One of the very few upsides of Donald Trump’s erratic personality is that sometimes he will “do the right thing”. Pausing for a man-to-man talk with Volodymyr Zelensky as world leaders gathered for the funeral of Pope Francis was one such rare occasion.
The image of the two men, seemingly alone, hunched towards one another in earnest, civilised discussion in the magnificence of St Peter’s Basilica was the “optic” the world needed.
The contrast with the infamous meltdown when the pair met in the Oval Office in February could hardly have been greater. This time there were no insulting questions about dress codes, no barracking from JD Vance (the real villain of that disastrous set-piece), and no need for the president of the United States to lose his cool like some guy at a ball game. This time there was almost a sense of the posthumous, spiritual benediction of His late Holiness.
Not a miracle, but certainly a surprise, and a welcome one. President Zelensky hopes that the exchange, the first in person since the Oval Office row, has “the potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results”. The White House added that the meeting had been “productive”.
What lasting good will emerge from this encounter is not yet clear, but Mr Trump’s subsequent social media post suggests that certain key truths are entering the president’s consciousness.
Never before overly troubled by pangs of self-doubt, he wrote, in reference to recent Russian attacks on Kyiv: “There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ’Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!”
Could the message be getting through? It has been fairly obvious for some time – indeed, dating back to the first Trump term – that Vladimir Putin has indeed been “tapping” Mr Trump all along on a wide front, even to the extent that the president once declared himself no more willing to believe the word of his own intelligence agencies than that of the Russian autocrat.
Somehow – and it has proved distressingly easy – the Kremlin has succeeded in precisely reversing the supposed order of events in the Trump peace plan. Whatever its flaws, the plan was supposed to involve a swiftly agreed unconditional ceasefire, and then peace talks. This was proposed by the Americans; agreed, after some initial resistance, by the Ukrainians; accepted by the Europeans as the way forward – but never given much more than lip service by Moscow.
Sometimes Putin puts on a show of statesmanship by announcing his own, unnecessary ceasefire, time-limited and partial; but even these efforts are demonstrably insincere, and they are breached within hours.
All it would take for the Trump peace plan to go forward is that Putin order his generals to stop the fighting. That is the one thing that President Trump has asked of him, and he has, to use a Trumpian expression, disrespected the president of the United States in a far more dramatic and humiliating fashion than anything Mr Zelensky might have done at the White House, or elsewhere.
It would seem, at this juncture, that even a “mark” as pliant as Donald Trump will realise he’s being played along if his manipulators push their luck and get greedy, which is what Putin, a former KGB colonel who is skilled in the diplomatic game, seems to have done.
It is always worth pointing out what is at stake in all of this. Russia was the aggressor in 2022 when it started this bloody war. Whether it would have done so with Mr Trump in charge is a matter for the contemporary historians and students of parallel worlds; but Putin wanted to destroy Ukraine, and still does.
“Peace for land” is a grand-sounding concept beloved by diplomats – but in this case, it would mean millions of Ukrainian people being brought under the unwelcome and hostile rule of a reborn Russian empire, with the extinction of their freedoms and their very culture. It is like asking the British to give up Yorkshire, or the Americans to cede Texas in return for “peace” – and not even a sustainable one with security guarantees. And yet President Zelensky has shown the leadership needed to enter into such a dangerous negotiation with his mortal enemy; Putin has not.
Perhaps now, President Trump and some of his more perceptive advisers have worked out that if there is no peace, and the fighting continues, that will suit Putin down to the ground. Furthermore, If the Kremlin were to fool the Americans into thinking the lack of progress on their peace plan was the fault of Mr Zelensky, and Mr Trump were to walk away and end military and intelligence support to Kyiv, then that would be an even better outcome for Russia.
Either would be an unmitigated disaster for Ukraine, for the security of Europe, and, in the longer term, for America’s own national security. Added to the unprovoked trade wars, it would signal a historic decline in American power and influence, and hand the 21st century to China.
But perhaps America is content to relinquish the role it has played since the end of the Second World War, in the name of isolationism and protectionism.
If it really is Mr Trump’s aim to abandon Europe, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Australia and all its other Western allies in favour of a new personal alliance of deal-making strongmen such as Putin, Kim Jong Un and even Xi Jinping – a scarcely believable shift – then there is nothing for America’s friends to do except to pray for divine intervention, and that US democracy survives long enough for sense to prevail one day.
Meanwhile, Ukraine will have to fight on, and Europe will have to decide if it wants to save it.
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