Prelude to disaster?

The Zelenskyy Oval Office brawl marks a turning point

Chamberlain and Hitler in Munich, 1938; source: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

In September 1938 the leaders of Germany, Britain, France and Italy signed the Munich Agreement, allowing Adolf Hitler to annex an area of Czechoslovakia largely inhabited by Germans, the Sudetenland Region. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain praised the pact for delivering “peace for our time.”

Of course, we all know the rest. By March of the following year, Nazi forces overran the whole country and, by that fall, the globe was aflame.

So much for appeasing a dictator. But, now, will a similar fate soon unfold for Ukraine, as U.S. President Donald J. Trump seeks to placate — even reward — Vladimir Putin? Will Trump’s disastrous Oval Office meeting on Feb. 28 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy prove to be a steppingstone toward a Munich-like unraveling?

If the Russian despot first carves up and then, in time, sweeps through Ukraine, will his appetite for other nearby lands — Moldova, Georgia and the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — merely be whetted? And will NATO — with or without the United States — roll over, now and going forward, as leaders strive to avoid a wider war?

Such questions may seem premature. After all, European leaders vow to stand by Ukraine, perhaps even if Trump abandons the country. As the BBC reported, Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote that “no one wants peace more than the citizens of Ukraine,” for instance, with his replacement-in-waiting Friedrich Merz adding that “we stand with Ukraine” and “we must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war.” A bevy of other world leaders similarly offered support.

Still, almost half of the military backing for Ukraine comes from the United States. Even Zelenskyy admits that American backing is vital, saying in an X post: “It’s crucial for us to have President Trump’s support. He wants to end the war, but no one wants peace more than we do.”

But peace at what price? Will Trump force Ukraine to yield parts of the country Russia now holds? Will Putin demand and get still more, perhaps enough to help him run through the whole vast country?

Four maps showing how the situation has changed on the ground since Russia's invasion: from Russian separatists holding territory in Donbass, to Russia taking territory in the north of Ukraine in the first days following the invasion, before being pushed out of the country and restricted to slow territorial gains in the southeast.

Already — without negotiations — the Trump Administration is making Sudetenland-like concessions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, for instance, told European leaders that it’s “unrealistic” for Ukraine to seek a return of lands Russia took over in 2014, including Crimea. He similarly shot down hopes for the country to join NATO, even as U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer insisted that Ukraine was on an “irreversible path to NATO”— which would make for a breach with the U.S.

Trump, moreover, has refused Ukraine security guarantees designed to prevent a wholesale Russian takeover. “We’re going to have Europe do that,” Trump said in advance of his on-camera brawl with Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian had sought such guarantees as part of a deal to give the U.S. access to vital minerals in his country — a deal that fell apart in the meeting’s wake.

After years of U.S. and global support, though, it’s difficult to understand Trump’s willingness to sell out Ukraine.

Yes, the ever-vengeful Trump has likely has nursed a deep grudge since his first term, when a phone call between him and Zelenskyy led to his first impeachment. Recall that before the 2020 U.S. election Trump demanded that the president investigate alleged Ukrainian election interference and supposed corruption by then-candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Trump went so far as to condition U.S. weapons deliveries on Hunter’s fate, prompting the House to impeach the president.

The House Intelligence Committee in 2019 reported that “President Trump … solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection. …President Trump conditioned official acts on a public announcement by the new Ukrainian president…of politically-motivated investigations, including one into Joe Biden, one of Trump’s domestic political opponents.”

Trump and former wife Ivana in Russia, 1987; source: Daily Mail

And, yes, Trump’s relationship with Russia and particularly with Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel, has long been a mystery. Some have even speculated that Trump may have been compromised by Russian intelligence in a 1987 visit, though no hard evidence of a “honey trap” or a bribery snare has emerged.

Others have pointed to how Putin, a brilliant manipulator, knows all too well how to flatter and win over Trump, who has long been prey to such indulgences.

