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volodymyr zelenskyy
Russia Launches Drone Barrage on Kyiv Ahead of Zelenskyy-Trump Meeting
The attacks came as Trump and Zelenskyy are expected to discuss critical questions in a Ukraine-Russia peace deal, including its territorial sovereignty, NATO protections, and control over its natural resources.
Dec 27, 2025
As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made his way to Florida for a pivotal set of talks this weekend with US President Donald Trump, Russia launched a barrage of drone and missile attacks on Kyiv early Saturday morning.
At least two people were killed in the Ukrainian capital during the 10-hour attack, with 44 more—including two children—injured. Hundreds of thousands of residents are left to brave near-freezing temperatures without heat following the attack, which cut off power supplies.
The attack came as Zelenskyy prepared to stop in Canada before meeting with Trump on Sunday to discuss a 20-point plan to end the nearly four-year war with Russia that has been the subject of weeks of negotiation between US and Ukrainian emissaries.
Zelenskyy is seeking to maintain Ukraine's territorial sovereignty without having to surrender territory—namely, the eastern Donbass region that is largely occupied by Russian forces. He also hopes that any agreement to end the war will come with a long-term security guarantee reminiscent of NATO.
On Friday, Zelenskyy told reporters that the peace deal was 90% complete. But Trump retorted that Zelenskyy "doesn't have anything until I approve it."
Trump has expressed hostility toward Zelenskyy throughout his presidency. In February, before berating him in a now-infamous Oval Office meeting, Trump insisted falsely that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for starting the war in 2022.
Zelenskyy's latest peace proposal was issued in response to Trump's proposal last month, which was heavily weighted in Russia's favor.
It called for Ukraine to recognize Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and cede the entirety of the Donbass, about 2,500 square miles of territory, to Russia, including territory not yet captured. Trump's plan puts a cap of 600,000 personnel on Ukraine's military and calls for Ukraine to add a measure in its constitution banning it from ever joining NATO.
Earlier this year, Trump demanded that Ukraine give up $500 billion worth of its mineral wealth in what he said was "repayment" for US military support during the war (even though that support has only totalled about $175 billion).
In his latest proposal, Trump has pared down his demands to the creation of a "Ukraine Development Fund" that would include the "extraction of minerals and natural resources" as part of a joint US-Ukraine reconstruction effort.
While those terms appear less exploitative, the reconstruction program is expected to be financed by US loans from firms like BlackRock, which have been heavily involved in the diplomatic process.
"The infrastructure rebuilt with these loans—ports, rail lines, power grid—won’t be Ukrainian in any meaningful sense. It’ll be owned by international consortiums, operated for profit, with revenues flowing out to service the debt," wrote the Irish geopolitical commentator Deaglan O'Mulrooney on Tuesday. "In other words, Ukraine will be gutted."
Despite the criticism, Zelenskyy has signaled support in principle for the US reconstruction proposal as an alternative to direct expropriation.
The "red lines" for Zelenskyy heading into his talk with Trump are related to Ukraine's territorial integrity. He has said he will not recognize Russian control of the Donbass, or the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest nuclear facility in Europe, which Russia currently controls. He has also demanded that all terms of a peace agreement come up for a referendum among the Ukrainian people, which is strongly against territorial concessions.
At the same time, however, he insisted Saturday that "Ukraine is willing to do whatever it takes to stop this war."
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America’s Toddler-in-Chief: When Personal Grievance Becomes National Policy
If progressives hope to counter Trump effectively, we must remember: We are not simply debating policy, we are confronting a man whose every political act is an attempt to soothe his private wounds.
Oct 04, 2025
If someone treats us badly or hurts our feelings, we feel resentful. Such a response is a normal and hard-wired reaction to experiences of rejection, neglect, and criticism. Such resentment might be a passing feeling or it might endure over time. Despite being advised to practice “forgiveness,” it’s possible or even probable that most of us, on some level, remember and keep alive our grievances, usually harboring them in private.
But do you know what normal people don't do? We don't draw up an “enemies list,” and make it our mission in life to exact retribution of some kind. If we do, we're weird and a bit crazy.
Welcome to the psychological world of President Donald Trump. He kicks Jimmy Kimmel off the air because Kimmel makes fun of him. He brings charges against James Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and the “Biden crime family” because they were critical of him and judged him. When California Gov. Gavin Newsom mocks him, his response is to proudly come up with the nickname, “Gavin Newscum.” He threatens General Mark Milley with “execution” and makes jokes about the violent attack on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband. In response to Bruce Springsteen’s critiques from the stage in Manchester, UK, he attacked the Boss in a highly personal, peculiar, and bizarre way, posting this on Truth Social: “Springsteen is ‘dumb as a rock,’ and couldn’t see what was going on, or could he (which is even worse!)? This dried out 'prune' of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT!” Trump’s actions and reactions to challenges or criticism of any kind come from an extremely personal, private, and insecure place, reminiscent of kids slinging insults in a schoolyard.
In other words, Trump turns everything political into something personal. His personal psychology is on display in his public actions all the time—it’s hiding in plain sight. And any guardrails or censor that should normally maintain a screen or at least some separation between his personal psychology and his public role have completely disintegrated, if it they were ever there to begin with. A leader unable to keep these two domains separate is invariably weakened and ineffective, and we’re all paying the price for this breakdown.
Trump’s interior life is a clown car of neurotic conflicts that have seized control of his executive functions and shape his every public statement and action.
A senior consultant in Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation used to teach progressive leaders that there is—and should be—a difference between public and private values, that in private life, relationships are ends in themselves while for public actors, relationships are, and should be, more instrumental and transactional. Self-sacrifice is normal in personal relationships, while self-interest guides public action. For political leaders, personal gratification should take a backseat to public service. Of course, there is often a blurring of these boundaries, but, in general, when these domains get too confused, the consequences are usually disastrous. We see in Donald Trump an extreme example of what happens when someone in public is unable to separate the pressures of his or her private psychology and public actions.
