Due to Donald Trump’s diplomatic overtures toward Vladimir Putin, Ukrainians find themselves as pawns in a geopolitical game, writes Ukrainian political analyst Mykola Riabchuk. Their country is left to fight for survival between an untrustworthy Russia and an unreliable West.

Shadows of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin walking side by side at the G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, in 2019. Photo: ANP / Brendan Smialowski / AFP

Since Donald Trump’s call with Vladimir Putin and series of other diplomatic moves aiming to kick-off the eventual Russia-Ukraine peace talks, the war in Ukraine has become again a major topic in the international media. For outsiders who observe the war from a safe distance, like an increasingly monotonous and boring TV series, the plot has finally acquired a new turn, predictably boosting the common interest and evoking public debates.

For Ukrainians, however, all Trump’s 'peacemaking' initiatives were another grave omen of their subaltern, ‘pawn’ role on the geopolitical chessboard. The signs have already been on the wall – after Trump’s ominous suggestion that Ukraine 'may be Russian someday' (as a reason to take over Ukrainian rear earth minerals in advance), after vice president J.D. Vance’s insistence that 'this war is between Russia and Ukraine' (and therefore the US military interference would not 'advance American interests and security'), and after defense secretary Hegseth’s bold claim that Ukraine should abandon its NATO bid and its push to reclaim all Russian-occupied territory.

Rare earth minerals

To add an insult to the injury, the U.S. responded to president Zelensky’s earlier bid for support in exchange for the privileged access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals with a virtually colonial demand to give almost everything for almost nothing. The Telegraph obtained a draft of the pre-decisional contract and called it 'a new Versailles': 'If this draft were accepted, Trump’s demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty... At the same time, he seems willing to let Russia off the hook entirely'. Normally, the paper averred, such terms are imposed on aggressor states defeated in war. 'They are worse than the financial penalties imposed on Germany and Japan after their defeat in 1945'. And, besides the purely economic issues, there was a discomforting moral question: would it be 'honorable to treat a victim nation in this fashion after it has held the battle line for the liberal democracies at enormous sacrifice for three years. Who really has a debt to whom, may one ask?'

The proposed U.S. contract seems to have been written by private lawyers rather than the US departments of state or commerce. It requires, according to a leaked document, a $500 billion 'payback' from Ukraine, which goes far beyond US control over the country’s critical minerals but also covers ports, infrastructure, deposits of oil and gas, and other resources. It is very unlikely that Ukraine will be able to pay $500 billion in any foreseeable future, but there is an even more daunting issue that the contract fails to address: the U.S. does not promise any security guarantees for Ukraine. This was the last drop that made president Zelensky put off the agreement, in spite of strong U.S. pressure which borders on blackmail.

Ukrainians remember quite well: neither the U.S. nor the U.K. lived up to their obligations in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum

Ukrainians’ concerns with security guarantees are hardly exaggerated. On the one side, they have Russia: a rogue state that violates all possible rules and laws, and can definitely not be trusted, whatever its leaders may say or sign. On the other side, they have wavering Western partners with lofty ideals but ambiguous practices and very long records of avoidance, betrayal, and search for excuses instead of solutions.

Ukrainians remember quite well that neither the United States nor the U.K. lived up to their obligations to protect Ukraine under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, signed when Ukraine gave up the Russian nuclear weapons on its territory. The expansiveness of the U.S. proposal, –  the New York Times concludes, – and the tense negotiations around it, demonstrate the widening chasm between Kyiv and Washington over both continued U.S. support and a potential end to the war. For many, Trump’s offer reeks of colonialism, an era when Western countries exploited smaller or weaker nations for commodities.

False figures

Equally upsetting are Donald Trump’s manipulations with figures. 'Every time Zelensky comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion. I think he’s the greatest salesman on Earth', he said (in)famously last September, probably forgetting that his own party had been blocking much smaller sums of aid endorsed to Ukraine by Biden’s government for half a year in Congress. Now, he claims that the US had spent $300 billion on the war so far, and argues that it would be 'stupid' to hand over any more. At his press conference in Riyadh, he once again ballooned the sum to $350 billion, again with no references to any reliable sources.

