Donald Trump’s re-election as president is fueling speculation that he will terminate U.S. financial and logistical support for Ukraine’s war effort against Russia. Trump himself contributed to that speculation during his June 28, 2024 debate with President Joe Biden when he said, “If we had a real president, a president that was respected by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, he would have never invaded Ukraine.” Indeed, Trump has boasted that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in twenty-four hours.
His critics, both in the United States and the other NATO countries, however, contend that he would likely do so by abandoning Ukraine and appeasing Russia. Allegations that Trump was a “puppet” of Putin cast a pall over his entire first term as president, and there are no signs that his opponents have abandoned that tactic. It was an absurd accusation, since Trump’s policy toward Russia actually was more hardline than that of his predecessors. Not only did he ship arms to Ukraine (a step that Barack Obama had refused to take) but he engineered the U.S. withdrawal from two major arms control agreements (Open Skies and Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces) that Putin and other Russian leaders considered vital to their country’s security. The Trump administration also continued NATO’s provocative expansion into Eastern Europe despite the Kremlin’s escalating warnings about such unfriendly moves.
The notion that Trump was “soft” on Russia during his first term was (and remains) a destructive, highly politicized myth. Over the past four years, though, Trump and at least some of his supporters in Congress, the news media, and the foreign policy community seem to have gained an understanding that Washington’s current Russia policy has been disastrous and requires drastic reforms. It is less certain whether he will muster the courage to ignore the smears and make the necessary policy changes to begin repairing relations with Russia.
Ending the NATO proxy war that has cynically used Ukraine as a military tool to weaken Russia is a crucial initial step. Washington’s strategy has resulted in the deaths of thousands on both sides of the conflict. Moscow remains emphatic that Ukraine occupy a neutral status in Europe and not become an official or de facto member of NATO. That stance was an important component of the Kremlin’s policy long before Putin came to power.
Trump needs to accept the reality that any peace accord between the West and Russia will have to have certain features. A guaranteed, strictly neutral status for Ukraine must be at the top of the list. Official recognition that Crimea is part of Russia will have to be codified as well in any realistic peace agreement. NATO insistence that Crimea be part of Ukraine following the unraveling of the Soviet Union was unrealistic from the outset. Crimea had been part of Russia from the 1780s until 1954 when Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred the territory to Ukraine’s jurisdiction. The change didn’t seem all that significant, since both Ukraine and Russia were part of the Soviet Union at the time. The demise of the USSR in the early 1990s, though, created conditions for a nasty territorial dispute. The presence of Russia’s principal naval base in Crimea intensified Moscow’s insistence on regaining control of that territory. Washington and its allies need to accept the underlying historical and logistical realities.
Resolving the issue of sovereignty over the Donbas region in Ukraine’s east is likely to prove more difficult. The area is now under Russian military occupation, but it is not clear whether a majority of the inhabitants would prefer to be part of Ukraine or Russia in a fair referendum. Most of the residents are Russian-speaking, and a majority of the region’s economic links are with Russia rather than Ukraine. Nevertheless, it would be better for Moscow to agree to a transparent referendum conducted by a neutral international body rather than insist on an automatic transfer of the territory to Russia.
Whatever the ultimate outcome of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, though, it should be determined by diplomacy between those two parties. The egregious meddling by the United States and the rest of NATO has created a bigger tragedy for all concerned. One of Donald Trump’s earliest actions as the 47th president should be to end Washington’s entanglement in the Ukraine-Russia war.
