What are we to make of Trump’s Ukraine policy? | Matt Duss

In Trump’s jungle, the powerful make decisions the weak must simply accept – international law and human rights be damned

It’s been quite a week for US foreign policy. Following a phone call last week between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, US and Russian delegates met in Saudi Arabia to smooth relations between the two countries and discuss possible paths to ending the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine was not invited to the talks. Quite reasonably, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his country would not be bound by decisions taken without their participation. Trump responded to this by falsely claiming that Ukraine had started the war, and sought to undermine Zelenskyy’s legitimacy by claiming in a Truth Social post that he “refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls … A Dictator without Elections.”

Matt Duss is executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to the senator Bernie Sanders

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