Zelensky, Not Trump or Putin, is the Threat to Peace

Foreign Affairs

Zelensky, Not Trump or Putin, is the Threat to Peace

For the brutal war to finally end, the Ukrainian president must go.

(Photo by YURIY DYACHYSHYN/AFP via Getty Images)

Now that the iconic Alaska summit between President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has concluded, where the world next goes in terms of both resolving the Ukraine War and stabilizing the wider U.S.–Russia relationship is coming more clearly into view. In terms of the Ukraine War, the end is coming. It will not be resolved by a ceasefire, as Putin has long told the Americans and as Trump now seems to agree. The only problem is that the Ukrainians and their European enablers absolutely disagree with this stance.

Ukraine is a broken state and, at this point, is not coming back from the abyss that it finds itself in after three years of brutal, inconclusive war with its much larger Russian neighbor. Once heralded as the symbol of modern democratic resistance to tyranny, the besieged Eastern European state hasn’t held presidential elections in more than six years. Indeed, before the disastrous Ukraine War occurred, the nation historically known as the borderlands between Europe and Russia was ranked as the most corrupt in Europe.

As the war has progressed, Kiev has lived up to this shameful ranking.

A veritable gravy train of U.S. (and European) tax dollars, weapons, and other forms of aid have flooded into Ukraine for more than a decade (since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 following the U.S.-backed coup against the purportedly pro-Russian Kiev government of Viktor Yanukovych). Awash with Western cash and aid, the Ukrainian elite have engorged themselves while sending increasing numbers of their young people to fight the invading Russians. The longer the war lasted, the more generous Western aid became—with far less oversight—and the more opportunities that some Ukrainian oligarchs and officials gained to enrich themselves.

Thus, a feedback loop of corruption fueled by war occurred until war was the only task the Ukrainian state could perform. All other functions of a normal, democratic state were contorted to serve the war machine, which itself was the byproduct of Western-fueled corruption. As Ukraine’s war effort reaches its predictable nadir in the face of massive Russian offensives along the bloody frontline, Zelensky has embraced a fanatical view of both the war and his own status in the country’s political system.

Once billed as Ukraine’s “everyman” president who came from the world of comedy and campaigned on fighting Ukraine’s legendary corruption, over the years, President Volodymyr Zelensky became an enabler of that corruption (along with his top government officials). He became what he beheld. And as the war deteriorated for Ukraine, at a time when any other rational and uncorrupted leader would have sought peace with the larger invader, Zelensky, fueled by the seemingly bottomless pit of Western aid, kept expanding the war and biting off more than Ukraine could chew.

Zelensky has pushed aside those he once trusted, such as the renowned Ukrainian general Valeriy Zaluzhny, because they no longer saw the point of fighting a Russia that possessed so many advantages over Ukraine. Rumors abound today that Zaluzhny is making moves to replace Zelensky as leader of whatever remains of Ukraine.

Zelensky has helped to scuttle previous peace attempts between his country and Russia based entirely on the fantastical notion that his smaller NATO-backed military could reclaim the Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine or the Crimean peninsula, which has been home to one of Russia’s most important naval bases—the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol—since the time of Catherine the Great. Indeed, Zelensky and his government refuse to countenance any alternative strategy to their current one of somehow recapturing these lost regions, even if it means the prolongation of the war and eventual annihilation of Ukraine and its people.

Last year, the paragon of democracy in Kiev canceled Ukraine’s scheduled presidential elections. Zelensky’s term in office was coming to an end. Rather than do the democratic thing and let democracy in Ukraine, however imperfect, take its course, the Ukrainian president opted instead to indefinitely extend his term in office. With no new date for presidential elections set, and with Zelensky now fully ensconced in his dictatorial power, the Ukrainian leader terminated the last vestige of Ukraine’s proto-democracy. This year he moved to shut down anti-corruption watchdog groups that had been established with the help of the West years ago to better ensure that Ukraine became a more functional democracy.

Many analysts assess that Ukraine has suffered more than 500,000 casualties in the war, higher than official estimates from the corrupt Kiev regime, and with no end in sight (at least if Zelenskyy continues getting his way). In this morass, cracks have started to form in Ukraine’s otherwise airtight control over the narrative surrounding the war. Recent polling conducted by Gallup indicates that most Ukrainians want their government to “negotiate an ending to the war as soon as possible.” The longer the war drags on, the tighter the control that Zelensky’s regime takes of the beleaguered country, the less popular the Kiev government—specifically, the president—becomes. Moreover, as support for the war declines, Zelensky’s demands for ending it grow more intractable.

Take, for example, Zelensky’s sly obsession with getting a ceasefire over a peace deal with Russia. This is because Zelensky understands a peace deal is lasting and, under such a deal, he’d be required to give up the territories in the east and Crimea permanently. But a ceasefire is, by definition, temporary. The fighting would stop, and Zelensky could theoretically restore his country’s fighting capabilities while (he hopes) the Russians stood down and gave up the significant tactical and strategic advantages Moscow currently enjoys.

The Europeans, desperate to remain relevant amid today’s shifting geopolitics, are backing Ukraine to the hilt because they fear that, if Trump and Putin manage to get a real deal for ending the Ukraine war, Moscow and Washington would effectively leave Europe in the dust. This would likely result in Trump diminishing the importance of the NATO alliance within U.S. national security policy. Evidently, the Europeans are more than willing to court a third world war with Russia over Ukraine if it means forcing the Americans to surge—over the long-term—support for Ukraine and, by extension, NATO against Putin’s Russia.

Without NATO, as the European Union struggles with a chronically turgid economy and with euro-skeptical nationalist-populist movements tugging at the supposed post–Cold War consensus, the current ruling class in Europe would truly be consigned to the geopolitical dust bin of history—victims of their own shabby globalist ideology and short-sighted decisions. For Europe to remain relevant, therefore, war must be their cause. But they can’t fight a war on their own, certainly not against mighty Russia. The Europeans will preen and pretend to fund their own defenses, all while ensuring that it is the Americans who are on the hook.

Which brings us to the last part of this story. The most important part. It’s obvious that both Trump and Putin want a peace deal. What’s more, the Ukrainian people want a negotiated end to this infernal war. Neither Zelensky nor Europe does. In fact, Zelensky seems inclined, if Trump attempts to impose a peace deal that requires Ukraine to give up the Donbas in eastern Ukraine—a region it will lose eventually if the war continues—to go rogue and continue fighting anyway.

Washington has a madman on its hands—in Kiev, not in the Kremlin. Rather than risk giving up his power by negotiating a peaceful end to the war that has decimated Ukraine, Zelensky (at the urging of his European friends) refuses to stop the fighting. He understands that failing to negotiate will lead to the complete destruction of Ukraine. But Zelensky doesn’t care. He can’t care. The money he relies on and the power he enjoys are inextricably linked to the war’s continuation. That’s what Trump is up against right now.

Zelensky, not Putin or Trump, is the impediment to peace. Until he is gone from power, Ukraine’s days are numbered, and the world is drawn inextricably closer to world war between nuclear-armed Russia and America.

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