Trump’s choice in Ukraine: make peace, or ‘crush the Russians’

With Russiagate no longer hindering diplomacy, US and Ukrainian officials recognize that Trump will have more leeway to end the Ukraine war.

In public comments, President-elect Donald Trump is vowing to broker a peace deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

“We're going to have to settle up with Russia, Ukraine,” Trump said this week. “That's a disaster.” Trump also confirmed that he intends to sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “He wants to meet, and we are setting it up. He has said that even publicly and we have to get that war over with.”

In advocating peace and pledging to meet Putin, Trump has already established a wide gulf with the outgoing White House. Repeating his stock line since the start of Russia’s invasion, Secretary of State Antony Blinken maintains that “we haven’t seen any signs that Russia has been genuinely prepared to engage,” as he said in a recent exit interview. Russia, Blinken insisted, is not motivated by security concerns but instead by “Putin’s imperial ambitions and the desire to recreate a greater Russia, to subsume Ukraine back into Russia.”

While the chief US diplomat’s aversion to diplomacy aligns with the current Washington consensus, Trump’s contrary position is not his only Beltway transgression.