These figures are grossly incorrect. Experts maintain that the five packages agreed by Congress totaled $175 billion, of which $70 billion was spent in the US on weapons production. Some of it is in the form of humanitarian grants, but much of it is lend-lease money that must be repaid.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which runs a detailed database on all kinds of assistance provided by various countries to Ukraine (interactive 'Ukraine Support Tracker') provides even more poignant figures: the actual (already delivered) U.S. aid to Ukraine, by December 2024, made up $114.2 billion versus $132.3 billion delivered by European nations.

'What the United States has learned from Ukrainians about modern warfare — and that is just one of many benefits — easily justifies the costs'

The U.S. really run ahead of all other nations in terms of both military and financial and humanitarian allocations, but these allocations make up only 0.5% of American GDP (they are only 12th on the donors list in these terms), while quite a few European countries endorse more than one or even two per cent of their GDP to help Ukraine. And, notably, the effective cost to Europeans has in fact been far higher, since sanctions on Russia mattered far more to European economies than to the U.S. economy. 

It is also worth noticing, as Timothy Snyder does, that 'most of the American military contribution to Ukraine stays in the United States, keeping factories running and paying American workers. In general, the weapons the US has sent to Ukraine were obsolescent and would have been destroyed, at the US taxpayer’s expense, without ever being used... In resisting Russia, Ukraine has also provided tremendous economic and security benefits to the United States. What the United States has learned from Ukrainians about modern warfare — and that is just one of many benefits — easily justifies the costs, even in the most narrow security terms'.

Reception in Ukraine

It is of little surprise, then, that all Trump’s 'peacemaking' initiatives were met with a mixture of anger, despair and black humor in Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky canceled his official visit to Saudi Arabia which was initially scheduled on February 20, two days after the Trump-Putin meeting in Riyadh. He openly stated that he did not want to legitimize that meeting and its 'decisions' by his own follow-up appearance. The fact that he was not invited to these talks nor even consulted by the American partners beforehand does not bode well for Ukraine’s eventual role in the conversation of the 'big boys'. As an old saying goes: 'if you are not at the table, you are on the menu'.

While Volodymyr Zelensky still tries to keep a brave face in a bad game, Ukrainian media are overwhelmed with sarcastic remarks, animalistic metaphors (an image of a copulating frog and snake in Riyadh might be the most pictorial), and caustic cartoons, some of which – with Trump as a bride and Putin as a groom – strikingly resembles the 1939 European cartoons of a newly married Stalin and Hitler. Vitaly Portnikov, a leading Ukrainian publicist, put it straight: 'It’s not Munich 2.0, as we were afraid of. It’s more like a new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact'.

So far, Ukraine is not buckling under the pressure – as both Zelensky’s and society’s reaction to mounting challenges indicate.

The real danger of Trump’s reckless cowboy diplomacy goes far beyond the fate of Ukraine alone

With all this emotional flurry, the real danger of Trump’s reckless cowboy diplomacy goes far beyond the fate of Ukraine alone (however grave it might be). His submissiveness to Putin and susceptibility to his arguments (partly because of ignorance, partly because of affinity) threaten the whole European continent targeted by Moscow, and endanger the whole global order undermined persistently by rogue states.

After J. D. Vance’s programmatic speech in Munich and Trump’s arrogant and nonsensical statements at the press-conference after the negotiations in Riyadh, Europeans seem to be waking up, trying to acquire a new geopolitical agency and responsibility that they have outsourced traditionally to American partners. How far, how decisively, and how effectively this motley club of thirty-plus nations will move remains to be seen. But at least the words of European leaders give Ukrainians a chance to survive in the new environment, even though this will definitely require even more painful efforts in the future – both diplomatic and military.