“He thinks he and Putin are friends,” former Trump national security adviser John Bolton told The Wall Street Journal. “He has no clue that Putin is exploiting him.”

Trump has admired Putin because he is “strong” and has total control over his country, a former senior administration official told the newspaper. The ex-official added that Trump likes authoritarian leaders better than others because they are “tough” and don’t face criticism and strictures from Congress and the courts.

But Trump’s global vision — if he has one — may go beyond all that. As the WSJ noted, in post-inauguration policy statements “Trump seemed to agree with Putin’s broader worldview—that big powers have the right to spheres of influence in their own neighborhood, including the right to invade or annex their neighbors.”

Trump/Putin, source: NY Post, 2018

Recall Trump’s designs on Canada, Greenland and Panama. Are they all that different from Putin’s ambitions to reconstruct the Soviet empire, perhaps beginning with Ukraine?

“Putin sees Trump’s language of extraterritorial ambitions as justifying his own claims,” Gabrielius Landsbergis, who served until recently as Lithuania’s foreign minister, told the WSJ. “They both see a world redivided and borders drawn anew. A scary new imperial reality is being born.”

Many have suggested that Trump is determined to remake the world order that has stood since at least the end of World War II.

“We are in a new era where, by and large, international relations aren’t going to be determined by rules and multilateral institutions,” Alex Younger, a former chief of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6, said recently on “Newsnight” on the BBC. “They’re going to be determined by strongmen and deals … That’s Donald Trump’s mindset, certainly [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s mindset. It’s [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s mindset.”

Stewart Patrick, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argued that Trump’s “ambition is to replace the international rule of law with the law of the jungle. Rather than a global order that constrains great power privilege, he envisions a regionalized one in which powerful nations pursue spheres of influence and throw their weight around, browbeating lesser actors (like Denmark and Panama, say)… [E]very interaction is an opportunity for one-sided bargaining to improve America’s relative position against all others.”

If he’s right, Ukraine’s demise — should that happen — would just be one unpleasant step on a broad road Trump seems to want to follow. Certainly, fraying America’s longstanding global partnerships would add a few strides.

“America’s alliances are now in danger, and should be: Trump is openly, and gleefully, betraying everything America has tried to defend since the defeat of the Axis 80 years ago,” argued Tom Nichols in The Atlantic. “The entire international order of peace and security is now in danger, as Russian autocrats, after slaughtering innocent people for three years, look forward to enjoying the spoils of their invasion instead of standing trial for their crimes.”

Some Trump critics have called on the president to pull back from dumping Ukraine, arguing it is vital for both Trump and the U.S. to continue to stand up to Putin.

“The U.S. interest in Ukraine is shutting down Mr. Putin’s imperial project of reassembling a lost Soviet empire without U.S. soldiers ever having to fire a shot,” Wall Street Journal editorialists contended. “Turning Ukraine over to Mr. Putin would be catastrophic for that country and Europe, but it would be a political calamity for Mr. Trump too. The U.S. President can’t simply walk away from that conflict, much as he would like to.”

But does Trump see things that way? If not, the ugly meeting in the White House may go down in history in much the same way as sessions leading to the Munich Agreement have. It could prove to be a prelude to disaster.

Putin’s Inhumane Gambit

Reporter Evan Gershkovich is a pawn in a cruel geopolitical game

The drumbeat of condemnation in the U.S. of Russia’s detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich continues. In a rare show of bipartisanship, U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Mitch McConnell issued a joint statement demanding “the immediate release of this internationally known and respected independent journalist.” This came a week after the Biden Administration, through Secretary of State Antony Blinken, similarly condemned Gershkovich’s arrest, blasting “the Kremlin’s continued attempts to intimidate, repress, and punish journalists and civil society voices.”

And it follows other expressions of support by news organizations such as the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, which warned that, “The arrest of Gerschkovich may signal a broader crackdown on the remaining Western reporters in Russia, which already has made it a crime for its citizens to criticize the unlawful invasion of Ukraine.” The National Press Club awarded its highest honor for press freedom, the John Aubuchon Award, to the journalist well ahead of its normal year-end schedule. A club official said: “we want to do what we can to call out his situation and stand up next to him.”

