Trump portrays Ukraine as the key obstacle to ending the war

Donald Trump has called the Ukrainian President a dictator.

There can no longer be any doubt that Donald Trump intends to sideline Ukraine and rehabilitate Russia as he seeks to negotiate an end to the war in Eastern Europe with Vladimir Putin.

His real partner in this project appears to be Moscow and not Kyiv. But, more than this, Trump appears to view Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky as an obstacle to achieving peace in Europe.

In the last 24 hours, the US President has depicted Zelensky as the problem – accusing him of trying to keep the war going in order to ride the US “gravy train” and maintain his hold on power.

The importance of the Ukrainian leader to the negotiation process has been swiftly downgraded by Trump, with the US President even appearing to blame Kyiv for starting the three years of bloody fighting.

By labelling Zelensky a “dictator without elections,” Trump is signalling his preference to potentially remove the Ukrainian leader from power entirely so he can strike a deal to carve up Ukraine with Putin in the absence of objections.

This is not a question of interpretation. All this is clear because Trump has stated it plainly in the most naked terms on his own Truth Social platform.

“He (Zelensky) refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle.’ Dictator without Elections, Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” Mr Trump said. “In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia.”

“Zelensky admits that half of the money we sent him is MISSING … Zelensky probably wants to keep the “gravy train” going. I love Ukraine, but Zelensky has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died.”

The previous day, Zelensky took aim at Trump for being too close to Russia. He said the US President was “living in this disinformation space” and that he wanted there to “be more truth in Trump’s team.”

Any deal cut between Washington and Moscow and imposed on Ukraine was always the great fear in Europe – but the speed with which Trump has turned the tables by moving to bring Russia in from the cold has stunned the world.

In just one month in power, Trump has taken a hammer to the status quo in Europe and his next steps have the potential to cause the biggest rift in the trans-Atlantic partnership in the last 75 years.

The latest public brawl between Kyiv and Washington will only make it harder to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion to end the war. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the objective is to arrive at a peace “that’s enduring and acceptable to all the parties engaged.”

This goal now looks further away than before.

Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Charles Kupchan, told The Australian the comments from Mr Trump over the last 24 hours were “regrettable.”

“If we’re going to get an acceptable outcome and an end to the war it will require the US and its European allies to back Zelensky. Otherwise the Russians will assume that the US is going to throw Zelensky under the bus or try to topple him or who knows what.”

With Trump flagging aspirations to meet with Putin before the end of the month, suspicions are growing in Europe and Kyiv about the reliability of America and its commitment to the Western alliance.

Serving from 2014 to 2017 as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs on the National Security Council in the Obama White House, Professor Kupchan said Trump should not rush into a meeting with Putin.

Instead, the US President now needed to hold “extensive consultations with the Ukrainians and European allies to figure out how you are actually going to end this war.”

“What does a ceasefire look like, where are the Ukrainians prepared to make compromises and what are their red lines?” he said. “If Ukraine is not on board, then this agreement won’t stick. And then Trump could say, ‘if you don’t do what I tell you to do we are going to turn off the flow of aid.’ Well fine, turn off the aid. Then Ukraine collapses and Trump just lost Ukraine.”

Security guarantees for Kyiv will be central to any lasting settlement in Eastern Europe. But the US has already conceded – ahead of negotiations starting – that NATO membership for Ukraine was an unrealistic pipedream.

In the absence of Article V protection, the question will quickly turn to whether the US is willing to offer a security assurance to Kyiv.

Zelensky himself said last week that he did “not believe in security guarantees without America.” The problem is that Trump’s commentary in the last 24 hours offers little hope that a US security guarantee is likely or credible.