photo by: Contributed

Jeff Robbins

Departing Alaska after a mega-hyped meeting with Vladimir Putin that gave the Russian dictator plenty to smile about, President Donald Trump trotted out the customary hogwash. It was, he proclaimed, “a great and very successful day in Alaska.” For some lucky salmon fishermen, perhaps, but not for Ukrainians, who have been victims of Russia’s bloody military campaign for three and a half years.

Trump has long been a Putin fan, and the feeling is mutual. He has parroted Putin’s talking points, taken Putin’s side against American intelligence agencies, cut critical American aid for Ukraine and repeatedly strengthened Putin’s hand, humiliating the United States and undermining European security. From Putin’s perspective, therefore, what’s not to love? Still, “a great and very successful day in Alaska” bore a jarring resemblance to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s famous self-congratulation after signing a peace treaty with Adolf Hitler blessing the latter’s annexation of a portion of Czechoslovakia, in exchange for a meaningless, promptly broken promise to refrain from further aggression. “Peace in our time,” Chamberlain declared after returning from Munich on Sept. 30, 1938. Eleven months later, Hitler invaded Poland.

In recent weeks, Trump’s approval ratings had dipped below 40%, and questions intensified about why the president, who as a candidate angrily demanded the release of law enforcement files relating to Jeffrey Epstein’s years of child sex trafficking, had turned so adamant that his old pal’s files never see the light of day. A rapidly scheduled, ballyhooed meeting between Trump and Putin to discuss some undisclosed, possibly nonexistent idea for ending Putin’s war against Ukraine was the master showman’s master stroke, quickly captivating the media.

En route to Alaska, Trump, who has sought to undercut the international opposition to Putin that Joe Biden skillfully fashioned, talked tough. If Putin did not agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine, Trump blustered, “I’m not going to be happy,” and there’d be “severe consequences.”

As usual, the story was very different. Trump rolled out an actual red carpet for the guy who invaded a sovereign country to conquer it, repeatedly, deliberately targeting its civilian population. There plainly was no preparation for the meeting, but none was needed: The meeting lasted just three hours, including the time required for translators to translate. It amounted to a kind of political “Seinfeld”: a show about nothing. There was no agreement. There was no evidence that there was anything close to an agreement. There wasn’t even any indication of what was discussed.

Afterward, the two made a brief appearance before a breathless press corps, issuing the most banal of banalities, and nothing that suggested that Putin intended to do anything other than what he has been doing. The press wasn’t permitted to ask questions. And then, quicker than you could say “We’re keeping Crimea,” it was over.

The Kremlin wasted no time crowing with satisfaction, and with good reason. Trump had praised Putin lavishly. He expressly nullified his own demand, made just hours earlier, that Russia agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine. Gone was talk of any “consequences” at all for anything Putin did or didn’t do, let alone “severe consequences.”

And even though it is Putin whose brutal invasion is the reason for the war, and although Putin had given not a single inch on anything, Trump reverted to blaming Ukraine for the conflict, placing the onus for ending it on Ukraine, effectively calling on it to capitulate.

“Now it’s really up to President Zelenskyy to get it done,” yammered Trump, silent on why “it” was “up to Zelenskyy” to terminate Putin’s war to conquer Ukraine, and what “it” was that Zelenskyy was supposed to “get done,” other than surrender to Putin.

If Ukraine received nothing from the elaborate photo op, Trump got what he wanted: an opportunity to continue blathering about how the 2020 election was “rigged” against him, citing no less an authority on democratically conducted elections than Putin. According to Trump, Putin, an expert on fair elections if ever there was one, had confided in him that voting by mail is tantamount to election fraud, and so, you see, Trump never really lost to Biden in 2020.

It’d be a joke if it weren’t deadly serious. In this particular case, it’s especially serious for Ukraine, which, from appearances, is about to become the 21st century’s Czechoslovakia.

— Jeff Robbins is a syndicated columnist with Creators.