One can only hope that the press reports on Trump-Putin communications and statements by Vice President Vance and Secretary of Defense Hegseth on their views about stopping Russia’s war on Ukraine and the West do not reflect what will actually happen.

Rewarding the war criminals and punishing the victims would not serve American or western national security interests and would suggest Washington either does not realize Russia is on the ropes and can and should be defeated by Ukraine with American support, or are naively thinking it is in American’s interest to allow our declared enemy to rebuild so that in the future it can restart its war against Ukraine and the west.

In the short article below, the EU uses the word “appeasement” with good reason.

The book The Art of the Deal, I do not recall, ended with the objective of capitulation.

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POLITICOPRO

EU’s top diplomat accuses Trump of ‘appeasement’ with Putin

“Any deal behind our backs will not work,” writes Kaja Kallas.

By: Elena Giordano | 02/13/2025 12:28 PM EST

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“Why are we giving them [Russia] everything they want even before the negotiations have started?" said Kaja Kallas, the EU's top diplomat.

BRUSSELS — Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, denounced President Donald Trump’s call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Thursday, saying any deal on Ukraine’s future that is arranged without European involvement will be a nonstarter.

“It is clear that any deal behind our backs will not work. You need the Europeans, you need the Ukrainians,” Kallas told journalists on the sidelines of the NATO defense ministers’ meeting on Thursday.

“Why are we giving them [Russia] everything they want even before the negotiations have started? It’s appeasement. It has never worked,” she added.

Trump said Wednesday he’d had a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with Putin that morning, confirming the two leaders had agreed to work together on a diplomatic resolution to the war in Ukraine.

Following Trump’s call with Putin, the so-called Weimar+ grouping — the EU, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and the U.K. — published a joint statement in support of Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity. “In any negotiation, Europe must have a central role,” Kallas wrote in a post regarding the statement.

But Hungary’s illiberal Prime Minister Viktor Orbán mocked the statement on Thursday, describing it as “sad” and “worthless,” and arguing that seats at the negotiating table must be earned “through strength, good leadership and smart diplomacy.”

ROBERT MCCONNELL
Co-Founder, U.S.-Ukraine Foundation
Director of External Affairs, Friends of Ukraine Network

The concluding remarks are Mr. McConnell’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation or those of the Friends of Ukraine Network (FOUN).

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