The Week: Ukraine—Shut Out from Peace Talks, Slammed by U.S.

• Elon Musk should combine his new and his old passions, and launch some federal agencies into the sun.

• The Ukrainian government has objected to its exclusion from recent peace talks Trump administration officials held with their Russian counterparts. It is now getting slammed by the United States, its ostensible ally. President Trump lambasted Ukraine for its frustration, saying Ukraine “should have never started” the conflict that began when Russia invaded and should have “made a deal” to end it. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed back, Trump called him a “Dictator without Elections” (Ukraine is under martial law) who “probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going.” Yet Ukraine is much more committed to democracy and the rule of law than Russia, whose malign autocratic leader Trump has never called “a dictator.” Ukraine is not the problem here—except to the Kremlin, which objects to Ukraine’s very existence as a sovereign state independent from Russia. Since 2014, Ukraine has endured a level of violence and criminality that reflects Russia’s utter contempt for the laws of armed conflict. Some in Trump’s ear contend that Ukraine antagonized Russia by seeking to join the Atlantic Alliance. Yet it was Ukraine’s integration with the European Union, not NATO, that inflamed Moscow, and it was the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych, Russia’s puppet in Kyiv, that occasioned the first invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in early 2014. The fact that Russia failed to conquer Ukraine in 2022 is a testament both to the determination of Ukraine’s defenders as well as Russia’s subpar military. But Moscow’s adventurism still poses a real threat to U.S. security and that of its treaty-bound allies on NATO’s frontiers. Ukraine won’t get all of its territory back or join NATO. Acknowledging this is cold-eyed realism; humiliating and undercutting an ally, perhaps with worse to come in the form of a sweetheart deal for Moscow, is not.

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• Elon Musk should combine his new and his old passions, and launch some federal agencies into the sun.

• The Ukrainian government has objected to its exclusion from recent peace talks Trump administration officials held with their Russian counterparts. It is now getting slammed by the United States, its ostensible ally. President Trump lambasted Ukraine for its frustration, saying Ukraine “should have never started” the conflict that began when Russia invaded and should have “made a deal” to end it. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed back, Trump called him a “Dictator without Elections” (Ukraine is under martial law) who “probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going.” Yet Ukraine is much more committed to democracy and the rule of law than Russia, whose malign autocratic leader Trump has never called “a dictator.” Ukraine is not the problem here—except to the Kremlin, which objects to Ukraine’s very existence as a sovereign state independent from Russia. Since 2014, Ukraine has endured a level of violence and criminality that reflects Russia’s utter contempt for the laws of armed conflict. Some in Trump’s ear contend that Ukraine antagonized Russia by seeking to join the Atlantic Alliance. Yet it was Ukraine’s integration with the European Union, not NATO, that inflamed Moscow, and it was the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych, Russia’s puppet in Kyiv, that occasioned the first invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in early 2014. The fact that Russia failed to conquer Ukraine in 2022 is a testament both to the determination of Ukraine’s defenders as well as Russia’s subpar military. But Moscow’s adventurism still poses a real threat to U.S. security and that of its treaty-bound allies on NATO’s frontiers. Ukraine won’t get all of its territory back or join NATO. Acknowledging this is cold-eyed realism; humiliating and undercutting an ally, perhaps with worse to come in the form of a sweetheart deal for Moscow, is not.