The Ukraine war: Clutching at straws

'Kissing the ring' failed to sway Donald Trump at the Ukraine meeting in Washington

- SHYAM SARAN

For an outside observer, it was painful to watch the orchestrated obsequiousness of some of the world's most powerful nations in front of US President Donald Trump at the meeting on Ukraine in Washington on Monday. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine joined the seven key European leaders—Emmanuel Macron of France, Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom, Friedrich Merz of Germany, Giorgia Meloni of Italy, Alexander Stubb of Finland, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Union, and Mark Rutte, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato).

They competed for Mr. Trump's approbation by lauding him as a peacemaker, as a leader invested in "stopping the killing" and for being generous and solicitous to his friends. One may argue, as some European commentators have done, that this public display of abject fealty was a small price to pay for keeping the world's most powerful nation on their side. They had to keep up with the measured but very successful use of flattery by President Vladimir Putin of Russia just last week in Alaska. Mr. Putin had succeeded in deflecting Mr. Trump from his earlier insistence on an immediate ceasefire and in persuading him to accept the Russian position of pursuing peace by addressing the "root causes."

What many commentators have failed to note is that Mr. Trump has openly declared that Ukraine must accept "territorial swaps" as the price for peace. This is a huge win for Russia. In his meeting with Mr. Zelenskyy at the White House, a map was unrolled for the visitor, presumably detailing the loss of land he must swallow. The European leaders seemed to have studiously avoided this thorny subject in their comments, though it lies at the crux of the crisis.