For its part, The Wall Street Journal has run a continuing series of pieces about such developments. In one piece it described how readers can offer their support for the reporter through social media posts featuring his photo and such phrases as “#IStandWithEvan. “Readers can download this collection of media assets to surface and share across their personal social-media accounts—from Twitter and Facebook to LinkedIn, Instagram and beyond,” the Journal advised. “They can be added as user profile photos, banners or posts.”

Of course, the Journal also editorialized against his detention. “The timing of the arrest looks like a calculated provocation to embarrass the U.S. and intimidate the foreign press still working in Russia,” the paper’s editorial board opined. “The Kremlin has cowed domestic reporting in Russia, so foreign correspondents are the last independent sources of news. Mr. Gershkovich’s arrest comes days after his byline was on a revealing and widely read dispatch documenting the decline of the Russian economy. The Kremlin doesn’t want that truth told.”

The New York Times also weighed in, pairing its condemnation with an attack on Putin and a defense of Ukraine. “The Kremlin’s readiness to seize an accredited journalist as a hostage demonstrates again why the United States and its allies need to stand firm to block Mr. Putin’s designs on Ukraine,” the Times argued. “Ukraine has chosen to be part of a Europe that is stable, peaceful and governed according to rules and law. Mr. Putin would supplant that with fear and force.”

Both papers also suggested that Putin may have grabbed Gershkovich in retaliation for the United States indicting Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, a Russian national suspected of spying against the U.S. Noting that Cherkasov posed as a Brazilian and reportedly entered an American university, the Times added the caveat that “there has been no indication so far that the Russians are looking to swap for him.” The papers also recalled the swap of athlete Brittney Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, with the Times noting she was held for about 10 months. In an unhelpful note, the Journal took a swipe at the Biden Administration, expressing its thanks for the administration’s condemnation but adding, “But it’s fair to ask why Mr. Putin believes he can snatch Americans and come out ahead.”

All these protests are necessary, of course. If Gershkovich’s arrest were met with silence, the Kremlin would likely take away the absurd message that this distinguished journalist was spying for the U.S. In fact, what he was doing – in open sight and perhaps even more infuriating to Putin – was churning out exceptional journalism, including work about how the war in Ukraine was weakening the Russian economy. The Journal republished much of his work here.

The question, though, is whether such protests will have any effect on Putin. Instead of finding them troubling, would he take narcissistic and sadistic delight in so riling up his enemies? Would he be gladdened that in Gershkovich he has taken a prize that really stings? Will he milk that for all its worth by keeping the gifted reporter in the notorious Lefortovo Prison for months to come. Putin is, after all, a former KGB operative who understands the West’s emotional reaction when individuals are tormented and who himself is insensitive to immiserating others: witness his murderous attacks on thousands of Ukrainians and his tolerance of huge losses on the Russian side. To say the man is an animal is an insult to animals.

Sadly, despite the condemnatory reporting, Putin already has cowed Western reporters with this move – or at least made it difficult for Western media to get reporting on the ground in Russia. The Journal’s bureau chief has left and the Times has no staffers in the country any longer, as the Times reported. From his perspective, Putin has won big with this single arrest.

Western media and governments, as well as ordinary citizens, should keep up their criticisms of Putin for this appalling move, if only to remind themselves of the sort of man and government they are dealing with. However, if the past is prologue, only two things will really matter: when Putin has squeezed the arrest for all its value to him and the size of the ransom – human or otherwise — he’ll get for Gershkovich.

Will this move weaken the West’s resolve on Ukraine, moving it down the isolationist path some Republicans hope for? That is doubtful, but Putin’s gamble suggests that the reporter could be a captive as long as that war goes on. Happily, that didn’t happen with Griner. But Putin’s game with Gershkovich seems much more calculated and inhumane.