President-elect Donald Trump is inheriting a blood-soaked war in Ukraine. He has pledged to put a swift end to the carnage.
Mr. Trump hasn’t explained his plan — if, indeed, he has one — but Vice President-elect JD Vance has called for Ukraine to cede captured land to Russia and drop its pleas to join NATO in exchange for peace. Mr. Trump’s national security adviser nominee, Representative Michael Waltz of Florida, has criticized the flow of U.S. aid to Ukraine and called for prompt negotiations, questioning whether the United States should support the complete liberation of Ukraine.
If Mr. Trump follows their advice and pushes Ukraine into talks that result in lost territory, his political rivals as well as hawks in his own party will accuse him of abandoning Ukraine and rewarding Vladimir Putin’s hunger for expansion.
They would be right; there’s no way to sugarcoat it. Ukrainians would be hung out to dry, and Mr. Putin could end up attacking again or expanding his imperial designs to other neighbors.
Mr. Trump should do it anyway.
Dozens of people, and often hundreds, are dying every day in this grinding war. Mr. Trump should seize the chance to save lives. Nobody is coming to save Ukraine. A settlement will eventually be needed.
Despite flashes of spectacular success by Ukrainian forces, the Russian position has gradually strengthened, and there is no reason to expect Mr. Putin to lose the upper hand now. That may sound like defeatism, but it’s also realism. Nor is it a partisan perception — there have long been reports of Biden administration officials quietly trying to nudge Ukraine toward negotiations.
The ambitious 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive, meant to cut supply routes between Russia and Crimea (the historically prized, strategically located Ukrainian peninsula captured by Russia in 2014) collapsed. Ukraine managed to capture a few hundred square miles of Russian territory in Kursk last August — but Russia has been slowly clawing the land back. Some 50,000 troops (including 10,000 North Koreans) are now massed in preparation for an attack on Kursk. At the same time, Russia is advancing in the east and south.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is scrambling to find soldiers. After two years and nine months of battle against a behemoth invader, Ukrainian police and conscription officers reportedly trawl subway stations and bars, hunting for recruits. The dependence on Western weapons means that shipments can (and do) get tangled in politics and delayed. Ukraine is also prohibited by American benefactors from using the arms to hit targets deep inside Russia.
Getting Ukraine and Russia to the table would be only the beginning of an arduous negotiation. Decisions about how much conquered Ukrainian land remains under Russian control are fraught, but that won’t even be the hardest part — after all, either country’s leader can frame those as temporary losses or gains to be reversed later through diplomacy or even force. President Volodymyr Zelensky has long insisted that Ukraine would fight until every bit of soil was liberated from Russian occupation, but more recently, he has sounded more realistic, or at least resigned. These days, he’s been pushing hard for international security guarantees in case of future Russian attacks.
The truly intractable problem is Mr. Zelensky’s demand that the West protect Ukraine from future Russian attacks by providing what diplomats euphemistically call “security guarantees.” In practice, Ukraine wants its military rebuilt and strengthened (that part will be easy to get) and also, crucially and controversially, an immediate invitation to join NATO.
On that point alone, talks could collapse. Mr. Putin has demanded, as a condition of peace, that Ukraine commit to remaining nonaligned (in other words, no NATO or security treaties) and nonnuclear (Ukraine is capable of developing nuclear weapons, and this could be a plausible, if extreme, backup plan if the West can’t provide protection). Mr. Vance, too, has suggested that Ukraine should commit to neutrality and give up its NATO ambitions. Even President Biden — who purports to be Ukraine’s greatest defender — has said that he wouldn’t support the “NATOization of Ukraine.”
Of course the United States is leery of Ukraine joining NATO: If we were willing to go to war with Russia to save Ukraine, we’d be doing so right now. If the United States truly wanted Ukraine to win at all costs, it would send troops and lift the restrictions on the weapons. But nobody sensible — this writer included — wants to risk igniting a direct war between the nuclear-armed nemeses Russia and the United States.
