The leader of a nation fighting for survival has offered to stop fighting for its own land, as the US increasingly sides with the aggressor.
“Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine,” Mr Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday. “Both parties have agreed. Do not break it! Thank you for your attention to this matter.” Kyiv had been carrying out strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, particularly refineries, in retaliation for similar attacks the Kremlin has carried out in Ukraine.
ANALYSIS
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has offered a surrender.
He says he’s willing to halt attempts to recapture lands lost to Russia’s invasion at the current front line.
“We have to freeze,” the embattled President told Fox News overnight.
“And I think this is [a] real way to end this war. We call it ceasefire or [to] ‘stop killing’ like President Trump called it.”
The move comes after a week of intense pressure.
US President Donald Trump has accused Mr Zelensky of obstruction.
The Pentagon halted air raid warnings and intelligence sharing.
US tech oligarch Elon Musk ordered access to his Starlink satellite internet access choked.
And Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday agreed “in principle” to peace talks after the US midterm elections.
That, and the release of a 74-year-old US prisoner, prompted Mr Trump’s personal envoy, long-term friend and business partner Steve Witkoff, to dub the dictator a “humanitarian”.
Mr Zelensky is increasingly standing alone.
Footage reportedly shows young Russian conscripts being kitted out and boarding buses to start their military service as Moscow prepares to call up 120,000 men this autumn.
Five years of stoic resistance hasn’t proven enough to win meaningful support from the free world for his fledgling democracy of 40 million people.
Which may be why he’s suddenly willing to halt his grinding, but successful campaign to recapture lands lost to Russia’s invasion.
Foundation for the Defence of Democracies (FDD) founder and president Clifford May has voiced the shock many feel at this emerging scenario.
He’s penned an open letter to the 47th President of the United States.
“My point is that right now, the title, Leader of the Free World, is yours to claim or forfeit,” he writes.
“Vladimir Putin is hoping you forfeit it.”
Trump’s wild card
Mr Zelensky’s retreat comes after months of sustained assault from the White House.
Even as his own troops continued to slowly roll back Russian forces in the occupied Donbas district.
“Of course, we will go to [the] President and to Europeans, and we’ll ask [for] security guarantees,” he told Fox News.
“The most important is peace and also security [of] peace. Not to be afraid that occupation will come back. Aggression will come back. Killings will come back. We have to stop this and that’s why freeze and talks.”
The tipping point came last week.
Mr Trump announced a deal to buy Russian diesel and the lifting of a swath of sanctions in a bid to lower soaring US inflation ahead of national elections.
“We have given tremendous amounts to Ukraine. We’ve got nothing back, other than high diesel,” Mr Trump reiterated at an Oval Office press briefing on Wednesday.
“And the American taxpayers are tired of it.”
He blames one man.
“Zelensky doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Zelensky is a man that should have had this war settled a long time ago. If he would have listened to me, he would have made a much better deal a long time ago,” Mr Trump told reporters.
“I think it’s time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine because what’s happened? A tremendous number of people are dead. They’re losing their male population.”
Putin’s role in the catastrophe didn’t warrant a mention.
And that raised an eyebrow from the FDD’s Mr May.
“For nearly five years, [Putin’s] been waging a war against the Ukrainians, who have fought and bled to remain within the Free World they look to you to lead,” he writes in his open letter.
“Ukrainians are not asking for American boots on the ground, only that you support their defence of their independence, families, and freedom.”
Freedom is not a word Mr Trump applies to Ukraine’s plight.
“We want Zelensky to make a deal,” he told reporters.
“We’ve given a lot to Ukraine. We’ve gotten absolutely nothing back except grief, death, tremendous monetary loss.”
This line of attack has wounded the Ukrainian President.
“We have welcomed literally EVERY attempt by our partners to end this war with dignity,” he posted to Telegram on Monday.
Humanitarian humiliation
The White House is touting Moscow’s release of US military veteran and former teacher Stephen Hubbard this week as a major diplomatic victory.
The 74-year-old had been imprisoned in Russia for allegedly joining Ukrainian resistance fighters during the initial 2022 invasion.
Mr Trump cited his release as an example of Moscow’s co-operation.
“I had a very good talk yesterday with President Putin. I think he wants to get it done,” he explained.
“Zelensky doesn’t care, and frankly, with all of the money that Europe is famously giving him, and that Crooked Joe Biden gave him in the past, he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.”
The human toll of Putin’s invasion has been enormous.
And Mr Trump, like Putin, is now positioning himself as a humanitarian.
