Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
President Trump had a simple but profound message about the Ukraine war during his campaign: "I want everybody to stop dying. They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying."
About two weeks into his second term in office, Russians and Ukrainians are still dying, and not just soldiers. On January 29, a Ukrainian drone killed a mother and her two-year-old child in Russia’s Belgorod Oblast. The following day, a Russian drone slammed into an apartment building in northeastern Ukraine, killing six people, who were described as three older married couples.
Trump has reportedly given his envoy to the conflict, Keith Kellogg, 100 days to end the war, and a purported leaked plan drawn up by the administration would call for a ceasefire by Easter to begin talks on a lasting peace deal.
But between now and then, many more Ukrainians and Russians will die. And for what? There’s nothing the US can do now to give Ukraine any real leverage over Russia. Time is on Russia’s side, and everybody knows it. Ukraine will have to make serious concessions to achieve peace, and that will be the situation now and in 100 days.
There are other reasons to stop the war besides the daily casualties. The risk of escalation is still very real as Ukrainian drones are flying into Russia on a daily basis and sometimes target very sensitive infrastructure, including nuclear power plants.
Contrary to what many believe, Ukraine did not build up its drone capabilities by itself. In its final days, the Biden administration decided to reveal a once-secret program that funded Ukrainian drone development to the tune of $1.5 billion. We also know that Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia are carried out using intelligence from the West.
Russia has shown that it doesn’t want to take the war to NATO in the face of Western-backed attacks on its territory, and it’s even more unlikely to do so now that there is a new US administration that’s at least talking about ending the war. But rogue elements of Ukrainian intelligence or even President Zelensky himself might decide to go for one big provocation, something Russia can’t leave unanswered, as a final desperate effort to get direct NATO intervention.
According to the leaked US plan to end the war, the US will direct Ukraine to lift martial law once a peace deal is reached. That means Zelensky will no longer have an excuse not to hold elections, and he is bound to lose after signing a deal that hands over a chunk of territory to the Russians.
Zelensky knows his days in power are numbered and that this war will be his legacy. He will be remembered for choosing to fight a war he could have never won instead of signing a deal in the first weeks of the invasion that would have ended the dying and left Ukraine much more intact than it is today.
For the sake of the Ukrainians and Russians who could die in the coming weeks and to bring the world back from the brink of World War III, Trump should get on the phone with Zelensky today and tell him it’s over.