In Donald Trump’s world, the political is always personal. Barriers between the two worlds, the sort of censors and self-restraint that effective leaders are obligated to exercise in public life, have completely collapsed. You don’t need to be Freud to see how much his policies are suffused with his personal and private needs, defenses, and insecurities. He attacks Canada because its leaders had a “nasty” response to his suggestion that it become our 51st state. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “disrespectful,” and so Trump withholds aid. His ignorance about policy reflects the fact that he recklessly acts on private impulses and not thoughtful reflection. He lies compulsively and continually, and always in the service of bombastic claims of perfection and self-exoneration. He frees criminals and criminalizes dissent, not out of high-minded principles but out of base impulses involving his personal narcissistic needs and vulnerabilities—not public interests.
Obviously, public figures and leaders are human beings with personal psychologies that invariably influence their public political actions. Effective leaders, however, learn to subordinate or at least sublimate personal psychological conflicts in the interest of being politically strategic, negotiating compromises, and focusing in a laser-like way on those desirable political outcomes that serve a broader good. No one is saying that politicians leave their egos at the door, but, rather, that the best ones seek to restrain these egos in order to achieve their political goals.
Trump is the opposite. He acts (out) entirely on the basis of personal animus and internal conflicts and then, only retroactively, spins a tale that paints his words and actions as principled or visionary. He will act on a small-minded personal impulse like humiliating Zelenskyy (who was “disrespectful”) in the Oval Office, but then argue that what was clearly an idiosyncratic personal response was really part of his efforts to single-handedly solve the Ukraine-Russian war and insure world peace. He feels slighted by other world leaders and then reactively trash talks them in public, all the while implying that his derogatory language and claims are really part of his efforts to make America great again and to promote a high-minded “America First” agenda without a hint of awareness that the real psychic motivation behind his actions involves making him, on a purely personal level, “great” and “first.”
The nature of the psychological engine that drives Trump to so constantly leak his personal issues onto his public political postures, the real reasons he simply cannot keep the seamier sides of his psychology from flooding his actions as president, all stem from his core psychological makeup. Again, let’s be clear: Trump’s psychology is hiding in plain sight. This isn’t some long-distance psychiatric conjecture or diagnosis. Trump is driven to avoid or refute any situation, any moment, in which he might potentially feel or be seen as one-down, inadequate, inferior, or otherwise a failure. He lives in dire fear of such feelings and instinctively, automatically, and desperately has to go out of his way to communicate the opposite. We see it every day. We see it in Trump’s constant clownish boasting and self-aggrandizing arrogance. When the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal suggested business sentiment had soured in response to his tariffs, Trump lashed back, calling it "globalist," "antiquated," and "very bad for the USA"—before promising, absurdly, that "we will WIN on everything!!!”
Everyone is so used to Trump’s compulsive sense of grievance and defensive arrogance that it no longer seems to be as much the impairment that it actually is. No one blinks an eye when he makes remarks, barely concealed within his word salad, about “having the best words,” being “the best President for black people since Abraham Lincoln,” or knowing more about taxes, the military, climate change—well, pretty much everything—than the world’s experts.
My point here is that Trump has no choice, no freedom at all, to edit or censor remarks like these because the psychic threats they seek to mitigate—feelings of shame, inferiority, or failure—are so threatening to him that they leave him no room at all to be cautious, modest, or to seek common ground. While all politicians, like all people, bring their personal psychologies into their public work lives, Trump’s interior life is a clown car of neurotic conflicts that have seized control of his executive functions and shape his every public statement and action.
This is exactly why Trump can’t tolerate Newsom’s mocking tweets. They hit him exactly where it hurts the most, namely, his ego, his narcissism, and his profound insecurities connected to feeling small, to being seen in any way as a loser. And this is the precise tone that those of us in the progressive opposition should take when we challenge the Trump regime in public.
There is nothing funny, nothing at all, about the systemic harm that Trump is inflicting on all of us. And our struggle to repair and reverse such harm involves gaining and wielding political power and not psychiatric explanation. But if progressives hope to counter Trump effectively, we must remember: We are not simply debating policy. We are confronting a man whose every political act is an attempt to soothe his private wounds. Exposing that truth is not a sideshow. It is part of the strategy.
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Trump Tries to Spin Failed Putin Peace Summit as Critics Label It a 'Self-Own'
"Putin got one hell of a photo op out of Trump," wrote one critic.
Aug 16, 2025
US President Donald Trump on Saturday morning tried to put his best spin on a Friday summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin that yielded neither a cease-fire agreement nor a comprehensive peace deal to end the war in Ukraine.
Writing on his Truth Social page, the president took a victory lap over the summit despite coming home completely empty-handed when he flew back from Alaska on Friday night.
"A great and very successful day in Alaska!" Trump began. "The meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia went very well, as did a late night phone call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and various European Leaders, including the highly respected Secretary General of NATO."
Trump then pivoted to saying that he was fine with not obtaining a cease-fire agreement, even though he said just days before that he'd impose "severe consequences" on Russia if it did not agree to one.
"It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Cease-fire Agreement, which often times do not hold up," Trump said. "President Zelenskyy will be coming to DC, the Oval Office, on Monday afternoon. If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people's lives will be saved."
While Trump did his best to put a happy face on the summit, many critics contended it was nothing short of a debacle for the US president.
Writing in The New Yorker, Susan Glasser argued that the entire summit with Putin was a "self-own of embarrassing proportions," given that he literally rolled out the red carpet for his Russian counterpart and did not achieve any success in bringing the war to a close.