“Here’s a woman who’s, I guess, not exactly a very beautiful woman, nice woman, and she was on television recently talking about the fact that our men are gone,” Mr Trump told the assembled reporters.
“She’s a Ukrainian woman. And it was very poignant when I heard this. I said, ‘boy, that’s some statement’.”
The President claims 32,000 lives had been lost “between the both of them” in September alone.
“They’re mostly soldiers, mostly young soldiers, some people in a town that got hit or whatever, but mostly young soldiers,” he added.
“It doesn’t affect us much. It doesn’t affect us in theory at all. We’re not involved. What affects me is to see that many souls lost so needlessly.”
But the FDD’s Mr May appealed to the President to demonstrate consistency.
“You’ve spoken out about the violence that has erupted in France and the danger of Europeans surrendering to an Islamist-leftist alliance,” he writes.
“Ukrainians, by contrast, are defending their nation, culture, and civilisation. Doesn’t that deserve your support?”
But to Mr Trump, the war in Ukraine is a numbers game.
“You have a very big country in Russia. They have a lot of people. They have a lot of people to draw from,” he said.
“Ukraine does not have a lot of people to draw from, and it’s time to make a deal.”
Realities on the ground
Mr Trump does not want to offend Putin.
That, he explained last week, was why he dumped the oil sanctions.
“My decision on Russia is a very simple one,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.”
The following week, he moved to force Mr Zelensky to that same table.
Russian drones and missiles immediately took a dramatically increased toll on Ukraine once US air raid warnings and Starlink CEO Elon Musk’s internet services were severed.
The FDD’s Mr May can’t understand why.
“You proposed an ‘energy ceasefire’, an excellent idea which the Ukrainians said they would honour if Russia did,” he wrote to the President.
“But Putin continued to launch hundreds of missile and drones against his neighbour’s civilian energy infrastructure aiming to deprive Ukrainians of heat, light, and water as winter approaches.”
Putin wants to negotiate from a position of strength.
And he’s continued to insist he won’t cede any ground.
In fact, he demands more.
“The Russian armed forces were tasked not only with expelling the enemy from our land but also with establishing a security zone in the adjacent territory,” he said in a television address last week.
“Our goal is to ensure the absolute security of Russia’s border regions for the future, and we do not plan to make this a subject for potential peace negotiations with Ukraine.”
His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, detailed the 660km “security zone” plan.
The problem is, Russian forces only occupy about 70 per cent of the Ukrainian territory claimed.
It also represents a significant escalation of Kremlin demands.
It previously said it would accept the surrender of the entire Donbas district as the price of ending the war.
This new demand adds territory from Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkiv regions.
And that’s the kind of behaviour the FDD’s Mr May expects.
“It’s clear to me that Putin will not settle for just a slice of Ukraine,” he writes.
“[It’s] intolerable to Putin: a Slavic nation on his doorstep that is pro-American and democratic. That might give ideas to those he rules.”
End game
“Ukraine has to want to make a deal because the United States has spent a fortune. Europe has spent a fortune. Europe’s tired of it right now,” Mr Trump insisted.
“If they don’t make a deal, ultimately it’s just going to get, in my opinion, it’s just really just going to get worse.”
France’s far-right presidential frontrunner Marine Le Pen agrees.
“We can no longer finance Ukraine,” she told reporters in Brussels earlier this week.
“France today is in an extremely perilous situation.”
Despite saying the US got nothing from Ukraine, Mr Trump boasted of succeeding in doing just that.
“We gave 350 billion dollars to Ukraine, and you know I insisted on getting something for that money,” he told the Oval Office gathering.
“We got a very big chunk of land and rare earth and other things. If anybody remembers. Let’s see what that amounts to.”
The choice is clear.
Land. Money. Or democracy.
The FDD’s Mr May has little hope that Putin will hold up his side of any deal.
“Putin consistently ignores requests that come without teeth. Frustrating his imperialist ambitions will not make him love peace, but it might make him agree to a ceasefire – which I know you’d prefer over years of continuing carnage,” he writes to Mr Trump.
And the Russian President has his own agenda.
“Putin is in an axis with the Islamists in Tehran and the communists in Beijing and Pyongyang. These regimes are co-operating militarily, economically, and diplomatically. All want to diminish American power and put the very idea of a Free World on the ash heap of history,” Mr May concludes.
Meanwhile, Mr Zelensky just wants Ukraine to be free. He’s urged his people – at home and abroad – to remain resolute.
“This is the most important … not to be afraid,” he told Fox.