Trump must get Putin’s message

Vladimir Putin’s contemptuous dispatch of a junior B team to represent him at much-anticipated Ukrainian peace talks in Turkey should leave no one – least of all Donald Trump – in any doubt about where responsibility lies for the horrifying, ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has kept the promise he made when Putin last week rejected his proposal, backed by European leaders, for an immediate 30-day ceasefire. He demanded face-to-face negotiations instead.

Mr Zelensky has reportedly flown to Ankara to see Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, under whose aegis the talks were supposed to begin. But, according to the Moscow Times, the Russian tyrant’s personal disdain for Mr Zelensky, and his “refusal to capitulate” despite Russia’s losses in the war, is such that he was unwilling to even sit at the same table to try to thrash out a formula for ending the conflict.

Thus, Putin has dashed what slim hopes there were for peace. The message of his grotesque inhumanity must not be lost on Mr Trump and other world leaders. The US President had been clear that if he found he was getting nowhere in his efforts to fulfil his boast that he could stop the war within 24 hours of returning to the White House, he would “walk away” from his attempts to do so.

Like his rejection of the proposal for a 30-day ceasefire, Putin’s pig-headed obstinacy over talks he had himself proposed demands better than Mr Trump’s threat to give up on trying to achieve an end to the war. Given his declared admiration for Putin, it may pain him to do so, but Mr Trump should acknowledge where blame demonstrably lies in the conflict and ensure that Mr Zelensky is provided with the means to ensure Moscow does not achieve its goal of overrunning Ukraine.

There can no longer be any equivocation by the Trump administration about where wrong lies in the war. It must act accordingly. Mr Zelensky was right to call Putin’s bluff over peace talks, and the international community must not ignore the clear meaning of the Russian dictator’s response. His arrogant dispatch of his B team to the talks is as much a rude rebuff to Mr Trump as it is to Mr Zelensky and Mr Erdogan: the US President had indicated that if Putin attended the talks and there was a real prospect of peace, he might also be there.

As putative leader of the free world, Mr Trump carries a heavy responsibility to support Ukraine as a democratic, sovereign state that is able to defend itself.