Maybe, just maybe, Trump is making a brilliant play on Ukraine

The best evidence? The way the legacy media screamed (and, yes, lied) about the White House's ceasefire proposal last week.

Trump Pressures Ukraine to Accept a Peace Plan That Sharply Favors Russia

So The New York Times warned a week ago, when the White House said Ukraine and Russia needed to make peace quickly. Slate, which has reached MSNBC levels of crazy-liberal, went even further: Trump’s Ukraine Peace Plan Gives Russia Everything It Wants…

Sharply favoring Russia! Giving Russia everything it wants! We are back in 2016, with Donald Trump as a Kremlin agent, a modern Manchurian candidate.

Just one problem. These headlines aren’t even close to the reality of what the Trump administration is proposing. (I know, you’re shocked.)

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(Close to reality. With your help.)

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In fact, the more I read and think about the ceasefire proposal, the more impressed I am with the tack Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Marco Rubio have taken.

They are walking a very narrow tightrope. If they can manage it they’ll deserve enormous praise. Nobel Peace Prize-type praise, though the Kremlin will freeze over before King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden puts that medal around Trump’s neck.

Let’s start with some unpleasant facts: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an old-school land grab by a murderous dictator. In a perfect world, the Ukranian people would rise up, evict the Russian army with boomerangs, and ride into the sunset.

But in this world, China puts a million Uighurs in open-air detention camps and nobody does squat. Viruses gonna virus, and great powers gonna great power. Even middling powers, if they have nuclear arms and the right (aka wrong) attitude.

In this world, after an initial burst in 2022, Ukraine has lost territory slowly but steadily for the last two years, despite massive American aid. Russia has four times Ukraine’s population, and a leader who faces no domestic constraints keeping him from losing as many men as he deems necessary.

The Europeans talk a good game about helping, but they have neither the military nor the political will to do more than talk (again, shocker!) For 80 years, Europe has had a terrible case of let’s you and him fight. This war is only the latest proof. Have you noticed the Bundeswehr on the Ukrainian front lines? Me neither.

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So Ukraine needs the United States.

And the United States has elected a president who does not believe this war is a good idea.

Donald Trump wants peace. The left says he wants peace because he hates Zelensky and wants to build Trump Tower Kremlin. The right says he wants peace because he is tired of sending American tax dollars so Ukrainian and Russian boys can kill each other.

Me, I’m not going to guess. I don’t presume to know what’s in our president’s head, much less his heart.

Here’s what I do know. A peace that simply gives the Russians a few months to rearm is not a peace at all.

Here’s what else I know. The Trump administration knows that too.

The administration has not fully released its ceasefire proposal publicly (a smart move, and a sign that it is serious rather than playing political games). But the details of it have leaked, as the administration no doubt expected.

And its most important element is the one the media has barely mentioned:

The proposal contains NO restrictions on the size of the Ukrainian military, as the Russian government wanted. That was a non-starter for the Ukraine, a true red line.

Nor does the proposal require Zelensky to quit, or even — as far as we know — hold free elections.

Nor does it require the Ukraine or any other country to recognize that the Crimean peninsula is part of Russia (though, apparently, it does extend American recognition).

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So why is the left shrieking?

First, because the deal keeps the front lines in place, pretty much. Meaning that Russia is going to continue to occupy the territory it now occupies.

So Trump is… wait for it… rewarding aggression! He’s allowing Putin to redraw Europe’s borders! (Well, one border of one country that even most Europeans probably couldn’t find on a map.)

Yep. He sure is.

What exactly do the critics propose? Newsflash, Putin is not going to give up the territory it has lost hundreds of thousands of men to take voluntarily. And Ukraine can’t make him. That’s why we need a ceasefire.

There is nothing unusual about an armistice that keeps the front lines in place. Like, say, at the end of the Korean War. Maybe after Putin dies, a new Russian regime will decide eastern Ukraine wasn’t so important after all and pull back. In the interim, the fighting and killing have stopped.

Second, because the United States apparently promises to recognize Crimea as Russian territory. The humanity!

Except that Crimea WAS Russian territory from 1783, when Catherine the Great annexed it, until 1954, when Soviet leader Nikola Khrushchev transferred it back from Russia to Ukraine. 1954 sounds like a while ago - except that in 1954, both Russia and Ukraine were parts of the Soviet Union.

In other words, Khrushchev’s transfer made no practical difference. The Kremlin, as the seat of Soviet control, still controlled the territory, and did so until the USSR collapsed in 1991. Thus, between 1783 and 2014, the Crimea was under Moscow’s rule for 208 years, and Kiev’s for 23.

Does this mean Crimea belongs to Russia? I have no idea.

What I do know is that when Russia took Crimea (back) in 2014, neither the United States nor anyone else rushed to Ukraine’s aid. The Crimean peninsula is strategically vital to the Kremlin, because its port of Sevastopol is Russia’s only warm-water port. It is much more important to Russia than the territory Russia has seized since 2022, and even after Putin is long gone, Russia isn’t going to give it up without a fight.

And, again, the Trump administration isn’t saying Ukraine has to accept this takeover as part of a peace deal, only that the United States will.

Third, the critics are whining the proposal includes a ban on Ukraine joining NATO. This objection is genuinely stupid. Even before the war, Ukraine was — at best — decades from joining NATO.

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So. To review. The deal the Trump administration has proposed doesn’t require Zelensky to quit, allows Ukraine to retain its ability to fight, does not require it to cede any territory it hasn’t already lost, and — as far as we know — does not limit the ability or Europe or the United States to continue to aid Ukraine militarily.

In return, Russia keeps Crimea and the other territory it has already grabbed. And it has the potential to have sanctions — sanctions that have proved completely ineffective in changing its behavior — removed.

I guess I’m missing the part where this proposal “sharply favors Russia.”

No wonder the Kremlin, despite its public praise for Trump, hasn’t jumped on it.

About that public praise: Putin needs a win if he’s going to make peace. On the other hand, after three years of promising to evict the Russian army, Zelensky needs someone to blame for the fact that he couldn’t.

The Trump administration is providing a useful foil for both. Zelensky gets to rant about the American betrayal while Putin puffs his chest and let his media lavish praise on him for outfoxing the Americans. The deal doesn’t change.

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The key word in all of this is lasting.

If the Russians take this deal only to break the ceasefire and make a new push on Kiev in a few months, it will be hard not to regard any peace as a massive miscalculation.

But is Putin really likely to be spoiling for another war? This one didn’t go as planned. It cost him hundreds of thousands of men for marginal territorial gains.

And he must know that if he starts hostilities again the United States and Europe will see little choice but to come to Kiev’s aid. This way, he can declare victory and get back to his billion-dollar Black Sea palace.

I think the odds are good that if Trump can push this deal through, it will hold until Putin winds up in the great Kremlin in the sky (or, more likely, down below).

In that case, Trump’s critics will no doubt acknowledge his incredible achievement in ending Europe’s most brutal war in generations quickly and relatively cleanly.

Sure they will.