The US plan to give away parts of Ukraine is a throwback to the 1919 Versailles carve-ups

Crimea will stay with Russia," Donald Trump told Time magazine in a largely sympathetic profile yesterday. And with that statement, the US president made clear that he wanted to carve up another country, Ukraine, and so legitimize the forced seizure of land by Moscow 11 years ago.

- Dan Sabbagh

From reading the transcript of the interview, Trump's thinking is hardly coherent. Crimea, he says, wouldn't have been seized if he had been president in 2014 but he says "it was handed to them by Barack Hussein Obama" and now Crimea has "been with them [Russia] for a long time" - so it is time to accept the situation.

The president does not pursue the argument that recognition of Russia's occupation of Crimea is a necessary price for ending Russia's military assault on Ukraine - though perhaps he thinks it.

Instead the conversation is moved on by the reporters to discussing Trump's aspirations for annexing Greenland and Canada. "The only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state," he adds.

Wars seldom end satisfactorily. The violence and sacrifice often do not bear the promised fruit.