Foul betrayals

A thoughtful description of Donald Trump's sell out of Ukraine to Putin comes from Kviv via David Rieff in The New Republic:

The Trump Presidency Is an Unmitigated Catastrophe for Ukraine 

Ukrainians aren’t shocked—they have a lot of experience in the betrayal business. ...

... the mood here in the days running up to the third anniversary of the start of the war has oscillated between despair and grim fortitude. It could hardly be otherwise, and for the obvious reason: With the rapprochement between Washington and Moscow, as exemplified by the U.S.-Russian talks in Saudi Arabia that excluded Ukraine, the presidency of Donald Trump has already been proven to be an unmitigated catastrophe for Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy apparently will be putting in an appearance in Washington this week to receive our Orange Toddler's ultimatum. There's plenty of speculation about how that will play out, but whatever results almost certainly will be horrible for Ukrainians -- and all of Europe now under the Russian imperial gun.

It's worth remembering the sort of figure Zelenskiy has been over the last three years.

Zelenskiy’s sang froid during his press conference, at what amounts to nothing less than the Trump administration’s betrayal of every promise and commitment the United States has made to Ukraine, both unilaterally and through NATO in concert with Washington’s European allies, was remarkable. It served as a gripping reminder of how important, for all his faults and both the military failures and failures of governance in Ukraine that have occurred during his watch, Zelenskiy’s leadership has been since, in the first hours of the full-scale Russian invasion three years ago, he declined the Biden administration’s offer to evacuate him with his family to Poland, defiantly saying, “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

Even the many Ukrainians who are disenchanted with him in general terms accept that the country could not hope for a better war leader. In this, the oft-made comparison between Zelenskiy and Winston Churchill is anything but hyperbolic. Like Zelenskiy, Churchill before the war was considered something of a buffoon, a political dilettante who had changed parties several times and who had done everything but distinguish himself during various periods as a government minister. And then, of course, immediately after the war, in the so-called “khaki election,” in which the votes of the war veterans proved dispositive, the British public voted Churchill out of office. 

But although many Ukrainians are predicting the same fate for Zelenskiy in a postwar Ukraine, as long as the war goes on, like Churchill between 1939 and 1945, Zelenskiy has proven himself the invaluable man. ...

Donald Trump is going to get away with his crime against brave Ukrainians -- just as he has skated on his crimes from his last tenure and most likely will continue to escape justice for his current even more corrupt and vicious assault on us here at home. This Friday's meeting may -- or may not yet -- resolve the shape of the Ukrainian betrayal.

A vigil in Chicago this week. Ukrainians are not without friends in the States.

Rieff goes on:

... European political elites misunderstood and misunderstand the U.S. in a way their Ukrainian opposite numbers never did. Betrayal is a good teacher in that regard. And throughout its history, from the days of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth to the subjugation of Ukraine by the Russian Empire to the murderous days of Red Power and the Moscow-made famine of 1932–1933, the Holodomor, to the contemporary era in which Ukraine was constrained to give up its nuclear weapons in return for independence and security from Russian revanchism, through to the Biden administration’s consistently insufficient grants of aid, to Donald Trump’s monstrous U-turn, Ukrainians have the misfortune to be connoisseurs of betrayal.

... Then there’s the victory of the Christian Democrats in Germany, and, more importantly, the statements by the soon-to-be Chancellor Friedrich Merz ... Donald Trump, Merz went on, had made it clear that his administration was “largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.” The message was clear: As far as Merz was concerned, the fate of Europe was inseparable from that of Ukraine. ...

... if Ukrainians continue to hope, what other choice—besides flight—do they have? Which is why this bitter defiant twist on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous theory of the five stages of grief—defiance, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—is now making the rounds in Kyiv. In the Ukrainian telling, the first four stages are the same. But instead of acceptance, the fifth stage is the polar opposite: It’s “Fuck you.” There are worse ways to prepare oneself for the ordeals that lie in store.

It didn't have to be this way. Biden got off to a good start against Russia's attack on Ukraine, but muffed the follow through. American elites of both parties never really warmed to defending Ukraine; perhaps they were always shamed by encountering a people that was so clear-eyed when it faced utter evil. This country -- so rich, so complacent -- basks in more muted colors.

For me, the historical analogy which the Ukraine war has always brought to the fore is of the European democracies' betrayal of the Spanish Republic in the 1930s. Oh sure, Britain and France were (mostly) glad to see the Spanish monarchy give way to a multi-party Spanish democracy. But that democracy was messy and contained leftist, pro-Soviet elements. Better to allow a Spanish Christian Fascist with German Nazi support go on to murder, pillage, and eradicate this unsavory, short-lived Republic.

In the '30s, abstaining from supporting Spanish democracy only meant Britain, France, and eventually the United States had to fight the Nazis a few years later. This time around, Donald Trump is bringing us in on the side of the Nazis. We, the citizens of these United States, also have been betrayed this week.