The truth behind Trump's latest assault on Zelensky

The US president's best option now is to walk away from his so-called peace talks and keep up the provision of military aid

- SAM KILEY

True to form, Donald Trump has again launched into victim-shaming Ukraine’s president and taking Vladimir Putin’s side after Volodymyr Zelensky repeated that Crimea can never be given to Russia. The US president was right when he said in his latest post on social media that “there’s nothing to talk about here” when it comes to Crimea – but not for the reasons that he lays out in his characteristic rant.

Zelensky “will not legally recognise the [Russian] occupation of Crimea”, not because he’s intransigent, but because constitutionally he cannot do so. But that nuance has escaped Trump, who has left US scholars warning of a potential constitutional crisis after he issued a record-breaking number of executive orders during his first 100 days of office.

From Ukraine’s perspective, what the US president does at home does not matter. But what he does to Ukraine could be strategically disastrous.

The last time Trump snarled at Zelensky, he also suspended military aid to Ukraine and later cut the flow of real-time intelligence. The latter came at the same time as Russia launched a largely successful campaign to drive Ukrainian troops out of the Kursk salient inside Russian territory.