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Victory for Putin would be a grave blow to U.S. power.
Someone in Donald Trump’s inner circle needs to take him to one side and tell him this home truth: as president-elect, he must immediately explain his plan to end the war in Ukraine.
Trump, still celebrating his historic victory, will naturally be thinking about his domestic agenda. But he should understand that the longer that he dithers, the more strategic advantages he hands to Russia—which is now a firm U.S. adversary.
Ideally, his plan should not involve Ukraine giving up territory that has been captured by Russia over the course of the war. Nor should it be based on empty promises from Russian President Vladimir Putin, which he has a history of making.
The need for clarity on the ground in Ukraine is obvious. NATO sources and Western security officials almost universally agree that Ukraine is slowly losing the war and that this winter will be critical. Trump’s victory in the United States has only heightened these concerns, not least because he has a history of making tepid statements about Ukraine and the war.
Trump has previously said that Ukraine should have ceded territory to Russia ahead of the invasion, claiming that even “the worst deal would’ve been better than what we have now.” He also accused Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of making “little nasty aspersions toward your favorite president, me.”
The situation in much of Ukraine is already grave.
“Russia destroyed a large part of the country’s energy system, so millions of Ukrainians may find themselves in their homes without heating, electricity, and water during the winter,” said Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Ukrainian lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. “Getting the appropriate number of systems and missiles is critical to close the sky and protect peaceful cities and civilians from this critical scenario.”
The destruction of infrastructure is seen by Ukrainians as a Russian strategy to make this winter as insufferable as possible, particularly in the east. In the south, sources on the ground say that Russian attacks on ports are also part of an effort to prevent supplies from reaching Ukrainian citizens.
“The Russian strategy in the east seems to be to freeze people out and heavily bomb their cities and towns; the strategy in the south seems to be to manipulate a key international artery for food,” said Michael Bociurkiw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, who spoke with Foreign Policy from Ukraine.
Bociurkiw believes that Russia has been taking advantage of the vacuum created by the U.S. election and uncertainty about whether Washington’s support will survive a change of administration.
“It’s been really disheartening to see the lack of spine in Washington and elsewhere,” he said. “Autocrats take advantage of blurred lines. Putin is prodding and testing for soft tissue. The inaction of the West, withholding permission for Ukraine to strike inside Russia at launch pads, has handed a major advantage to Russia.”
Many Western allies, including the United States, have set implicit or explicit limits on how much they’re willing to give to Ukraine—and what kind of weapons that includes. Theories as to why range from fatigue to a belief that the conflict will not spill outside Ukrainian and Russian borders.
But there are widespread fears among experts that the prospect of victory will only embolden Putin. Russian territorial gains will bring the Kremlin ever closer to NATO borders—and potentially supply resources for more conflict. Many believe that this logic still applies in the event of a peace deal that allows Russia to retain the territory that it has invaded.
“If there’s a cease-fire that effectively allows Russia to hold that territory, it will allow Russia to consolidate its position, reinforcing its military presence,” said Ruth Deyermond, a professor with the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. “With no war to fight, it would also be able to develop its military presence in Belarus, threatening NATO members in the Baltic region. And an emboldened Russia would be likely to escalate its attacks on European critical infrastructure and increase its interference in many NATO states, including the U.S.,” she added.
Peter Dickinson wrote for the Atlantic Council earlier this year that “it should be painfully apparent that anywhere Putin regards as ‘historical Russia’ is potentially at risk … This would create an array of possible targets for Russian aggression including Finland, Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Alaska, and the whole of Central Asia.”
Why a full or partial Russian victory is such a concern for Europe is easy to understand. It must now be explained to Trump why it is also critical to the United States. An ocean and a continent might separate Washington, D.C., and Moscow, but borders are not barriers to modern warfare.
While Zelensky continues to ask, reasonably, for more support in defeating Russia, it is also true that Washington has already spent a lot of political capital and money on this war.
The first obvious loss to the United States would be in face, Deyermond said.
“Ukraine losing would look to the rest of the world as if the U.S. was losing to Russia—or to a coalition of Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Any scaling back of U.S. support would also look as if the U.S. had been forced to retreat by Russia,” she said. “That would obviously be very damaging to U.S. credibility. For years, Putin has been talking about the weakness of the West, by which he mostly means the U.S.”
That might seem opaque to people sitting on the other side of the Atlantic, but it could have very real consequences for the United States and its global interests.
“First, it sends a clear message to other adversaries that you can mess around with America and get away with it,” said Bociurkiw, the Atlantic Council fellow. “Second, wars are becoming so much more about technology and lone actors that don’t respect borders. Fake news dropped by Russia in America can lead to violence like in Charlottesville. Russia is upping its biohazard capability, which is easily exportable.”
No one knows whether Trump has actually paid any attention to what is happening in Ukraine or what he thinks about Putin in 2024. He has repeatedly called Putin a “genius” during the conflict. Recently, while standing next to Zelensky, he said that “we have a very good relationship, and I also have a very good relationship … with President Putin,” before adding, “I think if we win [the election], we’re going to get it [the war] resolved very quickly.”
It’s not clear that Trump fully comprehends how grave the situation is in Ukraine, nor how serious the consequences would be for Washington and its allies. It’s not even clear that he particularly cares or believes that hose consequences really exist. And many of his far-right allies see Putin and his allies, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, as a role model for the kind of patriarchal nationalist state they want.
Trump’s positions can also be shifting and uncertain. Perhaps he has access to some inner information that the rest of us lack. But on the likelihood that Trump is merely spitballing, someone in his inner circle needs to grab him right now and hammer home the message: The United States needs Ukraine to win.
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The post Even Donald Trump Can’t Afford to Lose the Ukraine War appeared first on Energy News Beat.
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