Not Trump has betrayed Ukraine | Russia-Ukraine War

The United States President Donald Trump did not stop the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office, as he promised during the election campaign last year. But three weeks in his Presidency, things were moving in this direction at a speed of interruption.

On February 12, Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin and then Posted on Truth Social that they agreed to work together to stop “millions of deaths that are happening” in the war in Ukraine-Russia. This was followed by the announcement of a possible summit between the two in Saudi Arabia.

On February 13, Defense Minister Pete Heget expose some of the specifics From the US proposal to end war during a speech at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

In a sharp deviation from the key points of speaking of the previous US administration, he said Ukraine cannot hope to restore sovereignty throughout its territory and that its NATO membership must be out of the table to negotiate.

With these statements, the Trump administration has effectively canceled the US-Ukraine Charter for Strategic Partnership, which determined the mutual commitment to territorial integrity and privacy and defined Ukraine's integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions (NATO and the European Union) as a priority political policy goal.

Some Western media quickly announced the “betrayal of Ukraine” after Trump and Heget's statements. Washington really abandons Kyiv, but this is not a surprising development. The abandonment has always been a likely result of the US approach to relations with Ukraine.

And Trump is not guilty of creating it. Kiev was betrayed by those who promised him membership in NATO and the EU, so he struggles with Russia and rejects any compromise in war he cannot win.

Over the last three years, the West has reached the upper limit of what it can do in terms of arms supply and the imposition of economic sanctions without causing a world war or bad to harm the global economy. Continuing this dearly supporting longer would not change the reality that Russia is greater and richer than Ukraine and is able to maintain an army that adapts to the modern war and cannot be defeated by large quantities most Modern military technologies. First of all, Russia would always have the last word in any regional war as a major nuclear power – a factor that limits Western participation in the conflict.

Sooner or later, the US administration would reduce support for Ukraine because it was unstable. It just so happened that the decision was taken by the Republican administration. Democrats are lucky that they should not have done it and now they will use it in their inner battle against GOP.

In the meantime, despite several angry escapes in recent days, European partners of Ukraine may begin to comply with the United States under membership in Ukrainian. On February 14, NATO Secretary General Mark Rute said there was never a guarantee that Ukraine would join the Alliance as part of a peace deal with Russia.

This statement contradicts some of his more promises. In December 2024, the newly appointed Rut told a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski that “the road to Ukraine's membership is irreversible” and that it was “closer to NATO than ever”.

While NATO membership now looks completely out of the table for Ukraine, Trump's administration does not seem to ignore Ukraine completely. In a nod in Ukrainian demands for Western security guarantees, heget mentioned the possibility of deploying European and non -European peacekeepers to observe and require the termination of fire. He excluded the deployment of US troops and said that NATO peacekeepers should not be covered by NATO Article 5, allowing a joint response to an attack on any Union member.

This proposal is unlikely to reassure the Ukrainians. Zelenski repeatedly says that Western security guarantees have little value without US involvement. At the same time, the Kremlin will probably see all NATO troops in Ukrainian territory as a Trojan horse, so the idea is unlikely to take off when the conversations start seriously.

NATO non-NATO troops should not be a problem for Moscow, but non-nato European countries such as Austria and Serbia can probably deliver only a few thousand troops. Therefore, the main contingents will come from the global south.

This said the whole question of a peacekeeper was overworked. The only way to guarantee a stable peace is to establish Ukraine's true discrepancy and to achieve rapprochement between Russia and the West.

Does this mean winning the Kremlin? Yes, this is the case, but it was the only realistic result since Ukraine was thrown under Putin's Bulldozer from West Hawks.

Contrary to various Western predictions that the Russian economy will collapse and the regime will fall apart under military pressure, Russia has been able to do relatively well throughout the conflict. Its economy is flourishing thanks to the magnificent costs of defense and – unlike Ukrainians – the Russian population was effectively protected from the war to become a major factor in their lives.

Putin obviously can't be defeated on the battlefield. It can only be removed if the Russian people are on board. But the West and Ukraine have done everything to alienate even the most severe pro-Ukrainian anti-Putin Russians through xenophobic rhetoric and discriminatory policy. It seemed that the hawk crowd had always wanted war, not better Ukraine and Russia.

The choice with which Ukraine remains gloomy. This was obvious in Zelenski's speech at the Munich Security Conference, which aimed to show a challenge but struck by despair.

He turned to the EU, suggesting that the Ukrainian army become a nucleus of a new European military force. This is also unlikely to work because it brings the EU into a direct confrontation with Russia. The Ukrainian president also tried to interest Trump in the mineral riches of Ukraine just to get an ultimatum from his administration, leveling to imperialist confiscation of Ukrainian resources.

But all this is intended for his home audience. Zelenski must show that he has tried every avenue, even the most amazing, and that the West still betrayed it. In doing so, it can succumb to the inevitable.

The anger expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazee's editorial position.