"Putin got one hell of a photo op out of Trump, and still more time on the clock to prosecute his war against the 'brotherly' Ukrainian people, as he had the chutzpah to call them during his remarks in Alaska," she wrote. "The most enduring images from Anchorage, it seems, will be its grotesque displays of bonhomie between the dictator and his longtime American admirer."
She also noted that Trump appeared to shift the entire burden of ending the war onto Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and he even said after the Putin summit that "it's really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done."
This led Glasser to comment that "if there's one unwavering Law of Trump, this is it: Whatever happens, it is never, ever, his fault."
Glasser wasn't the only critic to offer a scathing assessment of the summit. The Economist blasted Trump in an editorial about the meeting, which it labeled a "gift" to Putin. The magazine also contrasted the way that Trump treated Putin during his visit to American soil with the way that he treated Zelenskyy during an Oval Office meeting earlier this year.
"The honors for Mr. Putin were in sharp contrast to the public humiliation that Mr. Trump and his advisers inflicted on Mr. Zelenskyy during his first visit to the White House earlier this year," they wrote. "Since then relations with Ukraine have improved, but Mr. Trump has often been quick to blame it for being invaded; and he has proved strangely indulgent with Mr. Putin."
Michael McFaul, an American ambassador to Russia under former President Barack Obama, was struck by just how much effort went into holding a summit that accomplished nothing.
"Summits usually have deliverables," he told The Atlantic. "This meeting had none... I hope that they made some progress towards next steps in the peace process. But there is no evidence of that yet."
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Ukraine Must Be Included in Trump-Putin Peace Talks, Says Sanders
The senator said the negotiations could be "a positive step forward" after three and a half years of war.
Aug 10, 2025
Echoing the concerns of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders about an upcoming summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday said the interests of Ukrainians must be represented in any talks regarding an end to the fighting between the two countries—but expressed hope that the negotiations planned for August 15 will be "a positive step forward."
On CNN's "State of the Union," Sanders (I-Vt.) told anchor Dana Bash that Ukraine "has got to be part of the discussion" regarding a potential cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine, which Putin said last week he would agree to in exchange for major land concessions in Eastern Ukraine.
Putin reportedly proposed a deal in which Ukraine would withdraw its armed forces from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, giving Russia full control of the two areas along with Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
On Friday, Trump said a peace deal could include "some swapping of territories"—but did not mention potential security guarantees for Ukraine, or what territories the country might gain control of—and announced that talks had been scheduled between the White House and Putin in Alaska this coming Friday.
As Trump announced the meeting, a deadline he had set earlier for Putin to agree to a cease-fire or face "secondary sanctions" targeting countries that buy oil from Russia passed.
Zelenskyy on Saturday rejected the suggestion that Ukraine would accept any deal brokered by the U.S. and Russia without the input of his government—especially one that includes land concessions. In a video statement on the social media platform X, Zelenskyy said that "Ukraine is ready for real decisions that can bring peace."
"Any decisions that are against us, any decisions that are without Ukraine, are at the same time decisions against peace," he said. "Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier."
Sanders on Sunday agreed that "it can't be Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump" deciding the terms of a peace deal to end the war that the United Nations says has killed more than 13,000 Ukrainian civilians since Russia began its invasion in February 2022.
"If in fact an agreement can be negotiated which does not compromise what the Ukrainians feel they need, I think that's a positive step forward. We all want to see an end to the bloodshed," said Sanders. "The people of Ukraine obviously have got to have a significant say. It is their country, so if the people of Ukraine feel it is a positive agreement, that's good. If not, that's another story."
A senior White House official told NewsNation that the president is "open to a trilateral summit with both leaders."
"Right now, the White House is planning the bilateral meeting requested by President Putin," they said.
On Saturday, Vice President JD Vance took part in talks with European Union and Ukrainian officials in the United Kingdom, where Andriy Yermak, head of the Office of the President in Ukraine, said the country's positions were made "clear: a reliable, lasting peace is only possible with Ukraine at the negotiating table, with full respect for our sovereignty and without recognizing the occupation."
European leaders pushed for the inclusion of Zelenskyy in talks in a statement Saturday, saying Ukraine's vital interests "include the need for robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity."
"Meaningful negotiations can only take place in the context of a cease-fire or reduction of hostilities," said the leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, German Cancellor Friedrich Merz, and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. "The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine. We remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force."
At the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, British journalist and analyst Anatol Lieven wrote Saturday that the talks scheduled for next week are "an essential first step" toward ending the bloodshed in Ukraine, even though they include proposed land concessions that would be "painful" for Kyiv.
If Ukraine were to ultimately agree to ceding land to Russia, said Lieven, "Russia will need drastically to scale back its demands for Ukrainian 'denazification' and 'demilitarization,' which in their extreme form would mean Ukrainian regime change and disarmament—which no government in Kyiv could or should accept."
A recent Gallup poll showed 69% of Ukrainians now favor a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible. In 2022, more than 70% believed the country should continue fighting until it achieved victory.
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What Are the Chances for Peace in Ukraine Right Now?
What makes it so difficult to find a solution? Is Russia a threat to Europe? Five questions for Eurasia expert Anatol Lieven.
Jul 09, 2025
David Goeßmann: The talks a few weeks ago between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul came to nothing. What are the chances for peace?
Anatol Lieven: I see no prospect for an end to the war at present. Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on peace terms, and the Trump administration has not put forward a compromise proposal of its own. The Russian generals are reportedly telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine will collapse by early next year, and Putin is willing to fight on, at least for a while. We will have to see what happens on the battlefield, and to the Russian economy.
David Goeßmann: What makes it so difficult to find a diplomatic solution for the Ukraine war?