Responses from Russia

The only country that clearly benefits from Trump’s awkward 'peacemaking' is Russia. Regardless of the ultimate results of these efforts, the very fact the U.S. leader is prepared to shake the hand of an indicted war criminal, a dictator who kills and imprisons his political opponents and wages a genocidal war of aggression against a peaceful sovereign neighbor, conveys huge symbolic meaning. It is of little surprise that Trump’s courtesy to Putin was celebrated in Moscow like 'Christmas, Easter, and New Year’s all rolled into one'.

As journalist Alexey Kovalev summed up in his field observations published in Foreign Policy:

‘The Kremlin and its media machine have not been this ecstatic since the launch of Putin’s “special military operation”... Trump is now doing our job for us by “sawing” Europe into pieces, Russian talk show host Evgeny Popov told his viewers. His giddy, smiling co-host, Olga Skabeeva, described the turn of events as having been “unimaginable” and “unthinkable” before. On another show, the pundit Sergey Mikheev was elated by another Hegseth remark that was widely interpreted to mean that Washington was reconsidering its security commitment to Europe. Mikheev concluded that Russia was finally free to strike Brussels, London, and Paris. Some pundits basked in the fact that it was Trump who reached out to Putin. “It’s as if Julius Ceasar himself telephoned a barbarian”, Mosfilm studio chief Karen Shakhnazarov commented on another show.'

Putin has certainly scored several victory points with Trump, besides the paramount fact of breaking his international isolation. First, he learned, without any initial promises and concessions, that American troops will not be, in any case, sent to Ukraine. This is the same gift that Biden gave him in December 2021, completely ignoring the importance of strategic uncertainty in geopolitical rivalry. Secondly, with no preconditions, Putin got a nod from the American president to his claims to occupied Ukrainian territories and to barring Ukraine from NATO. Thirdly, he heard that American sanctions would be removed without any reciprocal concessions, and that Europeans should do the same. And finally, he conveyed a whole set of Kremlin disinformation narratives to Trump’s gullible head, starting from the insolent claim that Ukraine and Russia (if not Ukraine alone) share equal responsibility for the ongoing war, to perfidiously questioning Zelensky’s legitimacy and provocatively demanding for war-time elections, in spite of Ukraine’s constitution which explicitly prohibits such elections.

Russian disinformation in Trump's team

One episode in this shameful campaign is highly revealing: to put forward the Kremlin narrative about Zelensky’s illegitimacy and to demand new elections, Trump pointed out a decline of Zelensky’s popularity – to a meager 4% for now. No responsible experts could provide him with such odd data; except, of course, Russians. But he has a team that could have easily fact-checked this claim. There are several national and international pollster companies that operate in Ukraine. None of them assessed Zelensky’s popularity below 50% at this point. Popular trust in him declined indeed from 90% in May 2022 to 60% last year but firmly stays at 50+ points, as the latest poll (57% in the beginning of February) clearly indicates.

Ignorance about Ukraine and the region in general is a problem which Trump shares with most international politicians and intellectuals who have been educated in the frames of Russian 'imperial knowledge', uncritically imported and normalized in both international academia and popular culture.

Moralistic discussions with Trump and his lieutenants will not help Volodymyr Zelensky and his European partners much

A much bigger problem, however, is his mindset, which has little to do with rule of law and liberal democratic policies, and a lot with the Realpolitik favored by most dictators who are confident that might makes right and international politics is primarily about accumulation of power and wealth. Ignorance can be enlightened and mitigated, but a cynical authoritarian mindset is very unlikely to change. This means that moralistic discussions with Trump and his lieutenants will not help Volodymyr Zelensky and his European partners much. They should speak from a position of strength – this is perhaps the main, if not only, point they fully agree on with the American president.

Mykola Riabchuk is a principal research fellow at the Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies in Kyiv and a visiting researcher at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw.