If you find the current state of US-Ukraine relations both bewildering
and unsettling, you are in good company. But although you should
find it unsettling if not downright scary, it is not so bewildering.

Trump made a campaign promise to bring immediate peace to
Ukraine, sometimes promising to do so immediately after being
elected and before he took office. His premise was that he needed
to find an agreement that would satisfy Putin and one that he could
force Ukraine to accept. And that is what he has set about doing.

He has immediately encountered two problems. First, Putin is no
fool. He knows Trump’s game and has responded to Trump with
maximalist requirements for a peace deal, essentially giving Russia
everything it wants and leaving Ukraine as a highly vulnerable state
easily dominated by Russia. We don’t know how great an effort
Trump has made to modify Russian demands but we do know that
after spending an hour and a half on the phone with Putin, Trump
came away using public talking points that sounded as though they
had been drafted in the Kremlin, the most egregious of which were
Trump’s blaming Ukraine for starting the war with Russia and his
characterization of Zelensky as a dictator.

In sum there was no distinguishable difference between Putin’s
demands and Trump’ peace plan. Not surprisingly, to anyone except
possibly Trump, Zelensky rejected the plan making clear that any
peace plan had to include firm security guarantees for Ukraine. This
would not be acceptable to Putin, so it was also not acceptable to
Trump. Even the threat of a total cutoff of US support did not move
Zelensky to accept what would have been a de facto Ukrainian
surrender to Russia.

It is not just Ukraine that believes that the Trump peace deal would
be simply poorly disguised surrender and a serious threat to NATO
and US security. All the major NATO countries are united in
opposition to what Trump is proposing and are appalled at the
extent to which Trump has bowed to Putin’s will. Most find it
inexplicable. Is it simply his desire to fulfill a campaign promise.

Is he really willing to throw Ukraine to the wolves, or the bear, in this
case, just to check a campaign promise box? Or is it some form of
blackmail that Putin has on Trump, or does Trump have a vision of
himself co-leading the world with Putin. No answer satisfies.

Regardless, after Ukraine’s rejection, the Trump plan was going
nowhere and Trump, himself, was coming under domestic criticism
for his troubling obeisance to Putin, particularly for his bizarre
characterization of Ukraine as the instigator of the Russian invasion.

Trump set about to do what he has been very effective doing in his
political career, changing the context of public discourse in his favor,
in this case by making Zelensky the scapegoat for the failure of his
peace efforts and undermining him in an effort to get a more
accommodating leadership in Kyiv.

Therein lies the origin of the highly staged and contentious press
conference we witnessed Friday at the White House with Zelensky,
Trump and Vance. Zelensky must have known something was up
when it became clear that the session to talk about peace was live
and on camera. Discussions such as these are always super-secret
as the parties work through high stakes issues.

This was going to be a show, not a serious discussion. And when
Vance launched into Trump’s Peace through surrender proposal,
Zelensky felt obliged to point out its glaring weakness, the lack of
any security guarantee for Ukraine and the public argument began.

In charge of post event spin was the weasel from South Carolina
who declared Zelensky’s performance to be an affront to the United
States and who then called for his resignations as President.
Seriously overacted, the spin, nevertheless, got good press
coverage. It remains to be seen how successful the gambit was.
There will still be suspicions about Trump’s coziness with Putin, but
he has raised questions about Zelenskiy’s hold on power in Ukraine
and identified his fall guy should Trump’s peace plan crumble, as is
likely.

Where does this leave Ukraine? In Limbo, negotiating increased
support from Europe. Waiting to see if real Republicans will emerge
from hiding to join Democrats in support of Ukraine. These issues
are yet to be played out. In the meantime, the only real winner in all
this is Vladimir Putin. Putin is an enemy of democracy, and enemy
of NATO and an enemy of the United States. He is getting a lot of aid
and comfort from the President of the United States for reasons no
one can decipher. Aid and Comfort for our enemy is defined in the
Constitution as Treason. Trump, take note.