Critiquing Trump’s Point About Russia, The G7, & Ukraine

Trump’s point is all over the place, being sensible, incomplete, and disingenuous all in one.

Trump shocked his G7 peers during their latest summit when he claimed that Russia’s special operation wouldn’t have happened if Putin wasn’t thrown out of the group in 2014. He described their decision as a mistake, said that it complicated diplomacy by removing him from the table, and added that Putin was so insulted that he now “doesn’t speak to anybody else” but him. Trump’s point is sensible but incomplete and arguably even disingenuous in some ways for the reasons that’ll now be explained.

To begin with, there’s a logic to arguing that the Ukrainian Conflict might not have escalated had Putin continued to meet yearly with his now-former G7 peers to discuss it in that format, but this ignores the fact that some of these same peers were manipulating him the whole time. Former French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel later admitted that the Minsk Accords that they agreed to were just a ruse for buying time to rearm Ukraine ahead of reconquering Donbass.

This leads to the next point about the Minsk Accords, which were agreed to after those two engaged in talks with Putin himself, thus contradicting Trump’s claim that Putin was so insulted by being thrown out of the G7 that he no longer spoke to any of his former peers from that group about Ukraine. In reality, he remained close to Merkel and later lamented that he’d been duped by her, who he truly believed shared his interests in politically resolving the conflict in order to then normalize Russian-EU relations.

Moving along, while Putin said in late December 2017 that he’s not against formal American participation in the Normandy Four format due to it already being part of the settlement through its involvement in the conflict, no tangible progress was made to bring this about. That was probably because he assessed at the time that the US might ruin those peace talks, not having yet realized that they were doomed from the get-go, by pressuring France, Germany, and Ukraine not to abide by Minsk.

The abovementioned observations are relevant since they prove that Putin was engaged in what he truly believed to be sincere diplomatic talks about Ukraine with G7 members France and Germany. At the same time, he also held talks with Obama, Trump, and Biden about this conflict too, none of whom did anything to coerce Ukraine into compliance with Minsk and thus avert the conflict that would later come. Trump is therefore just as guilty as his predecessor, successor, and his G7 peers at the time.

Actually, Trump might even arguably share a greater degree of guilt than any of them given how proud he is of having sold Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, which emboldened Zelensky to eschew his obligations under Minsk and later played an important role in repelling some of Russia’s forces early on. His guilty conscience might thus explain why he sought to shift the blame for Russia’s special operation onto others as well as make such a show out of trying to resolve the conflict despite no success so far.

With all this insight in mind, Trump’s point is all over the place, being sensible, incomplete, and disingenuous all in one. In the order mentioned: retaining Putin’s seat at the G7 table could have averted the special operation in theory; but only if his peers sincerely wanted to, which some of them didn’t; and Trump’s sale of Javelins to Ukraine emboldened Zelensky to refuse Putin’s demands for peace, thus making him partially responsible for the conflict, something that his ego will never let him admit.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/critiquing-trumps-point-about-russia