.” But that was the case throughout the Cold War. It was also the case with America as the unipower, when the U.S. and allies violently dismembered Yugoslavia while insisting that ethnic Serbs everywhere and always remain under oppressive majorities, as in Croatia and Kosovo.

So far Putin’s behavior, though odious, looks defensive. He has not sought to recreate the Soviet Union. Fearmongers can cite his statement: “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart.” However, his next line was “Whoever wants it back has no brain.” For the last quarter century Putin sought to create a military cordon sanitaire next to his country, something considerably smaller than what the United States claims as part of its “Monroe Doctrine” in the Western Hemisphere. U.S. foreign policy is ostentatiously more aggressive, asserting that Washington is entitled to intervene everywhere up to every other nation’s border and often inside their countries as well.

Does Putin have nefarious global ambitions? Much has been written about his “war against the West” and desire for a different “world order.” However, Moscow is not alone in its dissatisfaction with the West, which created a “rules-based order” designed for its benefit, and which it violates whenever convenient. The Global South’s skepticism toward U.S./European policy was well-earned. Moreover, until the allies’ proxy war against Russia, the latter cooperated with the U.S. on nonproliferation against Iran and North Korea. Putin offered assistance in the Bush administration’s campaign against terrorism and provided logistical support against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Russia has long valued good relations with China, but nothing like today’s “partnership without limits.”

After three years of war, Putin’s consistent policy remains: to avoid a clash with NATO. Allied officials lied to Ukrainians as well as Russians, promising membership that they never intended to offer. In moments of weakness, they sometimes admit the truth. For instance, in 2023 then-NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said of Putin, “He went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite.” The entry of Finland and Sweden, added Stoltenberg, “demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he’s getting the exact opposite.”

Again, Putin’s behavior backs this assessment. If Putin wanted an easy conquest and cared nothing of NATO members, he could have targeted the largely indefensible Baltic states in NATO, which brought a potentially hostile alliance just a few score miles away from St. Petersburg. However, Putin never took advantage of their vulnerable position, even as they upped their hostile rhetoric and military outlays. Finally, he waited years with Ukraine, acting only after the allies seemed intent to bring NATO into Ukraine via weapons shipments, military exercises, and allied training. So now Putin supposedly plans a frontal assault against the alliance he went to war to avoid?

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was, to paraphrase the French statesman Talleyrand, worse than a crime. It was a blunder. Even victory, whatever that means, will leave Moscow worse off. However, U.S. and European officials share blame for the conflict.

To Trump’s credit, he wants to end hostilities. If Kiev is determined to fight on, he should simply conclude America’s involvement. That certainly means no security guarantees to Kiev, or to European governments for aiding Ukraine. Ending the war is essential for the continent. Staying out of the war is even more important for America.

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire.

Being kicked out of the White House without scheduled lunch and the signing ceremony of the mineral contract, Zelensky flew to London, where a “coalition of the willing” ready to continue financing the bloodshed and destruction of Ukraine forced him to issue a sort of apology to Trump in time for President’s speech to the joint session of Congress. However, the main obstacle to finalizing this deal, which is Trump’s firm rejection of US security guarantees, remains, and everyone at the London emergency meeting, including its organizer, Prime Minister Starmer, openly admitted that Europe wouldn’t be able to deliver without these guarantees.  He said: “We will go further to develop a ‘coalition of the willing’ to defend a deal in Ukraine and to guarantee peace…. The UK is prepared to back this with boots on the ground, planes in the air,…together with others. Europe must do the heavy lifting…and to succeed, this effort must have strong US backing.

The Europeans are trying to trap Trump&Co, but Trump will not fall into the trap.

As Consortium News editor Joe Lauria sarcastically noted, Starmer says: “Europe stands ready to fight and die as peacekeepers to save Ukraine if necessary, but only with the Americans. So when they refuse to come, and the disastrous Project Ukraine, at last, comes crashing on our heads, don’t blame us; blame the USA.”

America under Biden, actually, Blinken- Sullivan duo, who ran this war while Biden was relaxing with ice cream on Delaware beaches or taking a nap, would listen to this party of war, but with Trump and his second team, which, contrary to his first term one that has betrayed him, and follows the leader, this is another story. The famous Russian expression “Nyet means Nyet” when talking about Ukraine’s inclusion in NATO is exactly what Trump is saying about security guarantees begged by Europe.

As Chicago University professor John Mearsheimer explained, “They are trying to trap Trump and Co., and Trump won’t be trapped.”  What Trump is saying is, “It’s time to stop this madness. It’s time to halt the killing. It’s time to end the senseless war. If you want to end wars, you have to talk to both sides.”

