Trump and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a predictable failure to which he contributed

Donald Trump became the 47th president of the United States on January 20 of this year. He had a significant challenge ahead of him.

This is not a peace process: it is favoring Russia and will not only have effects for Ukraine
Trump's shameful attitude towards Zelensky: rudeness to the victim and praise to the aggressor

Trump said he would end this war “in 24 hours”

He set the challenge for himself during his run for the White House. In May 2023, Trump said he could achieve peace in Ukraine: "I’ll have that done in 24 hours". He didn't want to reveal how he would do it until after the election, so many voted for him as if they believed the Republican candidate had some kind of magic formula to resolve the war. Finally, in February we were able to find out what the formula was: pressure Ukraine to give in to the invader, blaming Ukraine for the Russian invasion and committing the indignity of voting alongside Russia and Korea of the North at the UN against a resolution rejecting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Obviously, with this strategy, Trump only managed to strengthen Putin, believing that he would obtain in an office what his army failed to achieve on the battlefield in three years. At the same time, Ukraine has shown itself unwilling to submit to Trump's whims, given the US president's attempts to use the Russian invasion as a pretext to seize a large part of the invaded country's mineral wealth.

In mid-March he said that when he announced that he was a “little bit sarcastic”

In the middle of last month, seeing that things were not going his way, Trump claimed that when he promised to end this war in 24 hours he was being a "little bit sarcastic". This is a cynical way of saying that he lied to his voters, that he had no realistic plan to end the war, and that all his hopes were based on Ukraine surrendering. Hopes generated by Russian propaganda that has poisoned the ranks of the Republican Party in a regrettable way, as we have seen in recent weeks.

The US president realizes his failure

On Sunday, March 30, Trump said he was "very angry" and "pissed off" at Putin over his attempt to oust Zelesnky as president of Ukraine. "If Russia and I can't come to an agreement to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I believe it was Russia's fault — which it might not be — but I do believe it was Russia's fault, I'm going to impose secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia," he said in remarks to NBC.

Finally, yesterday the Reuters reported that senior officials in the Trump administration acknowledge that Washington may not be able to negotiate a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine in the coming months. This is a way of acknowledging that the White House has reached an impasse and that Trump is beginning to understand that he has failed.

A clumsy strategy that has served to strengthen Putin

The problem is that Trump's failure has been paid for by others. With his irresponsible actions, the US president has emboldened Putin and pushed many Western conservatives into the arms of Russian propaganda, a move that Trump's own team has facilitated by embracing some of the Kremlin's worst lies. This has caused serious moral damage to the Ukrainian cause, undermining much of its support in the US and elsewhere, and it has also served to make Putin believe that his strategy of terror was on the right track, which explains the recent wave of constant Russian attacks against civilian targets in Ukraine.

The damage Trump's strategy has caused to the conservative movement

Beyond those who have been taken in by Russian propaganda, many conservatives have put all their faith in Trump, believing him to be a brilliant negotiator, unleashing a wave of insults against those of us who criticize the US president's immoral strategy of putting all the pressure on the invaded country and not the invader. They have accused us of being "warmongers", they have accused us of wanting war, of wanting people to die, they have spread the slogan that if we supported Ukraine we should go fight there, and other infamies whose purpose was to silence those of us who criticize Trump's pitiful strategy regarding this war, applauded by many uncritically.

Finally, the facts prove us right: Trump is not the brilliant negotiator some claimed, and behind his regrettable statements about Ukraine in recent weeks there was no skillful strategy whose fruits we should patiently await, like someone waiting for a tree to turn into a raccoon. The only thing Trump's strategy has served is to break the conservative movement and favor Russia, at a time when the invaders had suffered such a colossal number of losses that the only minimally sensible thing would have been to end the invasion and withdraw from Ukraine.

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Photo: Reuters.