Trump seeks a ‘Putin peace’ for Ukraine

Near the end of his more than 90-minute-long stump speech to Congress on Tuesday, President Donald Trump finally devoted a few moments to Ukraine, bragging he was “working tirelessly to end the savage conflict.”

He neglected to mention he had just axed military and intelligence aid to Kyiv, something that could accelerate the slaughter of Ukrainians from Russian missiles that deliberately target civilians. Trump’s draconian step followed a bitter meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office Friday over security guarantees for any peace deal.

Adding gross insult to injury, Trump then posted on Truth Social, “President Zelensky is not ready for Peace… I want PEACE.”

If that’s the case, Trump’s statements and behavior indicate he envisions the kind of peace preferred by Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Which, to paraphrase President John F. Kennedy, is the kind of deal that must be avoided: a “peace of the grave” or a “peace of the slave.”

Trump’s words clearly indicate how his vision of peace aligns with the Kremlin’s. The tip-off came Tuesday, when the president stressed that “We’ve had serious discussion with Russia and have received strong signals that they are ready for peace.”

Really? As Putin launches massive air attacks on civilians and insists Ukraine has no right to exist as a state?

A “Putin peace” is not something Ukrainians nor Europeans can accept, just as Winston Churchill in the dark days of 1940 could not accept Adolf Hitler’s “peace” offer. Of course, at that time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to the aid of Churchill, despite the pressure from America First isolationists and Nazi sympathizers.

Yet, so long as Trump gets a ceasefire, a photo op, and the right to claim he stopped the fighting (no matter how briefly), I fear Americans may grasp too late what their president has signed on to. All as he moves to do business deals with Moscow in the delusion he can split control of the world with Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.

This is why I believe it is so important to examine Trump’s concept of peace.

First, he continues to lie about Ukraine aid to convince his base that Kyiv is mooching off America (a lie Russian propaganda repeats day and night).

On Tuesday, he repeated the falsehood that the United States has spent hundreds of billions — “perhaps $350 billion” — to support Ukraine. This is a blatant lie.

Any spending for Ukraine must be approved by Congress, which has technically appropriated $183 billion for military and economic aid since 2022 (tens of billions remain unallocated or unspent). Moreover, the $63 billion in disbursed military aid has mostly been spent in the United States for American-made weapons, thus creating jobs here. Moreover, Europe has spent much more than the U.S. has in combined military and economic aid, contrary to another Trump lie Tuesday.

Combined with his constant denigration of Zelensky, whom Russia wants removed, Trump seems to be trying to soften the U.S. public for a pro-Putin deal.

Second, Trump keeps showering Putin with carrots while using only sticks against Ukraine. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote, “Trump tilts toward a Ukraine sellout” while pushing for “the rapid rehab” of Putin as a peacemaker.

Trump refuses to include Ukraine in direct negotiations while sending his minions to Moscow and schmoozing by phone with Putin. The U.S. voted with Russia, Belarus, and North Korea in the U.N. General Assembly against denouncing the Russian invasion on its third anniversary. Trump hands the Kremlin concessions upfront — no NATO membership for Ukraine, no return of Ukrainian territory conquered by Moscow — while making zero demands on Putin.

Meantime, Trump extorts a mineral deal from Ukraine to pay back U.S. aid, as if Kyiv were the aggressor. He talks of lifting Russian sanctions as if Putin were the victim. A desperate Zelensky is willing to sign the minerals deal, but not the original version that demanded Kyiv pay back three times the total U.S. aid it has received.

Trump is even ready to invite Putin to the White House, as if the Russian leader had not broken the crucial international rule of law that has kept the peace since World War II: no seizure of another country’s territory by force.

Can there be any doubt Trump is pursuing a “Putin peace” rather than a solution that brings lasting peace to Ukraine? He insists Putin will never break a deal with him, so no U.S. military guarantees are needed. Never mind the Russian dictator has broken every deal he’s made with Ukraine.

Third, Trump refuses to come clean about what a “Putin peace” would mean for Ukraine. So let me spell it out.

Contrary to Trump’s claims, Putin has no interest in long-term peace. He has said repeatedly that Ukraine has no right to exist as a separate state. He clearly wants to retake control of the country in his effort to reconstruct the Soviet empire.

Trump’s eagerness for a quick ceasefire, without security guarantees attached, offers Putin a twofer. If the U.S. aid cutoff enables him to keep advancing on the battlefield, he can reject a ceasefire and blame Zelensky. Or he may take it, regroup, and attack again after an indifferent Trump has moved on to more destruction abroad.

Trump rejects what Ronald Reagan proclaimed: that life behind the Soviet Iron Curtain was brutal for anyone who yearned for economic, political, or individual freedom. I have spoken with escapees from the Ukrainian territory seized by Russia, and their stories of arrests, torture, and worse remind me of what I heard from dissidents in Poland and Czechoslovakia under Soviet rule.

Don’t believe me? Consider the words of Lech Wałęsa, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Polish leader of the Solidarity labor movement that fought back against Soviet repression in the 1980s. He rose to his country’s presidency after the liberation of Eastern Europe in 1989.

Following Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s attack on Zelensky last week, Wałęsa and other former Polish political prisoners wrote an impassioned letter to Trump, voicing “horror and disgust” at the White House’s attitude toward a leader fighting for freedom from Moscow. “The atmosphere in the Oval Office,” they wrote, “reminded us of the one we remember well from interrogations by the Security Service and … in Communist courts.”

Communist prosecutors and judges, they went on, “also explained to us that they held all the cards and we had none,” a pointed reference to the words Trump used as a rebuke to Zelensky.

Dismissing Trump’s complaint that Zelensky wasn’t sufficiently grateful, they argued: “Gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world. We do not understand how the leader of a country that is a symbol of the free world cannot see this.”

Trump’s admiration for dictators smothers any interest in defending democratic values. But if a majority of the U.S. public understood the nature of the “Putin peace” Trump wants to impose on Ukraine, I can’t believe there would not be pushback against a president who shames our history and our honor.

We shall soon find out.