OPINION - World War Three imminent? No, but the West is about to sell out Ukraine in a world-historic betrayal
As Vladimir Putin threatens nuclear escalation and Joe Biden promises to send more military equipment to Ukraine, there are warnings of “World War Three” on all sides. Pay them no heed. What lies ahead is not an apocalypse but a world-historic betrayal.
The present tensions are mostly a choreographed show of strength – in Washington and Moscow – to fill the time before Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. Having so often delayed the despatch of weapons or dithered over the use to which they might be put by Volodymyr Zelensky, Biden seeks to salvage some personal honour before he creeps from office and to give the Ukrainian president marginally more negotiating power when the talks begin.
For – be in no doubt – that is where we are heading. On Saturday, Zelensky himself conceded that the conflict “will end sooner” now that Trump is returning to the White House and that “for our part, we must do everything we can to ensure that this war ends next year".
How hard those words must have been for this soldier-statesman to utter. But Zelensky, who has fought with guile, valour and persistence since the illegal invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, knows that he must prepare his people for what lies ahead.
Trump has always insisted that, had he still been in the Oval Office, Putin would not have dared to embark upon this terrible enterprise. We shall never know whether this bombastic claim has any merit. What is certain is that the president-elect intends to bring the war to an end as soon as possible – “in one day”, as he puts it.
This is true, to the extent that the US, which has committed more than $60 billion in military assistance in Kyiv, can disable Zelensky’s campaign at a stroke by cutting off this supply. And Trump’s administration is foursquare behind this strategy.
Posterity will be unforgiving in its verdict upon the West and its craven, incremental abandonment of Ukraine
Pete Hegseth, the Fox News presenter he has nominated as Defense Secretary, is more interested in purging “woke generals” from the Pentagon than protecting Ukrainian sovereignty. Tulsi Gabbard, prospective director of national intelligence, has long been supportive of Russia. Even Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee as Secretary of State, has folded and now believes that the war “needs to be brought to an end”.
Worst of all, J.D. Vance, the vice president-elect, proposed in September that Putin should retain the land that he has already annexed, that a demilitarised zone be established along current battle lines and (the icing on the cake for Moscow) that Ukraine “doesn’t join NATO, it doesn’t join some of these sort of allied institutions”. Whether or not this exactly describes the deal that will finally be reached – Zelensky is no pushover – the direction of travel is all too clear.
On Tuesday, Keir Starmer stuck to the script that all western heads of government have observed since the day of the invasion, when the G7 pledged to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Ukraine. “We must ensure [it] has what it needs for as long as it needs to win this war,” the PM said en route to the G20 summit in Rio. Yet he knows that this is not true. Indeed, it is the opposite of the truth.
Why should we be surprised? We sold out Ukraine in 1994 with the Budapest memorandum when, in return for its handing over of the world’s third-largest nuclear stockpile, the US, Russia and the UK swore to respect its territorial integrity. We sold out Ukraine in the early 2000s when we encouraged and then dashed its dream of Nato membership. We sold out Ukraine in 2014 when Putin annexed Crimea. The great sell-out of 2025 – whatever its precise form – will only continue this shameful pattern.
“When the history of this era is written,” Biden said in his State of the Union address in 2022, “Putin’s war on Ukraine will have left Russia weaker and the rest of the world stronger.” How’s “the history of this era” looking now, Mr President?
Posterity will be unforgiving in its verdict upon the West and its craven, incremental abandonment of Ukraine. Putin will have his territorial gains, and the satisfaction that the international rules-based order has taken another body blow. Trump will claim that he has averted global conflict and – God help us – demand a Nobel peace prize. And the brave people of Ukraine will ask themselves what all the blue and yellow flags, all the social media posts, all the virtue-signalling really added up to, when we were going to betray them all along.
Matthew d’Ancona is a columnist for The Standard