Anatol Lieven: Ukraine will never legally recognize Russian sovereignty over the occupied territories, but cannot reconquer them. So a cease-fire will have to take place along the existing battle line, and the question of their legal status will have to be left for future negotiation—as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed soon after the start of the war.
In my judgement, internal political factors make it impossible for the Ukrainian government to make a peace offer that Russia could accept—just as the French establishment could not make peace with the Communists in Vietnam long after the war there was clearly lost. The Europeans are far too divided to make a coherent joint proposal. So the initiative for peace will have to come from the U.S.
The only question is whether the U.S. can abandon it incrementally and peacefully, or if it goes down in blood and fire taking many other countries with it.
The European states will have to be consulted about the future of sanctions and the Russian assets in Europe that they have seized. But they are incapable of uniting behind a serious peace strategy.
David Goeßmann: In Europe and the U.S. it is feared that Russia will go beyond Ukraine and invade other European countries? Your take on that.
Anatol Lieven: Russian military capabilities and intentions vis a vis NATO have both been hugely exaggerated. Even hybrid moves (which are not "war") have so far been very small and in the nature of warnings not serious attacks. Russian nuclear bluster has been intended to deter NATO from intervening in Ukraine, not as the prelude to a Russian attack on NATO.
David Goeßmann: NATO has decided that each member state should spend 5% of its GDP on military and related infrastructure. How do you assess this unprecedented militarization?
Anatol Lieven: These figures are absurd. Five percent of E.U. GDP would be approximately $900 billion a year—as much as the U.S. and almost three times the military budgets of Russia and China put together. That is quite unnecessary, and impossible. This is an empty bribe to U.S. President Donald Trump to keep the U.S. committed to Europe, not a serious strategy.
David Goeßmann: The struggle for global primacy continues under Trump, see the bombing of Iran or the confrontation with China. Where are we heading?
Anatol Lieven: The desire for universal U.S. hegemony (also known as the "Wolfowitz Doctrine") is a megalomaniac project that cannot possibly be sustained for long. The only question is whether the U.S. can abandon it incrementally and peacefully, or if it goes down in blood and fire taking many other countries with it.
Among the nuclear-armed powers, we can hope that the fear of nuclear annihilation will stop them from going over the brink into war with each other. The example of India and Pakistan shows that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) can actually work—for without it, India would have invaded Pakistan long ago. But the liberal dream of a global "Democratic Peace" is dead as a nail, killed by Israel and the U.S. itself just as much as by Russia.
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Ukrainians Need (and Want) an End to War
It’s time to end the suffering of the Ukrainian people, so they can heal and rebuild.
May 28, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump’s expressed exasperation over Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine seemed to temporarily lift the spirit of pro-war European leaders like France’s Emmanuel Macron, who said he hopes Trump’s anger “translates into action.” The U.S. isn’t likely to resume the massive military support it provided under former President Joe Biden. Under one scenario, however, it could conceivably sell weapons to NATO for Ukraine’s use.
The abandonment of peace efforts in Ukraine would be disastrous—especially for Ukrainians.
American citizens and those of other NATO countries have a moral obligation to demand peace—a just peace, but an urgent one.
Americans’ support for the war has softened somewhat, according to recent Pew polling, with 44% saying the U.S. has a responsibility to aid Ukraine’s defense and 52% saying it doesn’t. Sixty-nine percent, however, still believe the war is “important to U.S. interests.”
They don’t seem to understand the situation in Ukraine, the harm it is causing, the threats it poses to the United States—or the wishes of the Ukrainian people.
What Ukrainians Want
Chances are, most Americans didn’t see last November’s Gallup news report headlined, “Half of Ukrainians Want Quick, Negotiated End to War.” Or the Ukrainian poll which found that only 16% of Ukrainians wanted their country to “continue fighting until it wins the war.” This important information went all but unreported in American media.[1]
Their war-weariness is easy to understand. Ukrainians have already suffered more than 400,000 casualties. Two million Ukrainian residences have been destroyed or damaged, and nearly one-fourth of Ukraine’s population has been displaced, including 15% who have fled their homeland. Nearly 900,000 Ukrainians (the equivalent of 7 or 8 million Americans) are serving in the military.
Ukrainians are reportedly the poorest people in Europe. Today, one-half of Ukraine’s households reportedly live at a basic subsistence level; roughly 1 in 4 must “scrimp” for food. The government’s decimated finances have led to cuts in services, usurious tax hikes, and ever-worsening corruption.
To put it bluntly, they’re living in hell.
The Nuclear Scenario
And speaking of hell: This war also carries the very real risk of the first wartime use of nuclear weapons since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Germany’s new chancellor has confirmed, all NATO countries have lifted their restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles against Russia. That increases the risk of nuclear confrontation, which was already at an unacceptable level.
The New York Times recently published an investigation which revealed that the United States actively planned, armed, and helped carry out direct military actions against the world’s only other nuclear superpower—actions so reckless they even alarmed U.S. intelligence, which sharply raised its assessment of the nuclear threat.[2]
A War That Can’t Be Won
The Times report should have dominated the news cycle and changed the conversation about this war. It should have—but it didn’t. But then, little attention was paid back in November 2022 when Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared that the war was essentially unwinnable and that it was time to negotiate.
Journalists and war-promoting politicians have collaborated in downplaying both the horrors of this war and the impossibility of Ukrainian victory. That’s allowed the United States and its Western allies to extend this exercise in futility, while offering false hope to the Ukrainian people and expending their own resources on weapons abroad. It’s time to stop claiming we can help Ukraine fight until it “wins.”
It won’t win—not ever. To believe otherwise is to help NATO countries use Ukrainians as cannon fodder.
