If Donald Trump thinks Volodymyr Zelensky is out of cards now, he should have seen how the deck was stacked against the Ukrainian leader on the night of Feb. 24, 2022.
The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine was just hours old. The West had completely deserted Ukraine, pulling its military trainers and even its diplomats out of the country, expecting a rapid Russian conquest of Kyiv. Famously, many believed the war might be over in 72 hours.
Instead of folding, Mr. Zelensky and his inner circle stood outside the presidential administration building on Bankova Street in Kyiv to record a video that ricocheted around the world. “The President is here. We are all here,” Mr. Zelensky said, speaking into his mobile phone on that dimly lit night. “Our soldiers are here … We defend our independence. That’s how it will go.”
The video fuelled what has been a remarkable military effort by Ukraine – always outmanned and outgunned, but still in control of the capital and 80 per cent of their country’s territory. Many Ukrainian soldiers later said that seeing Mr. Zelensky broadcasting his defiance from Bankova Street was the moment they started to believe they could indeed resist the invading Russian army.
Three years later, Mr. Zelensky doesn’t need Mr. Trump – who berated the Ukrainian leader in a stunning Friday clash in the Oval Office of the White House – to tell him that his cards aren’t good. He knows.
But they’re far better than they were that night on Bankova. The Trump administration may well be abandoning Ukraine – Mr. Trump this week suspended all military assistance to Ukraine – but Mr. Zelensky received promises from Europe and Canada to create a “coalition of the willing” to stand with Ukraine. If Ukraine wasn’t willing to surrender on Feb. 24, 2022, there’s no reason it should now, just because Mr. Trump wants to end the war as quickly as possible, and largely on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s terms.
On Tuesday, Mr. Zelensky also rolled out his own vision of a peace plan, beginning with an exchange of prisoners and an immediate end to air and sea attacks “if Russia will do the same.” Moscow’s reply came hours later when it launched another mass attack, 115 drones and four missiles, on Ukrainian cities.
Pro-Zelensky demonstrators rally outside the U.S. embassy in Warsaw to decry Donald Trump and JD Vance's treatment of the Ukrainian leader.WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP via Getty Images
While Ottawa, London and Brussels are ill-prepared to defend Kyiv without Washington’s help, Ukraine is still in a far better position than it was in 2022, when it stood alone.
The history goes back much further than that. What the West often forgets is that this war began not with the start of the full-scale invasion three years ago, but in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and launched a proxy war in Ukraine’s southeastern Donbas region.
Many Ukrainians would point further back in history, to Stalin’s forced famine of the 1930s – Canada now recognizes the Holodomor as an act of genocide – as proof of Russia’s historic desire to eliminate Ukraine and Ukrainian-ness.
In 2014, the West again did little to help, eventually forcing Ukraine to agree to a pair of ceasefires – very similar to what Mr. Trump is trying to push on Mr. Zelensky – that froze the front line but did nothing to address the underlying causes of the conflict. All the while, Mr. Putin, who has made it clear he doesn’t see Ukraine or Ukrainians as worthy of a state of their own, was laying the groundwork for his next, larger invasion.
The Minsk agreements were so far from real peace that Ukrainians in 2019 voted out the president who had signed them, Petro Poroshenko (who is now being investigated for treason), and elected a TV comedian named Volodymyr Zelensky with a massive mandate to seek peace.
At the time, it was seen as Ukrainians tilting toward populism, a country tired of war (and corruption) electing a TV star with no political background to lead them out of a crisis.
And Mr. Zelensky tried to deliver. But after a single 2019 summit with Mr. Putin – presided over by French President Emmanuel Macron and then-German chancellor Angela Merkel – Mr. Zelensky, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian from a region of the country long seen as pro-Moscow, came away realizing that Mr. Putin wasn’t interested in a lasting peace deal.
This is the background behind Mr. Zelensky’s scowl as U.S. Vice-President JD Vance, who has never been to Ukraine, lectured him in the Oval Office about what was happening on the front line. (In truth, Ukrainian troops are losing ground along much of the 1,000-kilometre front, but have thus far prevented Russian forces from making any kind of strategic breakthrough.)
Watch how the Oval Office exchange between Volodymyr Zelensky and the U.S. President and Vice-President turned into a heated argument.
The Globe and Mail
The most telling exchange came at the end of the argument, when an angry Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky that he needed to accept a ceasefire “so the bullets stop flying and your men stop getting killed.”
“Of course, I want to stop the war,” Mr. Zelensky replied.
“But you’re saying you don’t want a ceasefire. I want a ceasefire,” Mr. Trump interjected.
Then came the moment of truth, where Mr. Zelensky made it clear that his people, his electorate, wouldn’t let him sign another Minsk-like ceasefire that made concessions to Russia, even if he wanted to agree. “Ask our people about a ceasefire, what they think,” Mr. Zelensky replied.
Ukrainians have been down the temporary solution road before. And they’ve also been forced to fight their larger neighbour alone, without U.S. help.
Given their history with Russia, Ukrainians and their President have chosen the latter course.