Trudy Rubin
Do not mistake the results of Tuesday’s phone call between President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin for progress toward peace in Ukraine. Instead, it marks one further step in Trump’s alliance with the Kremlin against the security interests of Ukraine, Europe, and the United States.
Putin did not even agree to the unconditional and temporary 30-day ceasefire Ukraine signed on to under heavy U.S. pressure. And why should he have? According to the U.S. readout of the talks, there was no pressure applied to the Kremlin leader to do so. Sticks are only for Ukraine. For Moscow, it’s all carrots.
The U.S. statement hinted at Trump’s repeated lie that the war is Ukraine’s fault. It stressed “the need for improved bilateral relations between the United States and Russia,” as if Russia had never invaded a peaceful neighbor. It reeked of the president’s deep-seated desire to get the Ukraine problem off the table — quickly and at whatever cost to Kyiv — in order to do business with Moscow.
What most Americans fail to realize is that these Ukraine talks are a portent of something far larger than the fate of that brave country. They are the first major test case of whether Trump will formally ally with Putin against our European and Asian allies in a coalition of autocrats vs. democracies.
He already took the first step by siding with Russia and North Korea against 93 U.N. General Assembly members on a vote to denounce Russia on the third anniversary of the invasion last month. The Putin-Trump talks on Tuesday appear to be another step down that treacherous road.
The only positive outcome from the talks was Putin’s supposed pledge to stop bombing Ukrainian energy grids for 30 days. But be assured, he won’t keep his word. This is a proposal made long ago by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and rejected by Putin. The Russians, who have recklessly targeted Ukraine’s nuclear energy plants at great risk to both countries and pulverized Ukraine’s civilian electricity grids, no doubt agreed to the pause because Kyiv’s drones have finally been able to hit back against their oil depots.
As the Russian readout of the talks made clear, Putin still insists on disarming Ukraine and ending all Western aid and support as the price for any further movement toward “peace” talks. He demands Kyiv cede even more land than Russia has occupied. And he insists there can be no Western security guarantees or peacekeepers to prevent Russia from breaking any ceasefire or agreement.
In other words, Putin is still insisting on Ukraine’s total surrender — even as a price for a ceasefire, let alone an agreement. Yet, not a word of criticism from Trump.
In fact, the four-paragraph U.S. statement mainly blew an air kiss to Putin. “The two leaders agreed that a future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge upside,” it gushed. “This includes enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability when peace has been achieved.”
Economic deals with Russia? Maybe a Trump Hotel in Moscow, but any U.S. business owner would be foolish to invest in a country that regularly seizes foreign assets and arrests Western business owners. That is Putin’s modus operandi.
But, according to the Kremlin readout, Putin encouraged Trump’s megalomaniacal fantasy. As the Russian statement boldly proclaimed, the two men’s “mutual interest in normalizing bilateral relations” was a response to “the special responsibility of Russia and the United States for ensuring security and stability in the world. A number of ideas were discussed that are moving toward the development of mutually beneficial cooperation in the economy and energy sector.”
Knowing Trump likes hockey, Putin cleverly threw him a bone by proposing hockey matches in the U.S. between Russian and American players playing in the NHL and KHL (Kontinental Hockey League). Never mind that Russian sportsmen at home are notorious for doping during the Olympics. Or that Trump is handing Putin gift after gift by normalizing his global presence before the former KGB colonel even agrees to a 30-day ceasefire. And the president was deluded enough to request Russian cooperation in the Mideast, where Russia helped destroy Syria and is allied with Iran.
Most disgusting to me was Russia’s bragging about a “gesture of goodwill” by exchanging 175 prisoners, when the Russians have been openly executing Ukrainian prisoners of war taken in Kursk, torturing and murdering them in Russian prisons. Will Trump praise this “gesture” without demanding a halt to POW executions? Or will the U.S. leader demand the return of tens of thousands of children abducted by Russians from Ukraine, a prime demand by Zelenskyy?
I assume not, since the Trump administration just terminated a U.S.-funded initiative that documents Russian war crimes, including a database detailing these mass kidnappings. One can only wonder whether this was requested by Putin as a price for the phone call.
Unless Trump is called out publicly and constantly on his would-be alliance with the Kremlin, we are headed toward a bizarre world in which the American government undermines traditional European and Asian allies and imitates the territorial aggression practiced by a mass murdering Russian dictator. I get Greenland and Panama, you get Ukraine, China gets Taiwan.
This may seem like a script from a bad alternative history Cold War movie, but it is happening before our eyes, right now, and the Trump-Putin phone call only accelerates this future alliance.
Yet, Trump is not the “Manchurian candidate” portrayed in the famous 1962 film about a POW in North Korea who is brainwashed to become a pawn in an international communist conspiracy. Rather, as he makes clear in speeches, Truth Social posts, and via the summary of his talks, he has fooled himself into believing he and his pal Putin can divide up control of much of the world and together balance China’s Xi Jinping, whose sphere of influence would be limited to Asia.
It’s long past time for so-far-supine GOP members of the Senate and House Ukraine caucuses to show the guts U.S. judges are displaying, by publicly denouncing Trump’s sellout to Putin — before he sacrifices Kyiv and the future security of Europe and the United States.
Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the The Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may write to her at: Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101, or by email at [email protected].