That’s not to deny that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a war crime. It is, and any decent person should abhor it. But we must also recognize the real-world concerns and provocations that preceded it.[3]
Facing Reality
It was unwise—not to mention criminal—to mark the start of U.S.-Russian negotiations by murdering a top Russian general with a car bomb in a Moscow suburb, an act that appeared to be a deliberate “F— you” to both negotiating parties. Ukraine’s role in that attack—also illegal under international law—was affirmed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s comments afterward.[4]
Graham Allison, professor of government at the Harvard Kennedy School, writes:
Rather than attempting to deny brute facts... Zelenskyy should now focus on what he and his brave compatriots have won. They have defeated Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to erase their country from the map. Ukraine’s army has fought the second-most powerful military on Earth to a standstill.
Allison writes, “Zelenskyy’s team should make its best efforts to use the few cards that it has left to negotiate an ugly but sustainable peace.”
Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft writes:
Most of the peace plan for Ukraine now sketched out by the Trump administration is not new, is based on common sense, and has indeed already been tacitly accepted by Kyiv.
Lieven adds that, given the details yet to be worked out, “it was unwise and thoughtless of Zelenskyy to declare immediately that ‘there is nothing to talk about here.’”
A Different Future
Ukraine needs and deserves more reassurances than it has been given so far. To be sure, any negotiated outcome will be painful, portending what Allison calls “an ugly but sustainable peace.” But these negotiations are Ukraine’s best hope. They are, in fact, its only hope. The only alternative is an even uglier procession of days, weeks, months, and years containing only death and destruction, with nothing to be gained and no end in sight.
Ukraine can still have a bright future someday, free of war and poverty. One possible future can be glimpsed in Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1989 proposal to the Council of Europe for a “common European home” that “replaces the traditional balance of forces with a balance of interests.”
As long as the war continues, however, Ukraine can’t move forward at all. American citizens and those of other NATO countries have a moral obligation to demand peace—a just peace, but an urgent one. That obligation extends to the many Democrats whose hostility to Donald Trump has deepened a needless partisan divide over this issue.
The United States must lead the West in shifting its focus—and its spending—from war to peace. Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction costs were last estimated at $524 billion over 10 years. It’s time to end the suffering of the Ukrainian people, so they can heal and rebuild.
We must help them in that recovery. But first, all Americans—Democrats as well as Republicans—must call for peace now.
________________________________________________________
[1]. The Gallup poll represented a dramatic change in Ukrainian public opinion: 73% wanted to fight until “victory” in 2022, and 63% the year after. By November 2024, 52% of Ukrainians wanted to end the war. I only found these polls mentioned once in The New York Times’ news section—a reference to Gallup’s poll in the 23rd paragraph of a story headlined, “Ukrainians Fear Peace May Strand Them Forever From Lost Homes.” (It also appeared in an op-ed.)
[2]. The New York Times’ investigation of the U.S. military in Ukraine is a must-read. It documents the U.S.’ leadership role in planning, arming, and carrying out direct military actions against the world’s only other nuclear superpower.
“Until that moment,” the Times reports, “U.S. intelligence agencies had estimated the chance of Russia’s using nuclear weapons in Ukraine at 5-10%. Now, they said, if the Russian lines in the south collapsed, the probability was 50%.”
Ukraine is also the home of 15 nuclear reactors housed in four power plants.
[3]. The Geopolitical Economy website has done an excellent job laying out the United States’ shameful role in provoking conflict between Russia and Ukraine. (See, for example, here, here, and here.)
[4]. Zelenskyy celebrated and took credit for the killing, writing on Telegram that a Ukrainian intelligence official had “reported on the liquidation of persons from the top command of the Russian armed forces.”
Zelenskyy added: “Justice inevitably is done... Good results. Thank you for your work.”
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As Russia Escalates Attacks on Ukraine, Zelenskyy Calls for Increased Sanctions
"Only a sense of total impunity can allow Russia to carry out such strikes and continue increasing their scale," said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
May 26, 2025
Russia launched a major drone attack on Ukraine overnight into Monday, the largest since Moscow's full-scale invasion that began in 2022, according to a Monday social media post from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy—who called for the escalation to be met with sanctions.
The attack was the third consecutive night of drone strikes against Ukraine, according to Zelenskyy. "Increase in Russian strikes should be met with increased sanctions," he said. "Only a sense of total impunity can allow Russia to carry out such strikes and continue increasing their scale. There is no real military logic to this, but there is significant political meaning." Zelenskyy also denounced Russia for rejecting a 30-day cease-fire proposed earlier this month.
Sunday night into Monday, Russia fired 355 Shahed drones, a record, as well as nine cruise missiles, according to The Guardian. Russia's Defense Ministry reportedly said Monday it had shot down over 100 Ukrainian drones overnight that were flying over southern and western Russia.
U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to put new sanctions on Russia, but so far hasn't followed through on the threat.
On Sunday, Andrii Sybiha, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine wrote that "Russia launched hundreds of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles into Ukrainian cities and communities during the night, injuring and killing people, including at least three children."
Meanwhile, Trump in Sunday evening post on social media appeared to distance himself from the conflict, calling it not his war, while also writing that Russian President Vladimir Putin "has gone absolutely CRAZY!"
"He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I'm not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever. I've always said that he wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that's proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia! Likewise, President Zelenskyy is doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does," Trump wrote.
According to Bloomberg, Trump told reporters in New Jersey on Sunday that he is "absolutely" mulling new sanctions against Russia following the latest drone attacks. However, The New York Times reported Sunday that the Trump did not indicate to reporters that he's willing to provide Kiev with military aid, and also declined to respond to questions about whether the latest attacks will prompt a policy change from the Trump administration.
While aid that was approved under former U.S. President Joe Biden is still flowing to Ukraine, the Trump administration has not sought any new drawdowns or new funding, according to The Washington Post.
