Donald Trump has once again caused heads to explode around the world as he appeared to blame Ukraine for being invaded.
Trump took off after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who complained that his nation wasn't invited to the talks between Russia and the United States in Saudi Arabia.
"I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it's going very well. But today I heard, 'Oh, well, we weren't invited.' Well, you've been there for three years," Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort. "You should have never started it. You could have made a deal."
Russian President Vladimir Putin had no incentive whatsoever to make a deal with Ukraine. Russia was under no pressure from Joe Biden and Biden's weak, ambiguous warnings to Putin fell on deaf ears anyway. Russia's invasion was a continuation of the war it began in 2014 when it invaded Crimea, a province of Ukraine.
Trump's statement, "You could have made a deal," is not supported by the facts. Short of surrender, Zelenkyy's options were extremely limited when Russia invaded in February 2022.
Trump then tried a little alternative history, claiming he could have made a deal to avoid war altogether.
"I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished, and not one dome would have been knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way."
Ukraine could be forgiven, given that both Barack Obama and Joe Biden promised it membership in NATO at a later date. This was always the red line for Moscow. It was a caucus belli that, if nothing else, gave Moscow a pretext to invade. It's not surprising that Russia welcomed Trump's remarks.
The U.S. president is "the first, and so far, apparently, the only Western leader who has publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the brazen path of the previous administration to draw Ukraine into NATO," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a speech to Russian lawmakers Wednesday. "No Western leader has ever said this,”
"This is already a signal that he understands our position," Lavrov added in a speech that covered the broader second Trump administration rather than the president's specific remarks Tuesday.
The U.S. and Russia on Tuesday agreed to re-establish embassy staffing, diverging from previous American policy on the matter. Zelenskyy said earlier Tuesday that “Ukraine did not know anything about it.”
Was Trump's "blaming the victim" a negotiating ploy to soften Russia up? Making both sides feel that Trump is on "their side" ("He understands our position") is one way to get negotiations off square one.
Exclusively for our VIPs: U.S. Rips Europe's Security Blanket Away, and the Continent Hasn't a Clue What to Do
But at what cost? President Zelenskyy claims Trump is repeating "disinformation."
“Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,” Zelensky said.
Indeed, Trump repeated a bogus Russian claim that Zelenskyy enjoyed just 4% support from Ukrainian citizens.
"According to an opinion poll released Wednesday by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology research organization, 57% of Ukrainians say they trust Zelenskyy," reports NBC News.
However, a recent Gallup poll found just 38% of Ukrainians wanted to fight on to a military victory, while 52% of the country wanted a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible.
Trump got mad at Zelenskyy for insisting that Ukraine be a part of the negotiations to determine its destiny. Trump's point of view is that adding seats to the table will only complicate the talks. That's why he's not in favor of allowing the European powers to sit at the table, either.
But since Ukraine is going to have to implement its side of the deal, including Ukraine would appear to be unavoidable.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member