President Donald Trump’s would-be peacemaking in Ukraine is taking yet more extraordinary twists and turns. Just when many had breathed a sigh of relief because the mercurial president finally seemed to be “disappointed” in Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin and prepared to back Ukraine all the way — including with long-range Tomahawk missiles — Trump had another phone chat with Putin Friday and evidently decided to give him another chance. The Tomahawks are out, the peace negotiations will resume, and Trump, it was announced, will have a new summit with Putin in Budapest, Hungary.
Is Ukraine being thrown under the bus? Is Trump in the Russian president’s pocket after all? Does he have a clever plan? It’s a dizzying story to follow — with a new twist coming Monday.
There is no question that Trump’s pivot back toward Putin on the eve of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s trip to Washington was somber news for Ukraine. No one believes it’s accidental that the summit will take place (if it does take place) on the home turf of Hungary’s Putin-friendly leader Viktor Orbán. Budapest also has a grim symbolism for Ukraine as the city of empty Western promises: specifically, the Budapest Memorandum, the 1994 agreement under which Ukraine agreed to surrender the nuclear missiles deployed on its territory under the Soviet regime in exchange for security guarantees from the West.
With reports that Trump had reverted to bullying Zelenskyy, telling him that Putin is winning and demanding concessions during the White House meeting, some foreign policy analysts feel that he is again demonstrating allegiance to Putin. Swedish economist and Russia watcher Anders Aslund has written on X that “Trump is Putin’s obedient servant” and that his anti-Putin comments have been a smoke screen.
Expatriate Russian journalist and YouTube streamer Michael Nacke, while extremely critical of Trump, has a very different — and, I think, more realistic — view: that Trump’s sole priority is Donald Trump. Specifically, he wants the war in Ukraine to end because he wants to take credit for ending it and because he thinks peace will open the way to profitable business deals. He couldn’t care less how much land Ukraine loses; he just wants an agreement that can work.
Nacke believes that the Tomahawks for Kyiv were never really on the table — it was just a bluff to force Putin to play nice. But he is also cautiously encouraged by Trump’s insistence that he hasn’t demanded land concessions from Zelenskyy and seeks a halt to hostilities along current battle lines. That’s a proposal to which Zelenskyy has already agreed. It won’t be a just peace, but it’s likely the best Ukraine can do at the moment — with the option to reclaim its stolen land in the future by diplomatic means.
In the latest news, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has appeared to reject this plan, saying that Putin’s position remains the same: he wants the entirety of the Donetsk region (which Russia officially annexed in 2022), including a sector heavy in military fortifications whose loss Ukraine believes would heighten the danger of further attacks. If the rejection is confirmed, will Trump cancel the Budapest summit and increase aid to Ukraine?
Nothing can be ruled out. The only thing we know for sure is that if the Russian dictator’s brazen imperialism is making the world less safe, so is the U.S. president’s lack of either moral principle or pragmatic strategy.
Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a writer for The Bulwark, are her own.
