By David Sole
Anyone following the war in Ukraine knows one thing for sure – President Donald Trump has not fulfilled his promise to “end the war in 24 hours.” Not before his inauguration nor in the 100 days since taking office. His bogus campaign promise, inflated by his own sense of self-importance, has come in conflict with the realities of a complex military and political situation created by over a decade of US imperialist policies. Now Trump claims that he was only “joking.”
Trump did recognize that the Ukraine proxy regime has been losing the war despite hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment and financial support from the US and other western allies. One section of the US ruling class wants to redirect its military and economic power to confront the People’s Republic of China, something Trump has done with his tariff trade war against that socialist economic powerhouse.
But it is proving difficult to engineer a peace treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. Ukraine president Zelensky, surrounded by his neo-Nazi militarists, is unable to change course in any meaningful way toward a negotiated settlement.
The European Union powers and the United Kingdom are also committed to drastically increasing their military spending at the expense of their own population’s well-being.
Trump is also frustrated that Russia’s president Putin is in no mood, after more than three years of fighting to defeat the US sponsored Ukraine war, to settle for anything short of his main demands outlined at the beginning of the war in February 2022.
Even a ceasefire is not a simple matter between the warring parties. With Russia pressing forward along the entire line of contact and Ukraine short of soldiers and supplies, a negotiated ceasefire would have to ensure that Ukraine didn’t simply use the opportunity to rebuild and reinforce its troops in forward positions. So far there is no sign that Ukraine and its imperialist backers have any intention of stopping the flow of weapons and newly trained recruits to the front lines.
Russia also cannot forget the two peace accords it signed in 2015 (Minsk I and Minsk II) with both France and Germany pledging to stop the fighting that had broken out between neo-Nazi Ukrainian militias and ethnic Russian Ukrainians following the CIA sponsored coup in Kiev in February 2014. Those treaties proved worthless. Years later, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted publicly that the treaties were only agreed to in order for Ukraine to gain time to rearm. There never was any intention of recognizing autonomy for the eastern, predominantly ethnic Russian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.
The military situation has also further turned in favor of Russia with the complete defeat and destruction of tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops that flooded into Russia’s Kursk province in August of 2024. After some modest gains by the Ukrainian forces, the Russian forces, aided by allied troops from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, counterattacked, surrounded the heavily armed Ukrainians and systematically destroyed them.
Russian Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, General Valery Gerasimov announced on April 26 that the last of the Ukrainian forces had been routed. Only mopping up operations remained against stragglers that might still be hiding out in forested areas. Russian units are now beginning to occupy border areas in Ukraine’s Sumy province along the Kursk border.
The US is still shipping military supplies to Ukraine and sharing military intelligence with Kiev’s forces. The EU and UK are also pushing Ukraine to continue the war. Should Trump’s fragile ego get further bruised with failure to manage a real peace accord, there is no telling what he might do in his rage. Russia is not easily bullied. The New York Times reported on April 27 that Trump was reaching a breaking point when he sent out a text message saying that Putin might have to be “dealt with differently.”
Days earlier, however, the Times reported that Trump was pushing a proposal that would recognize the territories taken by Russia in the war as well as Crimea, the region incorporated into Russia following the 2014 fascist coup in Ukraine. The plan also would include a ban on Ukraine joining the NATO alliance, a main point of Russian policy.
Major negotiations involving the US, France, the UK, Ukraine and Germany were scheduled to take place on April 23 in London. At the last-minute Secretary of State Rubio and Trump’s Ukraine negotiator Steve Witkoff canceled their participation. Those talks were then downgraded for low level functionaries to continue.
It remains to be seen how Trump’s frustrations are exhibited – whether he totally abandons his Ukrainian proxies or whether he dangerously escalates the war to try to force concessions from Russia. Either way the US imperialist leopard has not changed its spots and only a strong anti-imperialist movement inside the US can secure peace and justice around the world. Such a movement must recognize that the people of the US have no interest in making war, direct or proxy, against Russia. And we have a duty to oppose the anti-China propaganda that has permeated the capitalist mass media for so many decades.
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