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      A Trump-Putin carve-up of Ukraine is indefensible | Letters

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      I look with horror and outrage not only at the patronising and hypocritical words of JD Vance in Munich (JD Vance stuns Munich conference with blistering attack on Europe’s leaders, 14 February) but also at the apparent attempt by Donald Trump to effect peace between Ukraine and Russia without including either Ukraine or Europe more generally (Trump says he has spoken to Putin and agreed to negotiate Ukraine ceasefire, 12 February).A peace that prevents any more bloodshed can only be a good thing, but it cannot be a carve-up in which Vladimir Putin achieves the victory that Ukrainians have so gallantly deprived him of on the battlefield. Or in which Ukraine is impoverished and emasculated by a greedy US and irredentist Russia.Moreover, if Europe and, by extension, the UK, are to be excluded from negotiations on the future of Ukraine and the continent, under no circumstances should British or other European troops be used in a peacekeeping role.The idea that Trump thinks he can cut a deal with Putin, rob Ukraine of her mineral wealth and then leave Europe to pick up the pieces is disgraceful beyond belief. We should not fall for it.It is unacceptable that British lives be risked for the knavery of Trump and his acolytes. If the US wants European troops on the ground, we get a place at the negotiating table. No ifs, no buts. No taxation without representation: is that not a founding principle of US democracy?William SeafordNewport If Donald Trump is determined to upend post-1945 international structures, as seems likely given his vice-president’s speech, then both sides of the Atlantic need to contemplate the full meaning of a transactional approach to security. Maybe British politicians will stop kidding themselves about the so-called special relationship, which has only ever been special to the Americans when it suited them. At the same time, perhaps someone can inform Trump that it is a mistake to evaluate defence alliances like real-estate deals.Should the president pay a visit to the UK, as Keir Starmer seems to hope, I suggest he be taken to visit the Iraq and Afghanistan memorial in Victoria Embankment Gardens, London, where he’ll be reminded of the 626 UK military personnel who died in furtherance of American wars in those countries between 2001 and 2014. Given the popular reverence for veterans in the US, the Maga movement might find our military sacrifice is one of the few aspects of the North Atlantic alliance it can’t easily dismiss.If Trump then still ditches Europe in favour of deals with Putin, it needs to be made clear that self-interest works on both sides. The US won’t be able to expect its former allies to fall in line behind it in the same way it has commanded since the end of the second world war.Mark CottleMaesygwartha, Monmouthshire As Simon Tisdall pointed out a year ago in the Observer, the UK cannot maintain its Trident nuclear deterrent without the active support of the United States. There now appears a high risk that the US will want to be able to veto the use of Trident by the UK and/or to extract a high price for any continued support. Isn’t it time to think about mothballing Trident and redirecting that funding to conventional defence capacity in Europe?Simon RewLondon More

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      JD Vance and those threats from within | Letters

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      Among the justified furore around America’s new position in the world, one part at least triggers a bit of nostalgia (JD Vance stuns Munich conference with blistering attack on Europe’s leaders, 14 February). JD Vance’s description of the “threat from within” brings back memories of Margaret Thatcher’s designation of those who disagreed with her as “the enemy within”. I still have a badge with that somewhere. Maybe it’s time I dusted it off.Steve TownsleyCowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan As JD Vance lectures European leaders about freedom of speech, Louisiana is banning health officials from promoting vaccinations and libraries across the US are having to purge their shelves of any books that make mention of subjects that Republicans dislike. No hypocrisy there, then?Tony GreenIpswich, Suffolk Britain thought it had a special relationship with the US. Seems we got dumped on Valentine’s Day.Emma TaitLondon Your report (‘Guess who’s back?’: the inside story of Nigel Farage’s quest for power, 15 February) confirmed what I already suspected: Reform is basically a party run by millionaires, for the benefit of millionaires, with a good dollop of nativism added to the mix.Alan PavelinChislehurst, Kent Re remarks in school reports (Letters, 14 February), my favourite is from around 1971, courtesy of a great history teacher: “Intelligent answers, a mastery of the facts would help.” I’m sure CP Scott would have agreed with him.Kevin McGillPrestwood, Buckinghamshire More

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      ‘The US is ready to hand Russia a win’: newspapers on Europe’s Trump shock

