The President of the US has today called the democratically elected President of Ukraine a “dictator”, and has blamed Ukraine for starting the war against Russia. It has truly shocked me that I’ve had to write that sentence, but this is, apparently, the type of world we live in now.
These comments were made after Trump’s administration recently returned from meetings between the US Secretary of State, Marko Rubio (another sentence I never thought I’d have to type) and the Russian foreign Minister and Putin’s bulldog, Sergei Lavrov, the first such high-level talks between Russia and the US since 2021. The talks took place in Saudi Arabia, with dignitaries from that nation also in attendance, with Rubio and Lavrov discussing a potential process for ending Putin’s aggressive war against Ukraine.
The most notable absentees of these talks were representatives from Ukraine, who as I understand, weren’t even extended an invitation.
History echoes; all students of politics and international affairs know this for truth. Whilst I can’t reasonably compare Trump to Neville Chamberlain in any substantial capacity, the best example that springs to mind of a nation excluded from talks pertaining to its future and territory is from 1938, when Chamberlain struck a deal with Adolf Hitler for the Nazis to annex the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, with Czechoslovak representatives absent from the talks.
This deal was heralded by Chamberlain as peace in our time, as he had been given an assurance by the Fuhrer that he had no more territorial claims to make. A few months later, Hitler invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia, which was not liberated until 1945, leaving hundreds of thousands of Czechoslovaks dead, and the extinction of virtually the entire population of Czechoslovak Jews.
Hitler and the Nazis coveted Czechoslovakia as they saw it as rightful German territory, and other than the ethnic Germans who lived in the Sudetenland, wished to eradicate the peoples of that nation and replace them with Germans. Putin’s designs on Ukraine are not so dissimilar.
No such deal has been struck between Putin and Trump in respect of Ukraine yet, and Rubio has gone on record to say that any peace deal which is not approved by Ukraine will not be considered, but the echoes between 2025 and 1938 still send shivers down my spine.
Hitler sought to create a thousand-year Reich by taking over the world for the Germans, killing everyone who didn’t fit that narrative. Putin doesn’t have the same world-conquering ambitions (that he has expressed in public) nor does he seek to exterminate everyone who isn’t an ethnic Russian (that he has talked about yet), but his ambitions do extend to re-creating the old Russian Empire and annexing all former Soviet territories. Smaller-scale than the 3rd Reich, but no less despicable
We know Putin doesn’t believe Ukraine exists as a nation or people, and he thinks all Ukrainians are actually Russian. If he is allowed to assimilate the Ukrainian territories he currently holds, under the pretence he has no further territorial claims to make, everyone should start panicking. He will make more demands. He will find excuses to go to war again, against the rest of Ukraine, or another former Soviet state. It won’t end with this war if Ukraine does not win it.
That said, I do have faith in the international community and our rules-based system to step in should the worst happen, but if international law gets in the way of Trump’s destructive campaign of contrarianism, I wouldn’t put it past him to withdraw the US from conventions it is beholden to, or even simply ignore the rules, so he can have his way.
We already know US membership of NATO is now a dubious concept, but in Trump’s last term, there were even whispers he’d withdrawn the US from the United Nations. If any UN foot is put down in opposition to a prospective “peace” deal, Trump is more likely to bounce than capitulate.
The comparison between now and 1938 does have flaws. Namely, the Allies were not yet at war with the Nazis when Chamberlain spoke to Hitler. The Saudi talks took place when a Western ally is still at war with a Western adversary, a war of aggression aimed at stealing sovereign territory from a sovereign nation, under no lawful pretence, leading to thousands upon thousands of innocent lives lost. To speak a word with the perpetrator of crimes as vile as these as if he were still a viable member of the rules-based system is an affront to liberty and justice, nothing less.
Ukrainians will be feeling the utmost sense of betrayal that they were excluded from these talks, and rightly so. Throughout the war, the US has been Ukraine’s strongest backer, with former President Biden pledging unwavering support form the US “for as long as it takes”. Trump, by comparison, has no concept of loyalty to anyone, but expects nothing less than devotion to him by others. He fawns over Putin and other dictatorial strongmen, seeming emasculated in their presence, speaking of them as a fangirl speaks about a boyband. He will lie down as flat as his belly allows him if Putin tells him to. It’s therefore a little strange for Trump to call Zelenskyy a “dictator” in negative terms when he seems to admire them so much.
Zelenskyy, seeing the writing on the wall for US support, has turned to Europe to fill the gap once the US turns tail, and has already been met with renewed commitments by European leaders, not least Keir Starmer, who has floated the idea of British troops on Ukrainian soil. I won’t lie, this idea makes me extremely uncomfortable; a nuclear-armed NATO ally at war with a nuclear-armed enemy. But if that is the only option to kerb Putin’s warmongering and put Ukraine back on solid footing, so be it.
stay safe
/e