Monday 3rd March, 2025

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky must be regretting that he ever tried to obtain NATO membership for his country and confronted Russia. Having received rousing welcomes in western capitals including Washington during Joe Biden’s presidency, he may not have expected to be thrown into a gauntlet at the White House last Friday. A meeting that was aimed at strengthening US-Ukraine relations and inking some agreements ended in disaster, with President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance berating Zelensky in full view of journalists before showing him the door. Trump told Zelensky in no uncertain terms that Ukraine would lose the ongoing war.

Zelensky apparently did not properly read Trump’s patronising remarks about his attire at the entrance to the White House, much less guard himself against his host’s volatile temper. Had he done so, he might have chosen to tread cautiously during their discussion on contentious issues. In his wisdom, he gave Trump and Vance an opportunity to castigate him.

President Trump has drawn fire from Europe for the way he treated Zelensky at the White House, but his assessment of Ukraine’s military strength and his prognostication about the war are bound to take their toll on the morale of the Ukrainian soldiers. There is no way Ukraine can sustain its military campaign against Russia effectively, without US help. Zelensky himself has said so.

European leaders have reportedly rallied behind Zelensky after his humiliation in Washington. European Union Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas lost no time in declaring, “The free world needs a new leader’. The transatlantic alliance has thus suffered a serious setback. But there is little that Europe can do to contain Russia without US backing. Trump accused Zelensky of ‘gambling with World War III’, and therefore any country that aids Ukraine’s continued military campaign will be seen by Washington as being complicit in that dangerous pursuit!

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Europe of trying to sabotage rapprochement between Russia and the US. However, Trump is not doing Russia a favour by pressuring Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire. Besides his antipathy towards war, he does not want to keep pouring dollars into a bottomless pit in Ukraine; he is seeking to recover, through a deal on Ukraine’s minerals, what the US has spent. His approach to any issue is transactional; his focus is always on what’s in it for the US. His announcement that the US will acquire the Gaza strip is also case in point.

Russia’s aggression cannot be countenanced, but Zelensky should not have provoked Russia by recklessly furthering the interests of NATO and providing Moscow with a casus belli in the process. An experienced leader would have been mindful of the disastrous consequences of fighting a war with a military superpower.

Trump apparently has some other reasons for his refusal to help Ukraine unconditionally. He is not well-disposed towards NATO, which he considers a liability. In 2019, he failed to make Zelensky endorse his claims about wrongdoing on the part of some of his political rivals, and he faced impeachment over that. Trump has given a big boost to the Ukrainian Opposition by calling Zelensky a dictator and creating uncertainty about the continuation of the lifeline of US arms to Kyiv. The New York Times has reported that when Zelensky visited the White House, he was aware that the flow of weapons and military hardware from the US to Ukraine had essentially stopped.

Now that Trump has told Zelensky it is his way or the highway, chances are that the latter will have to agree to a ceasefire and a peace deal with Russia. Might is right in this world. The United Nations exemplifies the perversion of equality one comes across in Orwell’s dystopian, allegorical novella, Animal Farm. All countries are said to be equal, but, in reality, the permanent members of the UN Security Council are ‘more equal than’ others owing to their wealth and power. So, the outcomes of conflicts among nations are determined not by the notions of right and wrong or justice and fair play but by military strength and economic prowess of the parties thereto. Hence, the need for the not-so-powerful countries to come to terms with this reality and tread cautiously without endangering the lives of their people.