Trump would pressure Ukraine to give up Crimea and the Donbas border regions to Russia
Former president Donald Trump’s plan for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine would give parts of Ukraine to Russia, according to several people who have had discussions with Trump or his advisors.
The plan tacitly endorses Vladimir Putin’s forceful violation of “internationally recognized borders” according to three foreign policy experts.
The Russian war in Ukraine is the largest land war in Europe since World War II, according to RAND, a nonprofit organized in 1948 to promote “the public welfare and security of the United States.”
Trump would pressure Ukraine to hand over both Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to several people who “spoke on the condition of anonymity because those conversations [had been] confidential.”
Trump thinks “people in parts of Ukraine would be okay with being part of Russia, according to a person who has discussed the matter directly with Trump.”
Trump’s plan for Ukraine “circulated” in November at Heritage Foundation meeting; it is the “most-quoted D.C. think tank in Russian media.”
Former Trump White House aide Michael Anton described the plan “as Ukraine ceding territory in Crimea and Donbas, limiting NATO expansion and enticing Putin to loosen his growing reliance on China, according to multiple people present for the meeting, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private discussion.”
Reached by phone in March, Anton “denied knowing anything about Trump’s plan for Ukraine. He did not respond to further questions.”
The headline, Inside Donald Trump’s secret plan to end the Ukraine-Russia war, set my teeth on edge. It implies that Donald Trump has a viable policy for ending the Russian war of agression against Ukraine.
My critique began with a Mastodon post and a tweet.
Then I rewrote the “news analysis,” wearing the hat I usually reserve for university undergraduates, beginning with the headline.
Notable Republican opposition to Trump plan
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is a Trump supporter who has argued against such a proposal. “I’ve been spending 100 percent of my time talking to Trump about Ukraine,” the onetime Trump critic turned ally said. Putin “has to pay a price. He can’t win at the end of this,” Graham added.
“Graham said he has warned [Trump] against giving Russia desired land and wants Trump to embrace a pathway forward to Ukraine to join NATO.”
Trump has reportedly pressured congressional Republicans to resist additional American support for Ukraine’s war effort.
Despite a bipartisan agreement to provide financial support for Ukraine, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has refused to bring the matter to a vote.
“We don’t have time for all of this. We’ve got a [bipartisan] bill that got 70 votes in the Senate. Give members of the House of Representatives an opportunity to vote on it,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said earlier in March.
Nevertheless, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has refused to bring the matter to a vote due to vocal opposition from Trump-supporting Republicans. The bill has “enough support from members of his own Republican party to pass comfortably,” according to The Guardian.
Foreign policy experts speak out
“Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was Trump’s top Russia adviser and has since emerged as a prominent critic, said it reminded her of 2017 — when unvetted foreigners and business executives approached Trump with various peace plans, and he thought he could sit down with Russia and Ukraine and mediate on the strength of his personal charisma.”
Trump’s team “is thinking about this very much in silos, that this is just a Ukraine-Russia thing,” Hill said. “They think of it as a territorial dispute, rather than one about the whole future of European security and the world order by extension.”
“Ukraine and European allies would probably resist Trump’s efforts to strike a deal with Moscow, Hill said. She said the Europeans have jump-started their military industry to a point where they hope to supplant a significant portion of the current U.S. assistance to Kyiv. She added that the U.S. has limited leverage for a unilateral deal because meaningful sanctions relief would rely on European cooperation.”
The proposal to exchange land for a ceasefire “is a terrible deal,” according to Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank. Ukraine would have no assurances that Russia would abstain from future attacks, she said.
Michael Kofman, an analyst of the Russia-Ukraine war at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan research center, agreed. “No amount of leverage the United States has is likely to compel Ukrainian leadership to engage in policies that would constitute domestic political suicide…This is a situation where if you’re willing to give a hand, the other side will very quickly want the rest of the arm,” he said.
Trump plan reverses Biden policy
The Trump proposal “would dramatically reverse President Biden’s policy.” The Biden Administration has provided military aid to Ukraine and rallied NATO nations to support Ukraine in order to curtail Prime Minister Putin’s aggression.
The Council on Foreign Relations reported in March:
[Biden] invoked President Franklin Roosevelt’s January 1941 State of the Union address, one of the very few memorable State of the Union addresses. Better known as the Four Freedoms speech and delivered eleven months and one day before Pearl Harbor, FDR used it to argue that the United States should arm Great Britain and other democracies fighting Hitler and Nazi Germany…
“Overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond. If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not. But Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons it needs to defend itself. That is all Ukraine is asking,” [Biden said].
The Trump campaign declined to directly address questions for this article.
“Any speculation about President Trump’s plan is coming from unnamed and uninformed sources who have no idea what is going on or what will happen,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “President Trump is the only one talking about stopping the killing.”
“The United States wants a Ukraine that is sovereign, independent and secure,” Celeste Wallander, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, said in February.
The United States and European Union are committed to Russia “end[ing] its brutal war” in Ukraine. This includes withdrawing “military forces and proxies and military equipment immediately, completely, and unconditionally from the entire internationally recognized territory of Ukraine.”
NOTE: quoted but unsourced paragraphs and quotes are a copy-and-paste from the poorly titled Washington Post story, Inside Donald Trump’s secret plan to end the Ukraine-Russia war.
Talk to me: BlueSky | Facebook | Mastodon | Twitter
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com