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      This year’s Munich security conference exposed the chasm in core values separating the Trump administration from most Europeans and sparked deep alarm at US efforts to control the Ukraine peace process and exclude European governments from it.Here is what some of the main European and US newspapers had to say about it.Le MondeThrough JD Vance, its vice-president, the US has “declared ideological war on Europe”,wrote Sylvie Kauffmann for the French title. If Vladimir Putin turned on the US in a famous 2007 speech at the conference, in 2025 it was the US that turned on Europe.In a “virulent diatribe against European democracies he accused of stifling freedom of speech and religion”, Vance said the greatest threat to the continent was not Russia or China but Europe’s own retreat from some of its “most fundamental values”.Worse, his relative silence on “the topic Europe most wanted to hear him on”, Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, “prolongs the incomprehension and confusion over Trump’s initiative aimed at ending the war”, Kauffmann said.“A thick fog now surrounds Washington’s intentions; between the public statements of Vance and the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the various interviews followed by denials, contradictory positions have multiplied,” she said.New York TimesThe US administration had done nothing less than “offer what may be a preview under Mr Trump of a redefinition of a transatlantic relationship built on postwar bonds of stability between allied governments”, the paper said.It too reminded readers of Putin’s 2007 speech in which the Russian president “demanded the rollback of American influence and a new balance of power in Europe more suitable to Moscow”, adding that he “didn’t get what he wanted – then”.Now, top Trump officials had “made one thing clear: Putin has found an American administration that might help him realise his dream”. The comments raised fears the US may now “align with Russia and either assail Europe or abandon it altogether”.Such a shift, the paper said, would amount to “a previously unthinkable victory far more momentous for [Putin] than any objectives in Ukraine”.Süddeutsche ZeitungCommentator Daniel Brössler said in the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung that Vance had not come to the German city to give “a friendly wake-up call”, but as “an arsonist”. The US vice-president’s mission was “the triumph of rightwing populism – with the backing of America’s billionaire chief Elon Musk”.His silence on security policy was because “work has already begun on a deal with Putin at the expense of Ukraine, but also of Europe … This much is clear: Trump will make the deal, and the Europeans will have to pay and secure peace militarily.”Europe, Brössler said, was being attacked “by Putin, who has come a good deal closer to his goal of revising the European order in recent days. And by Trump, who no longer even recognises common interests – and certainly not common values.”On the one hand, the US “is demanding Europe finally become capable of defending itself against Russia. On the other, it is backing Putin’s henchmen and appeasers”, from Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, to the Alternative für Deutschland co-leader Alice Weidel.The continent, he said, “will have to rise above itself”. Editorialist Detlef Essinger said Vance had deployed “a trick that populists and authoritarians have used for years … The principle is: accuse others of exactly everything that you do yourself.”This “confuses them. It puts you on the offensive, and your opponents on the defensive. It gives you sovereignty over the terms. And a debate is not won by the person who has the better arguments, but by the person who owns the terms.”The Kyiv Independent“The US administration is ready to hand Russia a win in its brutal war against Ukraine. That’s the only conclusion we can make,” the paper said in a blunt editorial. The words and acts of Trump and his team go “beyond appeasement”.But, it added, while the US may be “the biggest and richest ally Ukraine has”, it is far from the only one: “That means all eyes are on you, Europe. The real decision on whether Russia wins the war doesn’t actually sit with Trump now – it’s with Europe.”Europe’s leaders, if they are “real leaders of their nations and not political opportunists, need to recognise the urgency of the situation, and act now. After all, if the US is out and Ukraine falls, Europe will be left to face Russia one on one.”Russia, the paper said, “is not at war with Ukraine, it’s at war with the west. And if a significant part of the west deserts, the rest needs to make sure to show up for battle.” Nobody, it said, wanted the war to end more than Ukrainians do.“But we understand that any compromise with Russia won’t be the end of the war. There can’t be a compromise in this war. Russia wins – the west loses. The west wins – Russia loses. Europe, the time is now.” More

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      Zelenskyy says Russia will ‘wage war on Nato’ if US support for Ukraine wanes

