President Trump says he wants to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, but the most charitable interpretation that can be put on his recent fatuous remarks and those of his hapless negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner is that they want a “win-win” peace on terms far more generous to Russia than Russia deserves, and far more dangerous to Ukraine than Ukraine should have to endure. Anything less than Ukraine’s decisive military victory will lead to the ultimate extinction of Ukrainian independence and possibly even to a new wave of mass murder against the Ukrainian people, to be followed, possibly, by further attempts of conquest in Eastern Europe.
President Trump has a long and dishonorable record of making remarks wherein he disparages Ukrainian. President Zelenskyy’s fight to preserve the independence of his country, while failing to acknowledge Putin’s fault in launching the war. For example, in October of 2024, and then in April of 2025, Trump blamed Zelenskyy for starting the war with Russia, apparently by refusing to surrender to the Russian army’s first incursions in February, 2022. “You don’t start a war, Russia told Zelenskyy, “with someone 20 times your size, then hope people give you some missiles.” Most recently, Trump has blamed Zelenskyy for the rising price of diesel fuel, saying he has asked Zelenskyy to stop attacking Russian diesel refineries. The possibility that Russia bears any responsibility for skyrocketing diesel prices seems not to have crossed his mind. However, in all fairness, it must be admitted that Trump did say on one occasion that as the war progressed, blame for the carnage had to be shared by Putin, Zelensky, and, of course, President Biden.
And Trump’s hand-picked negotiators for seeking to end the war, real estate developer Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, seem similarly detached from reality and devoid of any sympathy for Ukraine. Witkoff, for example, has inanely babbled about how in his old age his recollection of meeting Putin will be “right at the top” of the memories he’ll enjoy in his retirement. Kushner has talked about his desire to fashion a “win-win” peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia, whatever that means.
What neither Trump nor Witkoff nor Kushner seems to understand—assuming they care at all—is that the Ukraine-Russian war is not like a real estate or other business arrangement, wherein both parties can make a mutually satisfactory “deal.” In this war, there can be only one winner. And if Russia is that winner, Ukraine will ultimately lose its sovereignty and its people may well become subject to a Russian-induced reign of terror and more mass casualties in peace than they’re currently suffering in war. And Putin may be tempted to try to retake other parts or satellites of the old Soviet Union.
How so?
President Putin has said the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. While he does not want to bring back communism or socialism, he does want to restore Russia to the greatness of a superpower, and that begins by bringing Ukraine, which he regards as a renegade Russian state, back under Russian control. So dedicated is he to that goal that he evidently thinks nothing of killing as many Ukrainians (and members of the Russian armed forces too, for that matter) in pursuit of his objectives.
And what will happen to the Ukrainian people should Russia conquer Ukraine. Given the wanton abandon with which Putin’s armed forces have bombed Ukrainian civilians, it is irrational to expect any sort of humane treatment of the Ukrainian people by the conquering Russians. And then there’s the Holodomor to consider.
The Holodomor was the famine created by the government of the Soviet Union in the 1930s by which millions of Ukrainians were starved to death as the government forced the collectivization of Ukrainian agriculture. To this day, questions abound. Nobody knows for certain how many millions of Ukrainians were starved to death. Reliable estimates range from 3.5 million to 5 million. And the exact motivations of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet government have never been definitively established. Was the mass starvation the unintended but nonetheless acceptable (to Stalin) consequence of forced collectivization? Or did Stalin deliberately want to kill as many Ukrainians as possible to tamp down Ukrainian opposition to Soviet policies and destroy the well-to-do Ukrainian Kulak (prosperous peasant) class? Why else was food denied to starving Ukrainians? But while these issues are still being debated, what seems beyond debate is that Ukrainians have a deliberate and legitimate fear of surrendering to Russian rule now, given the past and current record of policies leading to the mass murder of Ukrainians. Putin probably won’t try to impose collectivization on Ukrainian agriculture again, but as a former KGB agent he knows that totalitarian states have other means of making populations suffer—slave labor camps, for instance, kidnapping and brainwashing children, mass population removals, etc., etc.
In short, there seems to be no “win-win” scenario, at least from the rational perspective of Ukrainians and those familiar with how Ukrainians have suffered under first Soviet and then Russian control. Ukraine has only two realistic options: Fight hard enough and long enough to inflict so severe a defeat on Russia that Putin will abandon his mad scheme of conquest, or surrender to the tender mercies of Putin and Russia and suffer the possible further slaughter of the Ukrainian people even after “peace” has been established.
And why should we care about all this? Well, if Putin seeks to control Russian glory as he defines it and succeeds in retaking Ukraine, he may well be tempted to try to reconquer or at least reduce other Eastern European states to satellite status as well. Since these states are now part of NATO, the United States may be legally obligated to defend them against Russian aggression. So we must hope Ukraine wins. After all, for the time being, they’re fighting for themselves, and for us as well—a point on which I’ll elaborate in a future column.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville since 1987 and taught politics and government at Tarleton for 36 years, retiring in 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990-2024). He was Mayor pro-tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Stephenville Economic Development Authority since 2018, and as chair of the Erath County Appraisal District’s Appraisal Review Board since 2015. He is also a member of the Stephenville Rotary Club, the Board of Vestry of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts’ Pecan Valley District. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
Be the first to comment