Alan Zendell, February 19, 2025

Avoiding the temptation to respond to every salvo MAGA sends up, I will focus on Ukraine, today. It’s a problem Trump promised to fix “on day one” and one that poses the greatest existential risk to the western alliance that has averted nuclear war for seventy-five years.

One aspect of the Ukraine problem is the ongoing battle between truth and fiction that has been the hallmark of Trump’s ten-year political career. Trump spent his life treading the fine lines between fraud, slander, libel, and free speech. That sometimes cost him huge fines resulting from lawsuits, but his calculation was that knowing how to play our legal system allows him to win more often than not. He has applied the same strategy to governing.

Trump’s problem with Ukraine began when he tried to strong-arm Ukrainian President Zelensky to frame Hunter Biden, with the sole intent of weakening Trump’s then strongest rival, Joe Biden, resulting in Trump’s first impeachment. Trump has a virulent grudge against Zelensky, and as we have seen since his inauguration, his personal grudges significantly affect his decisions. Our transactional president is driven by three things: increasing his own wealth and power, doing harm to everyone he perceives as an enemy, and fulfilling his fantasy of being lauded as the hero who saved America.

The Progressive approach to diplomacy in the 20^th century included the notion that countries whose economies are inextricably tied together don’t nuke each other. But engaging economically had its pitfalls, like giving up much of our country’s manufacturing base to China and other Asian countries. It also raised the question: is it morally acceptable or strategically smart to forge economic alliances with countries that don’t respect the sovereignty of others? That’s where we are with respect to Ukraine. Russia is attempting to convince Trump to release all sanctions placed on it by Presidents Biden and Obama as punishment for invading Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.

Vladimir Putin’s decision to seize Ukraine was also motivated by three things. One was the likelihood, that Ukraine would be invited to join NATO. Putin’s fear of facing NATO countries along Russia’s entire western border with Europe was understandable, if misplaced. NATO is a defensive alliance shaped by the realities of the Cold War. There has never been any reason to believe that NATO had aggressive designs on the former Soviet Republics. The Soviet Union’s aggressively expansionist philosophy made the West’s highest priority avoiding another world war.

The decision by Trump to negotiate with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, leaving out both Ukraine itself and our NATO allies had two purposes. One was to continue his tough guy act, making sure our allies understand who is really in charge. The other was revealed by the inclusion in the negotiating team by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund. Dmitriev’s role under Putin is to develop economic opportunities for Russia.

Today, The New York Times reported that Dmitriev shared his negotiating pitch with their reporters. He told American negotiators that America lost $324 billion by curtailing trade with Russia. Lavrov echoed this by stating after Tuesday’s meetings in Riyadh, that “there was great interest” in the room “in removing artificial barriers to the development of mutually beneficial economic cooperation” — a reference to lifting American sanctions.

Russia will end the war in Ukraine if Trump restores its status as a full trading partner, something Russia’s economy desperately needs. But Russia has no intention of giving up Crimea, the warm water port that connects through the Black Sea to the open ocean. Nor will Putin withdraw his claim on the industrial provinces of Eastern Ukraine that border Russia, many of whose citizens are ethnic Russians.

Putin’s pitch to Trump is: formally concede Crimea and the eastern provinces of Ukraine that our forces presently occupy, remove all sanctions, and open up all your markets to Russian products, primarily oil and natural gas, and we’ll stop bombing Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Not incidentally, Trump and his associates would all have preferential status for doing business with Russia. They can all become as wealthy as Elon Musk if they simply sacrifice Ukraine. That’s the secret deal Trump negotiated behind the scenes, running a shadow foreign policy during the Biden administration. If it came to pass, America would effectively tell the world that the values expressed by our foreign policy are a sham; in the final analysis, our leaders are as greedy and immoral as those we revile as enemies.

There’s a hint of good news. Today, two prominent Republican Senators, Roger Wicker of Mississippi and John Kennedy of Louisiana, spoke out forcefully against siding with Putin, “a war criminal who should spend the rest of his life prison.” With Mitch McConnell (R, KY) showing animus for Trump’s extreme views, and Majority Leader John Thune and Texas Senator John Cornyn having signaled that they will not roll over to Trump’s demands, he may not have the Senate majority he needs to pull off his Ukraine deal.