In 2020, President Donald Trump signed what amounted to articles of surrender to the Taliban, ending U.S. military support, demoralizing the Afghan army, and triggering a series of cascading events that led directly to the fall of the U.S.-supported Afghan government the following year.
Trump successfully pinned all the blame on his successor, former President Joe Biden, who was left with only bad options for restarting the war and chose to honor Trump’s treaty pledge to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
Chaos ensued, damaging U.S. esteem abroad, condemning Afghan citizens — especially women and young girls — to a brutal dictatorship while betraying thousands of Afghans who worked for and believed in the goodness of Americans.
Five years later, Trump is back and ready to follow that game plan again, sidelining Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the same way he cut former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani out of talks with the Taliban.
Trump reached out to Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he trusted he wanted peace, and quickly arranged for top officials from the United States and Russia to convene in Saudi Arabia to begin restoring relations with Moscow and inviting Russia back onto the world stage.
“We were not invited to this Russian-American meeting in Saudi Arabia. It was a surprise for us,” Zelensky said afterward.
Once again, Trump is pushing a surrender plan, one that would give Putin everything he could reasonably hope for — termination of U.S. military support to Kyiv, an end to Ukraine’s NATO ambitions, the pullback of U.S. troops from countries bordering Russia and Ukraine, while ceding to Russia control over the 20% of the country it seized during its illegal invasion in February 2022.
“They took a lot of land, and they fought for that land. They lost a lot of soldiers,” Trump said, justifying Russia’s continued occupation of eastern Ukraine. “It certainly would seem to be unlikely” they would give it up.
Initially, Zelensky tried to put a positive spin on his dealings with Trump.
“We have begun working with President Trump’s team and can already see that success is attainable,” Zelensky posted on X on the Saturday of the Munich Security Conference. However, in the days that followed, the ugly truth emerged. Trump was demanding complete capitulation from Ukraine and as payback for the $175 billion in U.S. aid provided since 2022 (most of which was spent in the U.S. replacing old weapons and ammunition sent to Ukraine) that Zelensky sign away 50% of its mineral wealth, valued over $500 billion.
Zelensky refused and rejected the idea that Trump could make deals without Ukraine at the table.
“We can’t recognize any things or any agreements about us without us,” he told reporters.
That infuriated Trump, who pushed back at Zelensky, blaming him for starting the war while spouting inflated numbers for U.S. aid ($350 or $300 billion) and calling for wartime elections in Ukraine to replace him. He also cited phony poll numbers claiming Zelensky’s approval rating had fallen to 4%. (Zelensky’s popularity has waned in the third year of the war but remains between 50% and 60% and exceeds Trump’s approval ratings.)
“Today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years [ago]. You should have never started it,” Trump said following the U.S.-Russia talks.
“It seems like Russia and the U.S. are preparing an ultimatum to Ukraine, talking about Ukraine without Ukraine,” Zelensky said. “We didn’t accept ultimatums in 2022 when the situation was much more serious, and nobody was helping us, and I have no intention of accepting any ultimatums now.”
The failure of Zelensky to roll over prompted Trump to go nuclear in a post on his Truth Social platform.
“Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP, will never be able to settle,” Trump posted. “A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do.”
The post repeated all the false claims of the day before, claims that prompted former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, typically a Trump defender, to weigh in.
“Of course, Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor. Of course, a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945. Of course, Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%,” Johnson posted on X, arguing that “Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.”
Europeans are, in fact, shocked, appalled, and contemplating a future without U.S. support.
After Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Conference, in which he lectured European leaders about “the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values,” Zelensky, in his speech, said it’s time to realize “decades of the old relationship between Europe and America are ending,” and Europe will need to go it alone.
“From now on, things will be different,” he said. “Right now, Ukraine’s army, supported by global aid … is holding back Russia. But if not us, then who will stop them? Really! Let’s be honest. Now, we can’t rule out the possibility that America might say ‘No’ to Europe on issues that threaten it … And I really believe that time has come. The Armed Forces of Europe must be created.”
In that speech, Zelensky also explained why he never made a deal with Putin, who doesn’t consider Zelensky a legitimate leader or Ukraine a sovereign nation.
“Putin cannot offer real security guarantees. Not just because he is a liar, but because Russia, in its current state, needs war to hold power together,” Zelensky said. “This is why we cannot just agree to a ceasefire without real security guarantees, without pressure on Russia, without a system to keep Russia in check.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio got a taste of the Russian style of lying when he met his wily Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov for the first time.
As Lavrov recounted, “Our U.S. colleagues mentioned a moratorium on attacks on energy facilities. We told them we have never put household energy supply systems in danger and targeted exclusively the facilities that supply energy to the Ukrainian armed forces.”
Just two days earlier, a Russian Shahed drone struck critical infrastructure in Mykolaiv, leaving more than 100,000 people without heat in subfreezing temperatures.
“An ordinary Ukrainian city. Ordinary civilian infrastructure,” Zelensky called it. “Nothing to do with hostilities or the frontline situation.”
The day after Lavrov flatly denied attacking civilian energy infrastructure, Russia launched a missile and drone strike targeting electrical transformers in Odesa, plunging 160,000 civilians into cold and dark in the dead of winter.
“We must never forget that Russia is ruled by pathological liars,” Zelensky posted after the attack, “They cannot be trusted and must be pressured.”
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the new chairman of the Armed Services Committee, also attended the Munich conference this year, sporting a yellow and blue Ukraine flag lapel pin.
When asked during an interview with Politico what statement he was making, Wicker replied, “The statement is that that there are good guys and bad guys in this war, and the Russians are the bad guys. They invaded, contrary to almost every international law, and they should be defeated, and Ukraine is entitled to the promises that the world made to them decades ago.”
While Trump likes to brag that since his return, “people are respecting us again as a powerful country,” Wicker said the U.S. risks becoming known as an unreliable ally.
“The United States is in danger of getting a reputation,” he told Politico. “[We] solemnly promised the Afghans we’re going to have your back, and so there’s a generation of little girls that got to go to school. Now they’re no little girls in school anymore.”
TRACKING WHAT DOGE IS DOING ACROSS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Wicker noted Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994 in return for guarantees from Russia, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. to “respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine.”
“The international community was trying to talk to the leadership of Ukraine at that time to give up a nuclear weapon, which they did based on a solemn by the United States of America,” Wicker said. “They [the Russians] certainly haven’t kept their end of the bargain … When we give our word, we ought to keep it.”