Earlier this month, under pressure from the U.S. and European governments, delegates from Ukraine and Russia met in Istanbul, Turkey for cease-fire talks.
The talks did not result in a truce, but the two sides did agree to swap civil detainees and prisoners of war, according to The Associated Press.
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How to Meet with Trump: A South African Masterclass in Diplomatic Strategy
South Africa's president read Trump perfectly and knew exactly how to handle this obvious and simple man.
May 24, 2025
You probably saw the cringe-worthy spectacle a few months ago: U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House. The Ukrainian president's pained expression as he described facing down Russian President Vladimir Putin—an authoritarian bent on destroying democracy and consuming land that isn't his—while Trump, who clearly identifies more with the aggressor than the victim, publicly humiliated him. Trump celebrated this awful spectacle as "good television." Once a desperate attention seeking reality show host, always a desperate attention seeking reality show host.
It's worth asking: Why would any world leader willingly walk into that gilded trap of an Oval Office—where, notably and ironically, "none of the items on the mantle in Trump's Oval Office were made in the U.S."—knowing they'll likely face an inept man-child who ignores shared reality and acts as though the universe revolves around him?
South Africa just gave every world leader a roadmap for navigating Trump without losing their dignity or falling into his reality TV traps.
Then South Africa's president showed up and delivered a masterclass in strategic diplomacy.
While it's important to talk about the falsehoods regarding "white genocide" that Trump kept repeating during this meeting—as many outlets are doing—I think we also need to examine the brilliance of how President Cyril Ramaphosa handled this, shall we use the very diplomatic language of, challenging leader.
Reading the Room (and the Racist)
This visit came days after the administration's theatrical welcome of white South African "refugees"—an absurd spectacle given that South Africa, where the white population at 7% of the total still owns 50% of the land and where a majority of crime impacts non-white South Africans, is hardly experiencing white genocide. The real genocide Trump ignores? Gaza, which the United States explicitly supports.
But rather than falling into the cruel trap Trump and Vance set for Zelenskyy, South Africa's president read Trump perfectly and knew exactly how to handle this obvious and simple man.
The Blueprint: Three Brilliant Moves
Move 1: Disarm with Humor
The South African president joked that he was sorry he couldn't bring Trump a plane, to which Trump replied, "I wish you would have." Any observer knows it would be a massive conflict of interest for a U.S. president to accept a plane from a foreign leader. Unfortunately, this isn't hypothetical, as Trump officially accepted a luxury plane gifted by Qatar's leader on the same day on May 21. But Trump, existing in his gold-plated self-centered universe, just enjoyed the joke. Brilliant—point out actual corruption while flattering the ego.
When an ABC reporter had simply asked about the Pentagon's announcement regarding this controversial Qatari gift, Trump unleashed his predictable (and with its frequency, less interesting but no less dangerous) attack on the press: "What do you have to do with the Qatari jet? They're giving the United States Air Force a jet. Okay? And it's a great thing… You are a terrible reporter. Number one, you don't have what it takes to be a reporter. You're not smart enough."
But humor? That disarmed him completely. The South African president got Trump to openly joke about foreign governments buying influence, something that would send any other president scrambling for damage control. All it took was the right tone and one luxury plane as a punchline.
Move 2: Bring the Right White Men
Recognizing Trump's racism (evident in everything from unlawful abductions that did not follow any due process and sent likely majority innocent people to El Salvador to the inconceivable resurgence of the Nazi salute in Trump's White House to the targeting students of color who speak out about the atrocities in Gaza) and sexism, the president knew he'd need white men to make Trump listen. But not just any white man—he brought golfer Ernie Els.
When Trump presented misleading clips and questionable papers (which reporters noted had nothing to do with his claims), he again predictably attacked the press: "If the news wasn't fake, like NBC, which is fake news, totally, one of the worst, ABC, NBC, CBS, horrible... if we had real reporters, they'd be covering it."
But Els? Trump actually listened to Els, who gently educated this president averse to historical realities: "It's been 35 years since the transition. President Ramaphosa was right in the middle of the transition time, 1990 and before that... There was a lot of stuff happening in the apartheid days. You know, we grew up in the apartheid era. But I don't think two wrongs make a right. President Mandela, when he came out of prison... didn't come out with hatred, you know, and really unified our nation with his sport."
A white man who has captured Trumps attention because of golf, that colonial relic spread by the British colonial elites during the 18th and 19th centuries, became the vehicle for Trump to hear about South Africa's real issues rather than his fantasized "white genocide" narrative.
Move 3: Speak the Language of Wealth
Understanding that people who hoard wealth only hear from other wealth hoarders, President Ramaphosa brought South Africa's richest man, Johann Rupert. Surrounded by the Oval Office's imported gold, Rupert could speak Trump's language while delivering hard truths: "We have too many deaths. But it's across the board. It's not only white farmers. It's across the board... The crime is terrible, sir... but the biggest murder rate is in the Cape Flats. Gangs."
With a billionaire as messenger, Trump was momentarily forced to confront reality rather than his distorted fantasy of South Africa.
The Lesson Plan
So what can other world leaders learn from this diplomatic parkour?
- Use humor to disarm while pointing out actual violations: it catches Trump off guard when reporters can't.
- Bring a white man who does something Trump cares about: Your options are limited to golf, wrestling, or maybe real estate, but stick to sports
- If possible, bring wealth: the ultra-rich can only hear from other ultra-rich
There you have it. South Africa just gave every world leader a roadmap for navigating Trump without losing their dignity or falling into his reality TV traps.
The question now is: Who will be smart enough to follow it?
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Trump’s Manual for Not Turning a Cease-Fire Into a Lasting Peace
The U.S. president’s unholy affection for both Putin and Netanyahu will produce only the worst kind of cease-fire, the kind that the strong use as a prelude to their final push to eliminate the weak.
