Trump's optimism on peace in Ukraine may look heroic – but he's dangerously wrong |
Donald Trump says that talks about ending the Russia-Ukraine war are “in their final stages” in the latest surge of US peacemaking diplomacy. At a joint press conference with Volodymyr Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, he said that they were “getting a lot closer, maybe very close” to an agreement, though he admitted that the future of the Donbas region remained unresolved.
Despite Trump’s public optimism, interpreting the actual outcome of the meeting – before which he spoke for two-and-half hours by phone with Vladimir Putin – is complicated because neither the Ukrainian or Russian leaders want to alienate the US President. They know from experience that the way to handle him is to praise his heroic efforts, agree they are close to success, then blame the failure to reach a final peace agreement on the other side’s intransigence.
Trump specialises in upbeat mood music often promoting fictitious successes. During the Mar-a-Lago meeting, he said that “President Putin is actually working with Ukraine on getting [the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant] open”, adding that “it’s a big step, when he’s not bombing that plant” – though this is scarcely surprising since Russia controls the nuclear facility in central Ukraine, and denies it will share this control with anybody........