If the country in question is the Ukraine, the answer is simple: accept Trump’s proposal for ending the war with Russia.
No Ukrainian president this side of the Russian agent Yanukovych could accept that deal without being rightly branded a traitor. Zelensky certainly won’t, and neither would any opposition leader baying for his blood.
Trump has gone President Wilson twice better: the latter only had a 14-point plan for post-war peace. Trump’s plan has 28, but then the Donald thinks on a large scale.
There is another difference: the war that prompted Woodrow Wilson into action had a clear-cut winner, the Entente, and a woeful loser, Central Powers. Europe was thoroughly exhausted by the war, her armies exsanguinated and demob-happy, her spirit broken.
In the current case, the situation is different. The Ukraine has heroically limited the Russian aggressor to only marginal gains for almost four years, and the country is still fighting and hurting Russia all over her territory.
I submit that no one but a Russian agent – whether de facto or de jure is irrelevant – could come up with those 28 points, which the Ukraine would rather die than accept. They include the surrender of the Donbas, including the parts of it that the Russians have been unable to capture in 11 years of fighting, and the abandonment of the fortified line of defence the Ukraine has constructed.
Trump has put a property-developer’s spin on that idea, in that the Ukraine would retain the legal ownership of the area, charge rent and act as the absentee landlord to Russian invaders. What would happen if the tenants were late with the rent, say by a year or two? Would the Ukraine be expected to evict them?
That would be hard to do because the Ukraine is also expected to halve the size of her army, relinquish her long-range weapons currently wreaking havoc on Russia’s energy infrastructure and decline any Western assistance.
In exchange, the US would offer some unspecified security guarantees, doubtless ones as iron-clad as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. It was in exchange for those guarantees that the Ukraine gave up her nuclear weapons, and we know how brilliantly that has worked out.
Some other points are cultural. The Ukraine would be obligated to accept Russian as a state language and welcome back the ecclesiastical extension of the FSB, the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, currently banned.
Incidentally, our papers misled their readers by suggesting that it was the ROC as such that is banned in the Ukraine. That’s simply false, and it’s up to you to decide whether this falsehood springs from bad faith or, more likely, ignorance. The ROC is a house with many mansions, and the FSB Patriarchate is only one of them.
When it was still active in the Ukraine, it was involved in a massive propaganda effort for the benefit of its sponsor. No sane country would have tolerated such a malignant presence in wartime. Still, the current coverage constitutes progress: a few years ago our papers led their readers to believe that all Eastern Rite confessions were ousted from the Ukraine, or perhaps all Christianity altogether.
Another falsehood widely peddled is that the Russian language is banned in the Ukraine. It’s true that official business is transacted in Ukrainian, but Russian is still widely used and its users aren’t harassed. I can testify to that: every day I follow Ukrainian analysts and podcasters, all of whom speak a Russian as good as mine, or even better for being more current.
Since Putin’s first objective in this war is expunging the Ukraine’s sovereignty, it’s easy to see that each of those 28 points will do much to advance that goal and nothing to thwart it. If that ‘peace’ plan were accepted, Russia would catch her breath for a few months, replenish her arsenal, beef up her army and come again, rolling over the Ukraine’s enfeebled and disarmed rump forces.
Putin’s first objective would be accomplished; the Ukraine would exist only as a Russian protectorate, not a sovereign state. It would be time for the Russians to take the next step, attacking a NATO country. That’s what fascist aggressors do when they sense weakness: they pounce.
I call this a Trump plan, but that’s not quite accurate. The president so far hasn’t endorsed that travesty, leaving it for his envoy Steve Witkoff and his Russian counterpart to thrash out the details. Now, the only way for Witkoff to be more closely allied with Russia would be to prance around in an FSB uniform, complete with a general’s insignia.
The poor man may not even be aware of how he comes across. His sole qualification for the job is a long career in property development and friendship with his colleague, Trump. He knows how to say “The same deal I’d give my own mother I’m gonna give you”, but I doubt that geopolitics had ever detained him for long before he got perhaps the world’s most important diplomatic job.
It’s still possible, I’d even say likely, that Trump will disavow his envoy after Zelensky tells him exactly where he can put those 28 points. The Donald is smart enough to leave himself an out, and he may need one.
The position of both presidents, Ukrainian and American, can’t be properly understood without the background of two scandals, one each.
Some high-ranking energy officials in the Ukraine have been caught in massive corruption, at the time when many Ukrainian cities are left without power, when those Ukrainians who aren’t dying at the front are donating their last pennies to the war effort.
A scandal of that magnitude has to rebound on Zelensky, even though there is no evidence of his involvement. More important, it gives the Russians and their stooges the world over the pretext to say that no aid should be sent to a country where it’s likely to be purloined, ending up in fat offshore accounts.
Granted, the Ukraine is as corrupt as any former Russian colony in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe – although much less corrupt than Russia herself. Russia is run by an OCG (organised crime group) made up of the FSB/KGB and assorted mafias. As such, it’s corrupt ontologically, and the only way to change that is to throw the ruling gang out and start afresh.
The Ukraine is corrupt not at her core but at its periphery, which she has proved by flashing the corrupt officials out after a thorough investigation. In any case, we ought to support the Ukraine not because she is a paragon of virtue but because a) she is a budding democracy, a pro-Western country and our friend, b) she is a victim of brutal aggression making a mockery of international law and c) she is fighting against an evil power that wishes to subjugate not only her but the rest of Europe as well.
Still, the scandal has made Zelensky’s position a bit shaky, meaning that under no circumstances can he accept the terms of surrender dictated by Putin and transmitted by Witkoff. He’d be branded a traitor and put in the slammer faster than you could say abuse of power.
The other relevant scandal involves the Epstein files, which Trump has magnanimously agreed to release knowing he didn’t have the congressional votes to stop them. I don’t know what is or isn’t in those files, but their contents doesn’t really matter.
We’ll find out within 30 days, but meanwhile rumours are rife that Epstein transferred to the Russians some compromising information on Trump, what the Russians call kompromat. That has strengthened the hand of those detractors that have been claiming all along that Putin has something on Trump to make him toe the line.
Whether or not that is so makes no difference. The very fact that such a possibility is mooted means that Trump can ill-afford to ram Witkoff’s blackmailing terms down Zelensky’s throat. If he did so, the ghost of Epstein would emerge from his grave and point an accusing finger at Trump – there, Donald, I knew all along you were a Russian agent.
All things considered, the Witkoff deal looks like a non-starter, but appearances may well be deceptive. What seems to be certain is that Putin is broadening his subversive operations to include NATO countries.
The other day, his operatives blew up the railway line in East Poland that carries much of the military aid to the Ukraine. Bizarrely, 40 per cent of the Poles blamed the Ukraine for that sabotage, which strikes me as counterintuitive. Why would the Ukraine cut off her own blood supply?
Then it turned out that the two saboteurs involved were indeed Ukrainian nationals, which added more grist to the mill of the country’s enemies. That’s ridiculous: there is no shortage of pro-Putin Russophile, Russophone Ukrainians happy to do Putin’s dirty work. Recruiting such traitors is a doddle for a country run by career KGB officers.
It is, however, reasonably clear that this crime will only be the first in a series of other acts of sabotage aimed at communicating to Europeans that, if they want to live in peace, they should throw the Ukraine under the bus. I’m sure the Polish government will stand firm – the Poles know exactly what to expect from the Russians.
I’m not so sure about the American government or indeed ours. Wait and see is all I can suggest. But make no mistake about it: if that fascist juggernaut rolling out of Russia isn’t stopped by force, God only knows how far it will go.