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      Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday predicted Russia would “wage war against Nato” if the US stepped back from its support of Ukraine – and that he had seen intelligence suggesting that the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, was building up troops for a possible military invasion of another European country.The Ukrainian president made the claim on the NBC show Meet the Press in a wide-ranging interview ahead of an emergency summit of European leaders in Paris to discuss Russia’s war on Ukraine – and peace talks between US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia.“It can happen in summer, maybe in the beginning, maybe in the end of summer. I do not know when he prepares it,” Zelenskyy said. “But it will happen. And at that moment, knowing that he did not succeed in occupying us, we do not know where he will go.”Zelenskyy added that he believed Putin’s next targets could be Poland and Lithuania – which were occupied during the second world war by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union – “because we believe that [Russian president] Putin will wage war against Nato”, the international military alliance formally known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.Zelenskyy said he had viewed documents indicating that Putin was “preparing to train 150,000 people” in Belarus, a staunch ally of Moscow – and that he had shared that intelligence with allies.The Russian leader, Zelenskyy said, wanted to “show it for the world that it is just training” and would claim “that these are exercises that are always ongoing” in Belarus.“But it’s not truth,” Zelenskyy said. “From such point, he began the occupation [of Ukraine] three years ago. Full-scale war he began from some symbolic trainings. The missiles the first night flew from Belarus, and the invasion came from Belarus.”Zelenskyy insisted he still had trust in Donald Trump’s ability to negotiate with Russia after beginning his second US presidency in January. But Zelenskyy said he would not accept any peace agreement that excluded Ukraine from the negotiating table. He also said that some of the “messages” coming from the US in recent days, such as Vice-President JD Vance’s speech in Munich denouncing European leaders, and Trump’s comment that Ukraine “may be Russian some day”, were “a disappointment”.In a recent exclusive interview with the Guardian, Zelenskyy stressed that Europe could not guarantee Ukraine’s security without US help – and he returned to the theme in his Meet the Press interview.“There is no leader in the world who can really make a deal with Putin without us about us,” he said, speaking in English.“Of course, the US can have a lot of decisions, economical partnerships, etc. We’re not happy with it, but they can have [them] with [the] Russians. But not about this war without us.“There are messages, which, you know, make disappointment for a lot of leaders of Europe, because they also feel sometimes that they are out of decisions.“They have to be in unity with the US otherwise, not only [can the] US lose Europe as a strategic partner, Europe also can lose the US.”His comments mirrored the alarm of European leaders at the US’s backpedalling over support for Ukraine, and Trump’s cozying up to Putin in a recent phone call, which many have portrayed as a capitulation.In advance of Vance’s divisive speech at the Munich Security Conference, European powers including Britain, France and Germany said there could be no lasting peace in Ukraine without their participation in peace talks.After it, some, including the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, took Vance to task for his comments questioning the future of the decades-old US-European alliance. Scholz also accused the US of “unacceptable interference” in its upcoming election after praise from Vance and the billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s “special government employee”, for the far-right nationalist party AfD.Zelenskyy, who in Munich on Saturday called for the formation of an armed forces of Europe, told NBC that any weakening of US support for Europe or Nato would open the door to Putin’s plans for a territory grab.“What is he waiting for? For a weakening of Nato by, for instance, policy of the US, that the US will think to take its military from Europe,” he said.“Yes, Putin thinks of that. But I will believe that the US will not take its forces, its contingents from Europe, because that will severely weaken Nato and the European continent. Putin definitely counts on that, and the fact that we receive information that he will think of the invasion against former Soviet republics.“The risk that Russia will occupy Europe is 100%, not all Europe, they will begin [with] those countries who are our friends, small countries who’ve been in the USSR, in the Soviet Union. Forgive me, but today these are Nato countries.” More

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      The courts separate democracy from autocracy. Will Trump defy them?