Mar 29, 2025
Israel has resumed its aerial bombardment of Gaza. The latest cease-fire, which lasted two months and led to the release of 33 Israeli hostages and 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, never made it out of its first stage. The Israeli government has now adopted a strategy of inflicting overwhelming violence until Hamas capitulates by releasing the remaining hostages.
Ukraine and Russia have accepted a limited cease-fire. Both sides have agreed to stop attacking each other’s energy infrastructure, but neither has actually adhered to this condition. U.S. President Donald Trump, who coaxed both sides toward this cease-fire, is reportedly furious. This week, Moscow and Kyiv agreed to extend this partial cease-fire to the Black Sea, though here, too, they don’t seem in a rush to stop their attacks. No serious analysts, including those in Russia, expect this cease-fire to hold.
A United Nations-brokered truce in Yemen lasted nearly six months in 2024 before fighting in the country between the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels and the Saudi-backed government started up again in the fall. The Trump administration has recently escalated air strikes against the Houthis in response to their revived efforts to disrupt shipping in the Red Sea.
Donald Trump promised that he would, like some authoritarian father figure, force warring parties in Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere to stop fighting and get along. Only the credulous believe in this avatar of Trump as peacemaker.
Last year, a cease-fire in Syria came to an end when rebels, with the go-ahead from Turkey, caught government troops by surprise when they seized Aleppo and kept going. A little more than a week later, they were in control of the capital of Damascus and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was on his way to Moscow.
Cease-fires have come and gone in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Last week, the DRC and Rwanda called for a cease-fire in the eastern part of the country. An astonishing 700,000 people have been displaced by fighting just since January. The record of truces in this war-torn country does not give much hope for this latest initiative.
In other countries, the mutual hostility between the warring parties has been so intense that cease-fires don’t even get a chance to take hold. Sudan, split in two by government forces and the rebel Rapid Support Forces, has so far resisted international calls for immediate humanitarian pauses in the violence.
Cease-fires don’t always fail. Libya hasn’t seen any major violation of the cease-fire signed in 2020. But it’s the only success of the three cease-fires that the Borgen Project cited in October 2022 as evidence of a more peaceful world. The civil war in Sudan resumed in April 2023. Later that year, Azerbaijan broke a cease-fire to defeat Armenia and seize control of the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Donald Trump promised that he would, like some authoritarian father figure, force warring parties in Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere to stop fighting and get along. Only the credulous believe in this avatar of Trump as peacemaker. The truth is, cease-fires are usually just empty promises, regardless of how smart, powerful, or delusional the mediator-in-chief happens to be.
What makes some cease-fires endure even as so many others disappear into the fire of renewed hostilities?
Why Cease-Fires Die
When he responded to Trump’s peace proposal for Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “We are in favor of it but there are nuances.”
Those “nuances” were sticking points as sharp as a saber. Putin wants the world to recognize his illegal seizure of four Ukrainian provinces over which he doesn’t even have full control. He wants all foreign military assistance and intelligence sharing with Ukraine to end. NATO membership for Ukraine must be off the table. Oh, and he also wants the world to lift sanctions against his country.
Putin believes that he has an advantage on the battlefield and, with Trump as president, at the negotiating table as well. There is some truth to Putin’s perception. Russia has more soldiers and resources at its disposal than does Ukraine, and Trump is the most pro-Russian president that the United States has ever produced. Putin also knows that the celebrated dealmaker is actually a naïf who pays little attention to details and has been taken to the cleaners in the past, most notably by the Taliban in its 2020 deal with the United States.
But Russia, too, has reached certain limits in its capacity to recruit soldiers and produce the armaments to continue its occupation of Ukraine. Mutual exhaustion is one of the best signs of a cease-fire that can endure. That was certainly the case with the two Koreas in 1953 after two years of relatively little territorial movement by either side.
But both parties to the conflict have to acknowledge, if only to themselves, that they have sunk into a quagmire. Putin, by contrast, thinks that he can prevail. He wants not only those four provinces but the entirety of what he calls “Novorossiya,” which includes all of Ukraine’s southern coast, which would render the country land-locked. Putin also wants elections that can replace Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a more malleable leader.
Any cease-fire that doesn’t lead to Putin achieving these ultimate goals is a cease-fire that Russia is unlikely to uphold.
A power-besotted aggressor who believes that he—and isn’t it always a he?—has an asymmetric advantage over his opponent is one of the leading reasons why it’s difficult to stop wars. Cease-fires for these aggressors are only pauses to regroup or to win international approval or to lull opponents into complacency.
That applies to Benjamin Netanyahu as well. Israel and Hamas have been locked in a conflict over Gaza for more than two decades. On October 7, the much weaker Hamas launched a brutal surprise attack on Israeli territory that killed more than 1,000 people and produced 250 hostages, which the Palestinian group figured it could use as bargaining chips. Instead of negotiating, the Netanyahu government launched its own brutal response, which has left 50,000 dead in Gaza.
Like Putin, Netanyahu has maximalist ambitions and an uncompromising attitude. He wants to destroy Hamas. He also wants to destroy the capacity of Gaza to serve as a part of some future Palestinian state. He doesn’t really care about the hostages that Hamas is holding. The Israeli leader is so determined to prove that Hamas is using Israeli hostages and Palestinian civilians alike as human shields that he’ll sacrifice them both in his bid to annihilate Hamas and, of course, maintain his own political position. To add grievous insult to catastrophic injury, he’ll then accuse the Palestinian group of human rights abuses after the fact.
A huge number of Israelis are fed up. This last weekend, 100,000 turned out to protest in the major cities.
