By Diane Francis
Why doesn’t Donald Trump have sympathy with Ukraine like most people do? Why has he placed no sanctions on Russia or its oil customers? Why does he hesitate to give Ukraine Tomahawk missiles to retaliate against Russia’s devastating attacks on civilians? Why does he handle Putin with kid gloves and respect? Why is he the tough guy who beats up or bombs rivals but tiptoes around Putin, allowing him to embarrass, humiliate, and outflank him? Why is there no deal to end the war? Of growing concern is that Trump’s efforts have also been erratic and questionable, raising questions as to whether he’s impaired, has been promised riches by Putin, or is being blackmailed. Whatever the reason, Putin, the world’s worst geopolitical predator, has been able to run circles around the most powerful man on the Planet. So far.
It makes little sense that a tough guy from New York City with a bottomless desire for success and the Nobel Peace Prize has squandered the momentum he created by executing the Israel-Gaza peace deal, a template that he made. All that is needed to stop Russia’s slaughter is: Back Ukraine to the hilt with weapons, as he did Israel, demolish Russia’s oil industry and economy with long-range missiles as well as severe sanctions, sanction all of Russia’s oil customers, publicly isolate, humiliate, and call Putin a war criminal who kidnaps children, then demand a ceasefire or escalate. Trump’s failure to put his own patented peace plan into gear makes him an accomplice, not a savior.
Matthias Schmale, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine, said 2025 has been deadlier for civilians than 2024, with casualties rising 30 percent.
Equally perplexing is that Trump is unafraid of bombing and sanctioning the Ayatollahs or destroying thugs like Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela. But, in the case of Ukraine, Trump has held back from slamming Putin for refusing to agree to a ceasefire, as Ukraine did weeks ago, and has held back from providing more firepower to Kyiv as it is continuously bombarded. Instead, he has a chat with Putin and backs down. Clearly, nuclear escalation is always a concern, but Trump recently positioned nuclear submarines close to Russia to reassert American deterrence boldly.
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What’s perplexing is the Trump-Putin relationship. Trump talks Tomahawks, Putin calls, and Trump shrinks. Then, Trump agrees that another summit will be held in Budapest. That bilateral is a coup for Putin for three reasons: Ukraine is not invited to participate, equivalent to settling the Israel-Gaza war by holding talks with Iran and Hamas without including Israel. Secondly, the summit provides another global photo-op for Putin, as did the pointless summit in Alaska, and thirdly, it also raises Putin’s stature in a city run by a pro-Putin government.
Budapest is an unacceptable venue. Putin chose it because it was where, three decades ago, Kyiv agreed to surrender its nuclear arsenal in return for security guarantees from the US, Britain, Russia, and others – guarantees that were never honored. Ukraine was invaded twice since then by Russia, and the US and Britain didn’t lift a finger. Besides that, Hungary is Europe’s “skunk at the picnic” and a small, inconsequential nation run by Viktor Orban, a Putin lackey. Russia openly bribes Hungary by providing it with cheap oil, and Hungary returns the favor by refusing to supply self-defense military equipment to Ukraine, nor to allow military equipment sent by other European Union (EU) member states to pass through the country.
Frankly, Hungary should be booted out of the EU and NATO because its government is obstructive to both alliances and is also guilty of democratic backsliding. Orban vetoes EU aid to Ukraine, and only recently agreed not to veto NATO assistance to Ukraine in return for concessions. But Orban is also a favorite of Trump because of his right-wing autocratic policies. So far, concerning Ukraine, it’s game, set, and match for Putin. In one phone call, Trump went from contemplating Tomahawks and sanctions to providing Putin with another global stage. Worse, in advance of the meet-up, Trump is putting pressure on Ukraine to capitulate, not on Putin. For example, he recently told Ukraine to accept Putin’s terms or risk being “destroyed” and suggested that Ukraine may have to trade land (Donbas) for peace.
A bilateral summit also suits Trump and will help project his “peacemaker” image. More importantly, it will allow his team to conduct “business” with the Kremlin. Since his inauguration, Russia has dangled economic proposals to the American business community as a tactic to undermine support for Ukraine and as a disincentive against destroying Russia’s economy to stop the war, according to an Oct. 17 report published by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in Washington. “The Kremlin continues to employ a dual-handed rhetorical strategy, leveraging economic proposals and veiled military threats in an effort to simultaneously pursue normalizing US-Russian relations and deterring US support for Ukraine,” it wrote.
This initiative is being directed by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) CEO and key Kremlin negotiator, Kirill Dmitriev, who publicly promotes a gigantic joint US-Russian economic venture, according to the ISW. This undertow of promised opportunities is obviously designed to prevent attacks that could destroy Russia’s asset base as well as to discourage draconian sanctions that could cripple its key businesses.
Interestingly, the Republican and business-oriented Wall Street Journal urges full-on escalation against Russia in an editorial entitled “Give Ukraine the Tomahawks, Mr. President.” It stated that “Mr. Trump’s reluctance seems to involve two concerns, and the first is escalation with a nuclear power. But Mr. Putin has been lobbing cruise and ballistic missiles at Ukraine for years, and there’s nothing escalatory about return fire. Tomahawks could be a force for peace by altering Mr. Putin’s capacity to carry on his grinding war. Mr. Trump has said repeatedly he wants to end the war, and no doubt he means it. But Mr. Putin so far hasn’t shown any willingness to stop shooting.”
So what’s next? There may be a light at the end of this tunnel. For starters, Trump would never have agreed to go to Budapest without certainty that there is or will be a deal. The Putin call was lengthy and took 2.5 hours, which indicates that a complicated agreement may have been sketched out. The latest rumor is that Putin wants Donetsk but is willing to “surrender” parts of occupied southern Ukraine, wrote the ISW on Oct. 20. But no one knows.
Optimistically, the best scenario would be that Trump may, in fact, pull off another Israel-Gaza triumph. After all, Putin knows that without a ceasefire win for Trump, the stalemate will grind on, Ukrainians won’t capitulate, and Tomahawks, backed by Ukrainian drones, will eventually have to wipe out what’s left of Russia’s economy. Only a deal can prevent Russia’s collapse and eventual dissolution. So Trump let Putin pick Budapest, but only if he agreed to freeze the battle line where it is now, give up some land, and immediately stop shooting.