U.S. officials usually describe this war in noble terms, extolling their unflinching support — $175 billion worth — for heroic Ukraine in the fight against the monster Mr. Putin. Sometimes, though, they are blunter — such as when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters in Poland a couple of months after the invasion that the United States wants to see Russia “weakened.” The comment suggested that the United States would weaponize Ukrainian patriotism, and spend Ukrainian lives, because a prolonged war — even a war that could probably not be won — suited U.S. interest in chipping away at Mr. Putin’s staying power.
I believe it’s right to call Ukraine a proxy war, because I think it’s reasonable to conclude that the Biden administration has supported the war not only in deference to righteous Ukrainian determination to fight off Russia but also because the war was a chance to debilitate our enemy without directly engaging it.
That’s not to detract from the countless ordinary Ukrainians who have fought with courage and fortitude. It’s a testament to Ukrainian steadfastness (not to mention American firepower) that Russia hasn’t already conquered the country.
The United States, meanwhile, staked out an awkward middle ground — supporting the war enough to keep it going, but never enough to win. The war in Ukraine doesn’t offer America a solution to the problem of Mr. Putin, but there is certainly a hope in Washington that it damages and deters the Kremlin’s impulse to adventurism.
Neither side has released reliable casualty figures, but an estimated one million soldiers and civilians are believed to have been killed since the 2022 invasion. Deaths now outpace births in Ukraine, turning the violence into a demographic drag.
Now another cold winter bears down, and Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure is so bomb-wrecked that people are expected to endure daily blackouts of up to 20 hours through the dark and bitter months.
This bleak landscape contains the most extreme and tragic results of the power games that have been played out mercilessly on Ukrainian soil by greater powers. Both Russia and the United States have for decades exploited Ukraine’s internal divisions to undermine each other and jockey for regional influence, usually at the expense of ordinary Ukrainians.
Diplomats and spies from successive U.S. administrations waded into the swamps of post-Soviet Ukrainian power-brokering, where corruption was thick and sharp divisions separated politicians backed by Moscow from those who saw Ukraine’s future — and sought protection from Russia — with Europe.
I covered Ukraine as the Moscow bureau chief for The Los Angeles Times from 2007 to 2010 and have watched the same cycle replay for years. The United States perpetually promises more than it’s willing or able to deliver in Ukraine, antagonizing Russia and leaving Ukraine vulnerable to Mr. Putin’s wrath.
This is an old trend: When the Soviet Union crumbled, Ukraine found itself in possession of the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. President Bill Clinton cajoled and persuaded President Leonid Kravchuk to dismantle the nuclear weapons and sell the uranium to Russia. In exchange for Mr. Kravchuk’s compliance, Mr. Clinton offered security assurances — which have manifestly gone unfulfilled.
The George W. Bush administration heavily backed Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, when protesters denounced the Moscow-backed presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych and demanded a tighter alliance with Europe and the West. A delighted U.S. government, crowing about reform and democracy, showered the pro-Western groups with funding and training. Mr. Putin was furious; the Orange Revolution still features in his speeches as the ultimate demonstration of U.S. malfeasance and treachery.
Conscious of Mr. Putin’s rage and Ukraine’s vulnerability, Mr. Bush promised to push for Ukrainian membership in NATO. It never happened. NATO membership has remained out of reach for Ukraine — a tantalizing deliverance dangled but never reached.
Whatever you think of NATO (another topic for another day), there is no question that the West, by talking from both sides of its mouth, left Ukraine in an untenable geopolitical limbo. The country didn’t get the protections of NATO — just the consequences of Mr. Putin lashing out over the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO. Nearly two decades later, Ukraine remains where it has long lingered: always on the verge of being taken into the alliance but never quite there.
It is this uneasy dynamic — a Ukraine close to the West, striving for inclusion in the West, but not truly part of it — that has defined the U.S. management of this disastrous war. We want Ukraine to function as a protectorate, but ultimately, we are unwilling to protect it. A sensible, ugly strategy — tactically defensible but morally reprehensible.
America is not going to save Ukraine. Maybe we need Mr. Trump — brazen and unscrupulous — to finally say so out loud and act accordingly.
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