Incoherent Ukraine policy yields a big setback

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s announcement on Monday that Ukraine will not surrender the territories Russia demands may signal the end of Donald Trump’s "peace plan" to resolve the war, which will reach its four-year mark in February. This apparent failure comes at a time when the Trump administration’s Ukraine policy has never looked so incoherent.

In the first year of Trump’s second term, we have seen the President attack Zelenskyy as a "dictator" determined to fight a losing war because of his dislike for Russian President Vladimir Putin — and credit Putin with a sincere desire to end the war. We have also seen him praise Zelenskyy and gripe about being strung along by Putin’s talk of peace, correctly pointing out that his friendly phone chats with the Kremlin strongman have been followed almost invariably by savage bombings of Ukrainian cities. We have seen the administration cut off crucial intelligence-sharing with Ukraine, then turn it back on. We have seen endless foot-dragging on economic sanctions against Russia — then, recently, some effective action.

This policy chaos has gotten worse since the "peace plan," apparently fed to Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff by his Kremlin counterpart, Putin crony Kirill Dmitriev, was made public last month. That 28-point plan was not, as some critics contended, a proposal for Ukraine’s complete capitulation. Its suggested caps on Ukrainian military manpower and armaments were vastly less draconian than the ones initially proposed by Russia after the February 2022 invasion but it called for concessions Ukraine could not accept, namely the surrender of territories in the Donetsk province currently held by Ukraine and the formal recognition of conquered Ukrainian lands as Russian.

Since then, U.S. negotiators have offered a different, 19-point peace plan whose provisions are not fully known. There have been talks with Ukraine and with Russia. Witkoff and fellow envoy Jared Kushner — Trump’s son-in-law — have flown to Moscow for nearly five hours of talks with Putin himself, only to have Putin reject the plan as containing some provisions unacceptable to Russia.

Now, Trump seems to be back in blame-Zelenskyy mode. On Sunday, he told reporters he was "disappointed" that Zelenskyy had not yet read the latest U.S. proposal for peace in Ukraine, adding, "His people love it, but he hasn’t. Russia’s fine with it."

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has correctly stated that only Putin can end the war. The fact is that Putin’s recent rhetoric leaves very little doubt that he has no desire to do so. He has made it clear to Russian audiences that he is still intent on achieving the war’s "original goals" — which include installing a Moscow-friendly government in Kyiv and effectively turning Ukraine into a Russian satellite.

Putin believes he’s winning on the ground — based in part on reports that inflate Russia’s actual slow and costly gains — and can fight until Ukraine gives up. That means he won’t accept any peace deal that doesn’t amount to Ukraine’s surrender.

Will Trump abandon Ukraine? That doesn’t seem likely, given the strong presence of pro-Ukraine voices in the Republican Party and even within the administration. It’s also worth noting that support for military aid to Ukraine among the American public is currently at a solid 64%, according to recent polls. But U.S. wavering has certainly hampered assistance to Ukraine, including efforts to seize frozen Russian assets in Europe to finance such assistance. The Trump administration's conflicting policies don’t settle anything, including achieving peace. They only reinforce America’s self-demotion to unreliable ally.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a writer for The Bulwark, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.