Neville Trump and the kneecapping of Ukraine

“Keep doing what I tell you, Donny, and I’ll never release those photos.” (Wikimedia Commons)

A quick post on Trump’s so-called “peace plan” to end the war between Russia and Ukraine: Putin’s gotta have something on the guy. It can’t just be a promise that the Orange Menace can build a Trump Moscow. There must be pictures. Or videos. Or something. I mean, the terms of the proposal came straight out of Putin’s playbook, “How to Flatter and Enrich the Simpleton in the Oval Office to Get Everything I Want.”

Trump is the king of appeasement; our Neville Chamberlain. The British prime minister did nothing when Austrians asked Britain for help against Hitler’s annexation of their country in 1938. (Oh, wait — he sent a strongly worded note of protest. I bet Hitler was quaking in his jackboots). Chamberlain even placed some of the blame on … Austria. Sound familiar?

When Hitler then set his sights on a huge swatch of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland, Chamberlain and his Cabinet basically told the Czechs to make the best of it. And Chamberlain, the poor sap, met with Hitler several times and believed him when he said he had no further designs on the rest of Europe. We know how that turned out.

And now Neville Trump is capitulating. The “peace” plan clearly was dictated by Putin. (As Andy Borowitz joked, Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted difficulties in translating the plan from the original Russian.) Reading through it, one would think that Ukraine was the aggressor in this war and Russia the victim. It achieves almost all of Putin’s goals and demands no concessions from him.

Just look at what was in the plan (you can read it for yourself here):

1. Reward Putin for his aggression: It gives Russian-occupied Crimea officially to Putin, along with the Donetsk and Luhansk regions — even though Ukraine has maintained control of significant parts of those regions. Ukraine would be forced to withdraw from its own territory.

   It allows Russia to keep the parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions that it invaded and controls. Russia would not have to withdraw.

2. Kneecap Ukraine: The country’s military would be forced to shrink, from the current ~850,000 members to no more than 600,000.

   Ukraine and NATO would be forced to pledge that Ukraine will never be admitted as a member and NATO troops are prohibited from stationing troops in Ukraine. A separate “security guarantees” document says that Europe and the US would consider an attack on Ukraine to be an attack on the transatlantic community. But the attack has to be “significant, deliberate, and sustained,” and the response could be anything from intelligence and logistical assistance, economic and diplomatic actions, or military action. Do you think any Ukrainian trusts Trump to help them if Russia began seizing more territory?

   Ukraine could never have nuclear weapons.

3. Expose Eastern Europe: “It is expected (emphasis mine) that Russia will not invade neighboring countries.” And this beauty: “Russia will enshrine in law its policy of non-aggression towards Europe and Ukraine.” Russia has a policy of non-aggression? Since when?

4. Rehabilitate Russia: Trump would help his buddy try to gain legitimacy on the world stage by lifting all sanctions and enrich him by jointly developing projects related to energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centers, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and more.

   Russia would be allowed to re-join the G7, even though the shared values and unifying philosophy of the member countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US, with the EU as a non-enumerated member) is based on pluralism, liberal democracy, and representative government. Now that I read that, what the heck is Trump’s America doing there?

There’s more, with lots of money thrown at Ukraine to rebuild the cities and towns that Russia destroyed, the return of prisoners, etc.

All in all, it’s a sad state of affairs. This monstrous document was cobbled together by two special envoys of Putin and Trump: Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, and Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer and friend of Trump’s, with no involvement of any Ukrainians or Europeans.

To his credit, Marco Rubio — a longtime Russia hawk — has taken control of the negotiations and, working with a Ukrainian delegation in Geneva, is trying to revise the plan into something more reasonable. Meanwhile, European Union countries are working on their own proposal that no doubt is far more favorable to Ukraine.

Rubio keeps saying that progress is being made. But exactly how much the plan can be revised in Ukraine’s favor, at a time when Putin has something on Trump, is an open question.