The countlessly repeated lie used by Zelensky and the parties of war both in Europe and the US that after finishing the war in Ukraine, Putin will move further West is intended to scare the Western public and accept the living standard sacrifices in favor of continuing this war to weaken Russia. The unprecedented propaganda and censorship of different opinions worked, but the number of believers in this lie is decreasing dramatically; the same is true for the ratings of many European leaders.   At the same time, the ratings of parties of peace are growing. This is especially evident in France and Germany, which, in the past, had the courage to resist the US war in Iraq and drive to move Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.

Trump has suggested that military spending could be cut in half if the United States, China and Russia can agree on a mutual reduction in their respective defense budgets.

Finally, with all these dramatic events, somehow, another significant development was almost ignored by the media and during Trump’s address in Congress, which is an apparent contradiction between the seemingly by-partisan policy of “Peace through strength” and Trump’s intention to cut the Pentagon budget in half.

I think there is no contradiction, and here are at least two explanations. First, Trump and many in the US suspect that there is a vast waste and corruption in the Pentagon, and if Elon Musk’s DOGE team, along with the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, look closely into their books, this slash in defense spending wouldn’t be a big problem. Secondly, he suggested that expenditures could be halved if the U.S., China, and Russia could reach some deal to follow in kind. Russia signaled that it was ready for negotiations, while China was not.

So, the upcoming May 9, the 80th anniversary of the Allied victory in WWII, would be an ideal chance for what is frequently dubbed a Yalta 2.0 meeting between the leaders of the US, Russia, and China. They could talk not only about this deal but also about the new world’s security architecture. George H.W. Bush spoke in the early 1990s about such infrastructure from Vancouver to Vladivostok but got nowhere due to resistance from the Military Industrial Complex and others in the Deep State who needed enemies rather than friends. Chinese leader Xi has already confirmed his trip to Moscow on that day, and by joining him and Putin, Trump would make history as a great American and world peacemaker.

Much has been written on the tone of what was said by both sides, but not enough attention has been paid to the content of what was said.

Much of what Trump and Vance said publicly had been said privately before. This was not the first time the U.S. or its allies have accused Zelensky of always asking for more without expressing gratitude. Vance pressed Zelensky that he “should be thanking the president.” In July 2023, then British defence secretary Ben Wallace said that the U.S. and UK “want to see a bit of gratitude.” And he said that he had previously told Ukraine, “when I drove 11 hours to be given a list, that I’m not like Amazon.” Then U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan said that “the American people do deserve a degree of gratitude.”

The complaint is not entirely fair. It is cruel to berate a country being defeated in war for asking for what you promised them if they would continue fighting that war. In the first weeks of the war, Zelensky was exploring a negotiated peace with Russia when the U.S. and UK discouraged him from following that path and promised whatever aid he needed for as long as he needed it if he would abandon negotiating with Russia for fighting with them. If you don’t want to be treated like Amazon, you shouldn’t advertise that you provide services like Amazon.

As Vance demanded a thank you from Zelensky, Trump told him that “you don’t have the cards.” But that, too, had been forcefully pointed out before. On February 24, in round one of their fight, Trump said, “I’ve been watching this man for years now, as his cities get demolished, as his people get killed, as the soldiers get decimated. I’ve been watching for years, and I’ve been watching him negotiate with no cards. He has no cards, and you get sick of it. You just get sick of it. And I’ve had it.”

Even Vance’s complaint that “it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media” had been issued before. Vance used the same words in a February 19 interview, when he complained that Zelensky tried “to litigate his disagreements with the president in the public square.”

Trump was also not being original with his firm refusal to commit to a security guarantee that included U.S. troops in Ukraine or to court the risk of World War III. President Biden, too, had insisted that “We will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine. Direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War Three, something we must strive to prevent.” The Biden administration, too, sometimes recklessly, attempted to calibrate its escalations to avoid confrontation with Russia.

What seemed to irritate Trump and Vance was two comments Zelensky made: one to each of them. Trump’s goal can be summarized as wanting to negotiate a quick end to the war in a way that does not involve U.S. security guarantees that could lead to World War III. Zelensky publicly challenged both those points.

Zelensky implied that without security guarantees that involved U.S. support, Putin would continue his expansionist agenda and, despite the ocean between them, Russia would threaten the United States: “you have nice ocean and don’t feel now. But you will feel it in the future.” The New York Times reports that, according to “three people with knowledge of what took place beforehand,” neither the president nor the vice-president “had been looking to blow up a deal for Ukraine’s mineral rights.” But, they say, Zelensky “seemingly triggered the two American leaders” in part “by pressing for commitments to protect Ukraine from Russian aggression going forward.”

