Why has Trump been so critical of Ukraine President Zelenskii over the ceasefire Trump and his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, Trump’s advisor, Steve Witkoff, and the US envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg have sought to achieve in over 100 days since his election 2024? Repeatedly, Trump has criticized Zelenskii over Ukraine’s refusal to agree to conceding Russian control of Crimea. Trump and his representatives in the talks create a ridiculous simple conundrum over why Putin might agree to controlling territories of Ukraine, while Ukraine refuses to cede territory to Russia.
One answer is based on a history of international agreements. Essentially, Crimea is a legitimate territory of Ukraine, later occupied by force by Russia. The constitution of Ukraine specifically includes Crimea, as it had been part of Ukraine since the former Soviet Union transferred this territory to Ukraine in 1954. While in 1992, the Russian legislature declared the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine to be illegitimate, this was a unilateral decision, not agreed by Ukraine.
From 2013-14, the Euromaidan Protests (centered on Maidan Square in Kyiv) led to protests across Ukraine and the pro-Russian President Yanukovych, who was a major target of the protests, fled Ukraine with assistance from Russian security services. Shortly after the presidential election of Petro Poroshenko in 2014, Russian forces seized Crimea and annexed the peninsula, legitimating its occupation by a staged referendum. In many respects, this occupation of Crimea was the first major step in the last decade of conficts that evolved into the War in Donbas and then the larger Russia-Ukraine War of today. Transferring this territory to Russia would be a major step toward appeasement of Russian aggression by the US and not legitimate from the perspective of Ukraine.
A more likely answer is that President Trump does not want to accept any blame for failing to end the Russia-Ukraine War. In his presidential campaign, Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine in one day. That turned out to be a naïve promise, based on a limited understanding of the history and complexity of the war. However, he can tell his MAGA-Republicans that he tried to be ‘fair’, but Ukraine refused to make this concession. Ukraine would be blamed for his failure to achieve his campaign pledge.
Increasingly, I find Donald Trump’s political ambitions to be a more consistent and parsimonious explanation of his policy decisions and flipflops than any rational theory of public policy.[*] If his followers don’t like a decision, he can flip it. And if he hurts those whom his MAGA-Republicans dislike, such as other nations, elite universities, and so forth, then he retains his popularity among his ‘base’, which could increasingly be the only group that will continue to support his actions.
Can it be this simple? I’m afraid so, but welcome your comments.
References
Dutton, W. H. (1975), ‘The Political Ambitions of Local Legislators’, Polity, 7(4), pp, 504-22.
Schlesinger, J. (1966), Ambition and Politics. Chicago: Rand McNally.
[*] If you know the political ambitions of a politician, you can better anticipate their behavior. This is called an ambition theory of politics (Schlesinger 1966; Dutton 1975).