This sick charade will show us Trump's true master

On Friday, on American soil, Donald Trump will entertain a brutal war criminal whose critics are poisoned, imprisoned, or dropped from high story windows. As Vladimir Putin continues reducing Ukraine to rubble, Trump will generate headlines with no grasp of the underlying history at issue.

In 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to the formation of 15 states, including Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. In the process, Ukraine was left with an outsize stockpile of nuclear weapons, including 1,700 nuclear warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 44 strategic bombers, which put Ukraine in possession of the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

In 1994, in exchange for Ukraine’s agreement to move these weapons into Russia, the US, the UK, and Russia agreed, jointly and severally, to protect Ukraine and to secure its borders. This was consistent with the US’ global efforts to control nuclear proliferation through diplomatic, legal, and operational channels. The terms of Ukraine’s disarmament were hammered out in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.

The US, UK, and Russia gave their security assurances to Ukraine in an express exchange under which Ukraine gave up the weapons, joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation pact, and became a non-nuclear state.

Ukraine, to its peril, kept up its end of the deal. Russia did not.

Because we effectively disarmed Ukraine three decades ago, the US has a continuing obligation to help defend it against Russian aggression, but more crucially, US military aid is prophylactic. Before Trump, the US upheld democratic values and international order, including respect for sovereignty and existing borders, as a matter of self-preservation. Last year the U.S. Department of Defense described Ukraine’s fate as a battle between freedom and tyranny, and a defense of the rules-based international order. U.S. officials shared the EU’s belief that supporting Ukraine advanced global stability and thereby U.S. national security by strengthening NATO, and perhaps most importantly, by deterring future Russian aggression.

Dangerous alliance

Enter Trump, who promised to end the Russian-Ukraine war on “Day One” of his presidency, a promise he now calls “sarcasm.”

Rejecting NATO’s interests, and dismissing military alliances that have kept America safe since WWII, Trump has instead consistently advanced Putin’s interests. Since Trump returned to the White House in January, Russia has more than doubled the number of drones and missiles fired at Ukraine; recorded aerial attacks from Moscow have now reached their highest levels since the invasion began.

Trump has paved Putin’s way, by:

• Publicly blaming Ukraine for Russia’s invasion, bizarrely stating in February that Ukraine “should have never started” the war.
• Directing his administration to pause military aid to Ukraine.
• Calling Zelensky “a dictator without elections,” echoing Russia's propaganda.
• Criticizing the amount of military aid provided to Ukraine.
• Staging a public humiliation in the Oval Office where he and VP JD Vance insulted Zelensky in a fully choreographed, made-for-Fox-News-and-Putin televised takedown.
• Publicly praising/failing to condemn Putin’s brutality in Ukraine, calling Putin a “genius” and “savvy” after he attacked.

There’s little doubt that Trump has nursed deep, personal animus toward Zelensky ever since Trump was caught trying to condition military aid on an “investigation” into Joe Biden’s son, which Zelensky never did. There’s also little doubt that Trump is openly protecting Putin’s interest. The question is, why?

What kompromat or career-ending evidence might Putin have over Trump? Perhaps Putin is holding proof of steps he took to assure Trump’s electoral wins, and threatening to go public if Trump crosses him. Perhaps Trump really was Russian agent Krasnov in the 1980s, as many believe. Or perhaps Trump is neck-deep in Russian money laundering schemes, including the financing of Trump Tower, going back to the 1990s.

The only thing that’s certain is that Trump’s on again, off again efforts to look like he’s “pressuring” Putin somehow never materialize. Trump last week “declared” that peace between Russia and Ukraine would involve “some swapping of territories,” parroting Russia's demands for territorial concessions from Ukraine. He then invited Putin to a personal Ukraine “summit” in Alaska, as if carving up nations after a meal were a game of monopoly.

Elevating a war criminal

By inviting Putin to meet on US soil, Trump is conferring legitimacy onto a mass murderer credibly accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Putin has been isolated since 2023, when the ICC issued arrest warrants for him and several advisors for crimes against humanity. Putin has been unable to travel outside Russia, because many of the ICC’s 125 member states have agreed to arrest and detain him if he sets foot on their territory.

The crimes for which the ICC issued the warrants include well documented abductions of over 19,000 Ukrainian children aged four months to 17 years. The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab is tracking Russia’s systematic campaign to kidnap Ukrainian children and move them to Russia where they are issued new identities and advertised for adoption after they undergo “re-education” to erase their emotional connection to their families, language and heritage. Putin has set up an online “catalog of Ukrainian children,” a photo database searchable by personal characteristics such as size and hair color, as Ukrainian parents wail.

The Alaska “summit” will be Putin’s first international trip since the warrants. European leaders question the invitation while Russians crow over it as a national coup, since Trump’s invitation came without any concessions from Putin.

A King’s College professor of Russian history said, “The symbolism of holding the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska is horrendous — as though designed to demonstrate that borders can change, land can be bought and sold.”

No one knows what the outcome will be, but it’s a safe bet that Trump will issue platitudes that sound tough on Russia while delivering Putin’s ultimate goal: cementing his territorial gains in Ukraine, thereby rewarding Russia for its aggression.

Zelensky will reject the plan, Trump will demand the Nobel peace prize, and pundits will continue to wonder if Putin’s get out of jail free card is a product of blackmail.