Andrew Bolt: Trump has done the easy bit but will he step up if Russia doesn’t comply?
Getting Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire — by shamelessly bashing the victim – was the easy bit. Donald Trump will now learn whether he’s been duped by Russia’s president, the war criminal Vladimir Putin.
Andrew Bolt
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No, stop the cheering: this is not peace in Ukraine.
Donald Trump must now learn whether he’s been duped by Russia’s president, the war criminal Vladimir Putin.
Trump has done only the easy bit by getting Ukraine on Tuesday to agree to a 30-day ceasefire.
He’d just bashed the little guy – the victim – in this war.
He’d publicly insulted and humiliated Ukraine’s leader, even called him a “dictator” who’d “started this war”, and last week cut off US weapons and intelligence, crippling Ukraine’s ability to defend itself from the Russian invaders.
It was vicious and immoral.
The West was reminded how Trump treats his friends, as Australia is now reminded by Trump’s decision to hit us with tariffs.
In the end, Ukraine had no choice but to grovel at these ceasefire talks in Saudi Arabia, and thank the US president for making it agree to a ceasefire … provided Russia did the same.
Or as Marco Rubio, Trump’s level-headed Secretary of State and a long-time critic of Putin, put it: “We will take this offer to the Russians … The ball is now in their court.”
And that’s the catch.
Putin has given no public sign at all that he wants peace, let alone a ceasefire.
He’s made no concession at all, and an hour after Rubio announced Ukraine was ready for a ceasefire unleashed more drones on Ukrainian cities, aiming to kill and terrorise civilians.
True, Trump did say last month Putin had assured him he’d let European nations send peacekeepers to Ukraine under any peace deal to guarantee it would not be invaded again by Russia.
“I’ve specifically asked him that question,” Trump assured reporters.
“He has no problem with it.”
Yet Russia’s Foreign Minister two days later said Russia would not consider “any options” of peacekeepers.
He this week mocked the very idea as “an attempt to save what remains of this (Ukrainian) regime from the wrath of the people by deploying peacekeepers”.
Worse, Bloomberg this week reported undisclosed Western security officials saying Putin has deliberately set “maximalist” demands on territory, peacekeepers, and Ukraine’s neutrality in exchange for a ceasefire, knowing this would be too much for Ukraine and Europe to accept.
Putin has in the past insisted Ukraine withdraw from what it still holds in four partially occupied regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia – before he even starts to discuss peace.
Ukraine would also have to agree not to join NATO or let in peacekeepers to protect it from a third Russian invasion once the world moves on.
How could Ukraine agree to that?
This is where Trump’s brutal treatment of Ukraine could backfire on him, and especially on Ukraine.
He’s made Ukraine weaker and less friendless in America, where public support from Republican voters has tanked after Trump and his megaphone, X owner Elon Musk, started to paint it as a greedy, ungrateful leech of American money.
That just made Russia less likely to give up.
Putin obviously worked out he should ask for everything he can get, and most of what he wanted when he invaded Ukraine again three years ago, after already seizing Crimea in 2014.
He will figure Trump has no stomach for this fight, and would happily abandon Ukraine, a country which fought for the US invasion in Afghanistan.
Of course, Trump could surprise us and punish Russia if it doesn’t agree to this ceasefire.
He’s threatened more sanctions on Russia of the kind that still haven’t stopped it.
He’s also dropped his ban on US arms and intelligence for Ukraine, and could step up both if Russia doesn’t play ball.
But how would Trump justify that to American voters who’ve bought his line that Ukraine is a welfare queen bogged in an “endless war” that he’d end in a day?
Trump is unpredictable, but this would be the mother of all u-turns.
Ukraine’s freedom now lies in what Trump chooses.
Will he hand Ukraine’s fate to Putin, as Neville Chamberlain handed Czechoslovakia’s to Hitler in 1938, and embolden Russia and China to grab other countries, too, knowing America is weak and selfish?
Still Trump could surprise us, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky may have played a blinder despite Trump jeering he had “no cards”.
Yes, Zelensky had to agree to this ceasefire.
But he still hasn’t yet signed the rare earths deal Trump demanded as payment, and is getting American weapons again.
And the heat now is finally where it should be – on Putin.
But also on Trump.
Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Trump has done the easy bit but will he step up if Russia doesn’t comply?
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