Trudy Rubin: As Ukraine falters, Trump tries to hand the country to Putin with a shamefully pro-Russia peace plan

While America has been obsessing over Jeffrey Epstein, Vladimir Putin has been making dangerous headway in Ukraine — and expanding his war into Europe.

Under such circumstances, genuine peace negotiations are impossible because Putin thinks he is winning. America’s top foreign policy priority should be to reverse the Russian leader’s mindset by increasing military sales to Ukraine — which the Europeans will pay for.

Instead, the Trump team and Russian officials together have drawn up a new 28-point “peace” plan, without first consulting Ukraine or European allies. This pro-Russian plan calls for major Ukrainian concessions and would leave the country naked to further Russian aggression.

The White House has already denied Ukraine the weapons that could still stop the Russians, thereby effectively helping Putin slaughter Ukrainian civilians nightly with missiles and drones that target apartment buildings and heating systems.

In pursuit of his mythical Nobel Peace Prize, Trump appears poised, yet again, to sell out Ukraine. If so, he will also be selling out our European allies — and the United States.

Most Americans don’t realize Russia is already at war with Europe. This new mode of hybrid warfare is carried out on land, air, and sea, but without ground troops — yet. Moscow is frequently using drones to shut down airports in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and Poland. Russian hackers are attacking European networks.

Russian ships are cutting Europe’s underwater cables, its warplanes are invading European airspace and buzzing military planes, and its saboteurs are carrying out assassinations and arson attacks, including failed plans to bring down European airliners.

Because this war is unconventional, and hitting individual countries in Europe, the European Union and its members haven’t yet figured out how to respond.

Putin seeks not only to frighten Europeans but to unnerve Americans, as well. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded last year that failed Russian arson attempts on planes were a “test run” for using similar devices on transatlantic cargo shipments, according to the Washington Post. And Putin frequently hints at nuclear war against the West.

Has Trump denounced such behavior, or warned Putin to stop his attacks on U.S. allies? Nyet. Only occasional grumbling has been heard from the White House.

The president probably never even took briefings on Russian sabotage. Anything negative about Putin is rebuffed as the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.”

Instead, Trump has been busy misusing U.S. forces to threaten war on Venezuela (which poses no military threat to America, and contrary to Trump’s claims, ships no fentanyl to U.S. shores). Perhaps this wag-the-dog war is meant to scare a weak Nicolás Maduro.

But Trump has made clear he doesn’t dare (or want to) stand up to Putin.

His new secondary sanctions on Russian oil sales haven’t been seriously pursued against India or China, which buy huge and increasing shares of Russian oil and gas.

Moreover, as Moscow takes advantage of Ukraine’s dire shortage of man power, air defenses, and long-range missiles, Trump refuses to help. Even though Europe has pledged to pay for key weapons systems for Kyiv, Trump won’t sell them.

Although Ukraine makes an array of drones, they can’t shoot down ballistic missiles or cope with Russia’s current mass production of drones, helped by thousands of North Korean workers and endless shipments of parts from China.

Promised U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems, which could take out the ballistic missiles, have never arrived in Ukraine. Only this week, after a nine-month delay, did Washington permit Kyiv to once again fire long-range U.S.-made ATACMS missiles. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had banned their use early this year.

And most cowardly, after hinting for months that he would send desperately needed long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, Trump finally came out with a big “No Tomahawks.”

There’s more. Although Ukraine is a world champion producer of all varieties of drones, and the United States lags far behind in unmanned warfare, Trump has yet to conclude a much-discussed drone deal with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whereby Ukraine would swap drones, technology, and testing for U.S. weapons.

Such White House blindness — and weakness — convinces Putin he can get away with destroying Ukraine.

And so the Russian leader is doing with a disastrous plan pushed by Trump’s supremely naive negotiator, real estate mogul Steve Witkoff, who has has no grasp of Putin’s history or goals and seems to swallow his lies whole.

Witkoff’s draft plan would reportedly require Ukraine to give up the 14 per cent of the Donbas region it still controls, and cut the size of its armed forces by half. It would require Ukraine to abandon key categories of weapons, endorse a permanent rollback of vital U.S. assistance including long-range weapons, and ban foreign troops from basing on Ukrainian soil.

And the deal provides no U.S. guarantees except lip service to protect against Putin’s certain violations in the future.

Trump might as well say publicly that he endorses Putin’s dream of swallowing Ukraine. He is effectively telling Ukraine and Zelenskyy: Drop Dead.

Putin isn’t fighting for a piece of land. He wants to absorb Ukraine back into the Russian empire.

Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian traitor and close Putin ally, whom the Russian president wanted to install in Zelenskyy’s place after the invasion, recently spelled out Kremlin goals to the official TASS newswire. He said that Ukraine will not “survive as a state” in the future, and Moscow considers the reunification of Ukraine with Russia a strategic goal.

Trump clearly doesn’t care.

The administration is pushing to strip language from an annual U.N. General Assembly Human Rights Committee resolution that recognizes Ukraine’s territorial integrity and rights as a sovereign nation. The U.S. delegation will vote against anything that condemns Putin.

Trump has made clear he believes Putin bears no blame for invading Ukraine (it’s all Zelenskyy’s fault or even Joe Biden’s). He has crossed over totally to the Russian dictator’s camp.

Unless he wakes up from his Putin-induced trance, he is incapable of making peace.

Although things look bleak for Ukraine, I believe its fighters will manage to hold back the Russians this winter, but at a brutal cost to civilians’ and soldiers’ lives. Trump will bear much blame for the suffering to come.

But after the Epstein-induced awakening of GOP members of Congress, I hope some Republican senators will find the courage to denounce Trump’s attempt to hand over Ukraine to Russia.

They should recognize that the retort of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R.-Ga., after Trump called her a traitor also applies to his position on Ukraine.

“Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is an American [who] serves foreign countries and themselves,” Greene said. With his heedless pursuit of Putin and a peace prize, Trump is serving the Kremlin, in service to his ego, as he attempts to sacrifice Ukraine.

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