Trump told Zelensky that he did not know that the U.S would feel threatened by Russia. He told him that he was “not in a good position” and that he did not “have the cards.” Trump confronted Zelensky because he publicly demanding U.S. security guarantees that would be “gambling with World War III.”

Zelensky’s also fundamentally challenged the very possibility of negotiating. Vance suggested that “the path to peace and the path to prosperity” is not the path of war taken by President Biden, but the path of “engaging in diplomacy” as “President Trump is doing.” When Zelensky challenged Vance by laying out his case that negotiation with Putin is impossible, Vance objected to his “litigating” a case against negotiations when everyone had agreed on the need for negotiations. Concluding that Putin could not be trusted in negotiations, Zelensky asked Vance, “What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about? What do you mean?” With the only alternative being continued war, Vance shot back, “I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country.”

Zelensky may not only have been mistaken to publicly reopen the case against negotiations. He may also have been mistaken in some of the evidence he cited in his case. Zelensky’s case against negotiations was that negotiations with Putin are dangerous and naïve because Putin can’t be trusted to do what he signed that he would do.

As evidence, Zelensky cites 2019 negotiations with Putin in which he, Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron and then German Chancellor Angela Markel signed a ceasefire. But “he broke the ceasefire, he killed our people, and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners. But he didn’t do it.”

Zelensky does not identify the negotiations. But given that he says they took place in 2019 and that it involved a prisoner exchange, he is likely talking about the December 2019 meeting in Paris of the Normandy Format, which was a meeting of the heads of the Minsk Agreement states. As suggested by Zelensky, the agreement involved a ceasefire in additional areas, a prisoner exchange and progress toward local elections in an autonomous Donbas. Nicolai Petro, the author of The Tragedy of Ukraine, told me that the mechanism for implementing these goals was the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG). Its delegates were asked to implement the Steinmeier Formula, the latest incarnation of the Minsk Agreements.

Zelensky is accurate about the diplomatic agreement, but he is less accurate about who broke it. “What was not known publicly at the time,” Petro told me, “was that [the Ukrainian delegates to the TCG] were told not to move forward on any of these points. Their job, as they saw it, was to delay negotiations until the Ukrainian army could launch a blitzkrieg into Donbas.” Sergei Garmash, a Ukrainian delegate to the Minsk TCG admitted that “Minsk serves to weaken Russia. It is only useful to Ukraine if it is not implemented; as soon as it is implemented, it is no longer to our advantage.” He was allegedly told by a Western diplomat that “Victors are never judged” and said that “nobody will say anything to you” if they “enter Donetsk militarily and liberate the territory.”

It was not Putin, but Zelensky who signed the agreement with no intention of honoring it.

Zelensky is also accurate that they “signed the exchange of prisoners.” But he is not accurate that Putin “didn’t do it.” On December 29, Zelensky’s office announced that “The mutual release of detainees has been completed. 76 of our people are safe in Ukrainian-controlled territory.” That this prisoner exchange was a fulfillment of the negotiations  Zelensky is referring to is shown by mainstream Western media who reported at the time that “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on the exchange during peace talks in Paris this month.”

Worse is that the 2019 discussions were just a part of the larger Minks Agreement discussions. It is now known that it was not only Kiev’s instructions to use the 2019 talks to “delay negotiations until the Ukrainian army could launch a blitzkrieg into Donbas,” that was Ukraine, Germany and France’s intention for the entire Minsk Agreements, as has now been verified by statements by each of Putin’s partners in signing the Agreement, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande. Zelensky has also reportedly said that he told Merkel and Macron that “as for Minsk as a whole… We cannot implement it like this.”

And Minsk was not the first time that Ukraine, and not Putin, broke an agreement. After the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Donbas voted in favor of sovereignty, Pyotr Poroshenko was elected president of Ukraine. He initiated negotiations for a peaceful settlement with rebel leaders in the Donbas. The talks were promising, and, by the end of the next month, a formula for peacefully keeping Donbas in Ukraine had been found. At this point, on June 24, the Russian parliament rescinded the authority to use troops abroad. A peace was possible. But instead, Nicolai Petro reports, the government in Kiev decided that Putin’s decision to withdraw troops put the Ukrainian military in a new advantage, and, instead of pursuing the peace, Poroshenko ordered the launch of attacks to recapture Donbas militarily.

Though much of the media focus has been on the tone of what was said, not enough attention has been paid to what was said, which included key ideas going forward, including negotiating an end to the war or going on fighting it and offering Ukraine a security guarantee that does not risk a Russian-American war and the risk of World War III.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.