Getting to Peace
Most cease-fires fail, often spectacularly so. “Of the 105 failed cease-fires, 84% were followed by an offensive within an average of just 13 days,” reports Patrick Burke in his study of cease-fires in 25 wars from 1947 to 2016. According to a study by Jason Quinn and Madhav Joshi, 80% of cease-fires fail.
Mutual exhaustion on the battlefield is certainly one factor behind a successful cease-fire. But what can mediators do when one or both sides believe that they can still achieve a complete victory, as Croatia did with Operation Storm in 1995 and Azerbaijan accomplished more recently?
Trump’s approach is to strong-arm the weaker party. He cut off military aid to Ukraine, trash-talked its leader, and forced the country to accept a partial cease-fire. With the latest deal on the Black Sea, he is dangerously close to agreeing to lift some restrictions on Russian exports without approval from Ukraine or the European Union. Such a cease-fire is not likely to last or to lead to a second stage.
Putin is no doubt watching Netanyahu, taking careful notes, and identifying lessons to learn:
- Lesson one: Break previous agreement
- Lesson two: Flatter Trump
- Lesson three: Apply maximum firepower
- Lesson four: Ignore international opinion
From a conflict resolution point of view, a more successful approach would be to identify the underlying reasons for the dispute—competition for resources, historical grudges, cultural differences—and find ways of nudging the parties toward addressing those root causes nonviolently. But this approach assumes a certain power balance among the combatants.
It’s hard to imagine Trump, Netanyahu, or Putin being very interested in such a process. They don’t believe in talk therapy. They believe in power moves.
Where one side has an obvious advantage, an outside force could try to level the playing field. That requires arm-twisting not the weaker party but the stronger one. That’s what the United States did to get Serbia to the table and sign the Dayton Accords to end the war in Bosnia.
Ah, but didn’t the West follow just such a strategy with Russia during the current conflict? All the sanctions against Russia and arms deliveries to Ukraine and resolutions at the U.N. only made Putin fight harder. These punitive actions were taken to help Ukraine repel the invaders and uphold the principles of international law. In other words, the international community has had a stake in the conflict, since Russia didn’t just seize Ukrainian territory, it defied a collective global norm.
With Israel, of course, the Biden administration did little or nothing to restrain Netanyahu. The Trump administration has only encouraged the Israeli leader. Trump’s scenario of a Gaza resort with no Palestinians, however ridiculous it sounds, served notice that the United States would be okay with a genocidal push of all Palestinians from their land.
So, perhaps in some contexts, cease-fires are just bound to fail.
But don’t despair. Remember that 80% failure rate from Jason Quinn and Madhav Joshi? Believe it or not, these researchers were actually encouraged by the results of their analysis of data from 196 conflicts between 1975 to 2011.
“What we found was that the best predictor that any one cease-fire agreement will be successful—and by successful I mean: not followed by renewed conflict or violence—… is how many failed peace agreements came before,” Jason Quinn noted. He pointed to the ultimate successes in ending wars in Nepal and Colombia as important examples.
Wars are hard to end. Exhibit A: The Hundred Years War. It makes sense that cease-fires are bound to fail and fail and fail and fail and fail until one day, they produce a lasting peace. Skilled mediators, a power move or two, mutual exhaustion on the battlefiel and at the negotiating table: These can all eventually lead to success.
But one thing is for sure. Trump’s unholy affection for both Putin and Netanyahu will produce only the worst kind of cease-fire, the kind that the strong use as a prelude to their final push to eliminate the weak.
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Trump Lifts Ukraine Aid Pause After Kyiv Agrees to Cease-Fire Proposal
Ukraine's foreign minister called the endorsement a "step that proves Ukraine is ready to move forward on the path to a just end to the war."
Mar 11, 2025
The Trump administration said Tuesday that it would resume military aid to and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine after that country's leadership endorsed a U.S. proposal for a 30-day cease-fire in the war defending against Russia's three-year invasion and occupation.
The Washington Post reports that U.S., Ukrainian, and Saudi officials met for eight hours on Tuesday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. No Russian officials were present at the negotiations.
"We're going to tell them this is what's on the table. Ukraine is ready to stop shooting and start talking," U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after the meeting. "And now it'll be up to them to say yes or no. If they say no, then we'll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here."
Ukraine has agreed to a 30 day ceasefire. Incredible work by Trump team. Now if Russia agrees, Trump may have gotten cease fires in the Middle East and Europe in his first 60 days. Nobel Peace Prize worthy: pic.twitter.com/lYogXVP8wj
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) March 11, 2025
White House National Security Adviser Michael Waltz said following the talks that "the Ukrainian delegation today made something very clear, that they share President [Donald] Trump's vision for peace, they share his determination to end the fighting, to end the killing, to end the tragic meat grinder of people."
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called his country's endorsement of the cease-fire proposal a "step that proves Ukraine is ready to move forward on the path to a just end to the war."
"Ukraine is not an obstacle to peace; it is a partner in its restoration," Sybiha added.
U.S. officials said the cease-fire proposal will now be sent to Russia for approval. It is unclear whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will accept the offer.
"The ball is now in their court," Rubio said of the Russians.
Buoyed by Western support but stretched thin and vastly outmanned and outgunned, Ukrainian forces have been struggling to repel Russia's invasion and hold Russian territory they seized in the Kursk region, with an eye toward potential future territorial exchanges.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian forces launched a massive drone attack on Moscow. Three people were reportedly killed and six others were injured when debris struck a meat processing facility.
Tuesday's development marked a dramatic turnaround from just two weeks ago, when Trump and Vice President JD Vance lambasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a highly contentious White House meeting that was followed by a suspension of all U.S. military assistance and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv.
The U.S. has "provided $66.5 billion in military assistance since Russia launched its premeditated, unprovoked, and brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and approximately $69.2 billion in military assistance since Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014," according to a State Department fact sheet dated March 4.
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