TRUMP'S LEARNING CURVE

Faced with the war's complexities, Trump backs away from Ukraine peacemaking

- - BY SIMON SHUSTER

COMING OUT OF HIS TWO-HOUR CALL WITH Vladimir Putin on May 19, Donald Trump made an unusual concession: only Russia and Ukraine should be involved in talks to end the war between them, he wrote on social media, “because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of.” The admission of ignorance seemed out of character for a President who often claims to know more than anyone else about a great variety of subjects, and it may have set the peace process on a new and uncertain course.

For Putin, the gaps in Trump’s knowledge about the war have always offered an advantage. One of the Russian leader's favorite negotiating tactics is to overwhelm his interlocutors with a torrent of historical theories. Ukrainian officials and their European allies have tried to prepare Trump for such conversations with Putin by offering their own views on the complexity of the war and its history, but they have often run up against a wall of ignorance about Ukraine inside the Trump Administration.

“They’re not read-in on a lot of the background,” says a Western official who has discussed Ukraine at length during visits to the White House. On the Ukrainian side, a diplomat put the same frustration in starker terms. “It’s this messianic attitude,” the diplomat says of the U.S. approach to Ukraine under Trump. “Like they know everything and don't want to hear anything.”