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      Will the Trump administration defy the courts?JD Vance’s tweet last weekend that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power” has sparked widespread concern that the Trump administration might become the first in US history to do so. At least at this stage, it is not clear that it will come to that, notwithstanding the president’s proclivity for asserting limitless executive power. But as other countries’ experiences show, if he were to adopt the position of the US vice-president, Trump would be crossing perhaps the most fundamental line demarcating constitutional democracy from autocracy.Consider just a few examples. In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez spent years undermining the country’s supreme court, declaring that it lacked “legitimate and moral authority”. The former president later refused to comply with a 2003 order to demilitarize the Caracas police force, instead tightening military control over law enforcement to entrench his power. In Hungary, after failing to enforce rulings of the constitutional court, Viktor Orbán’s government openly defied the European Union’s highest court’s ruling finding Hungary’s restrictive asylum scheme in violation of EU law. Likewise, in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan systematically ignored domestic and European court of human rights rulings that ordered the government to release journalists and other political activists critical of his government.Nothing is more challenging to an authoritarian than an independent judiciary ready to hold the leader accountable. When would-be authoritarians perceive judicial oversight as a threat, they respond by dismissing and defying court rulings or otherwise undermining judicial independence. By the time the authoritarian takeover is complete, the judiciary is rendered toothless. Courts are especially vulnerable to such moves because they do not have their own enforcement arms.To be sure, we are not there yet. But Vance seems to see these examples not as object lessons in what not to do, but as models for the US president to follow. In 2021, Vance said his “one piece of advice” to Trump for a second term would be to “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people … And when the courts – because you will get taken to court – and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’” (It is disputed whether Jackson even said this, but in any event he never defied the court.)In Trump’s last term, he had a worse won-lost record in the supreme court than any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt – yet he abided by all court orders. And in the wake of concern about Vance’ s comments, Trump said he always obeys courts, but will pursue appeals. Thus far, that seems to be the case. But no responsible government official – much less the No 2 official in the executive branch – should even suggest that defying the courts is appropriate.View image in fullscreenTrump’s right-hand man, Elon Musk, is also fanning the flames. On 8 February, hours after a federal judge in New York temporarily blocked Musk’s team from accessing sensitive personal information held by the Department of the Treasury on millions of Americans, Musk shared a tweet from another user saying: “I don’t like the precedent it sets when you defy a judicial ruling, but I’m just wondering what other options are these judges leaving us.” The next day, Musk posted: “A corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached NOW!”On 12 February, Musk tweeted: “Bravo!” in response to a claim by El Salvador’s autocratic president, Nayib Bukele, that he had impeached judges in 2021 “and then proceeded to fix the country”. Musk added: “We must impeach judges who are grossly undermining the will of the people and destroying America. It is the only way.” Bukele’s removal of five constitutional court judges in 2021 is widely regarded as a “technical coup” that paved the way for him to seek re-election in violation of constitutional term limits. Musk is no lawyer, but he should know that in the US, impeachment is reserved for “high crimes and misdemeanors”, not decisions Musk does not like.Government officials are of course free to criticize court decisions. But Vance’s and Musk’s comments echo those of authoritarian regimes around the world, which often seek to undermine the legitimacy of any institution that might constrain their actions – the courts, the press, the non-profit sector. The criticism is often the first step in a campaign to sweep away all constraints.The federal courts in the US system are given independence and final say on legal disputes so that they can act as a check on the political branches. In 1975, the supreme court explained that “all orders and judgments of courts must be complied with promptly.” Indeed, the chief justice, John Roberts, in his annual end-of-year report on the federal judiciary in 2024, identified “threats to defy lawfully entered judgments” as one of the core issues that “threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends”.The moment of truth may come soon. More than 60 lawsuits have been filed challenging Trump’s initial measures – from seeking to revoke birthright citizenship to freezing federal funding. Nearly every court to rule thus far has ruled against the administration.Were the Trump administration to follow Vance’s and Musk’s advice and defy the supreme court, the fallout would be swift, widespread – and justified. The supreme court has limited formal resources to compel the president to follow its dictates, because the president, not the courts, oversees federal law enforcement. Despite that formal reality, defiance would be an impeachable offense – and if the Republican party stood behind the president at that point, it would pay greatly at the polls. That’s because few principles are as fundamental to the American system as the notion that the supreme court has final say on constitutional and statutory issues and its orders must be obeyed. Trump would cross that line at his own, his party’s, and the country’s peril.

      Amrit Singh is a law professor and executive director of the Rule of Law Impact Lab at Stanford Law School. David Cole is a professor at Georgetown Law and former legal director of the ACLU More

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      The courts are a crucial bastion against Trump. What if he ignores their orders?

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      Years before he became the US vice-president and openly advocated defiance of the courts over the Trump administration’s blitz through the federal bureaucracy and constitution, JD Vance revealed his contempt for legal constraints.In 2021, Vance predicted that Donald Trump would again be elected president and advised him to “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people”.“Then when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it,’” he told the Jack Murphy Live podcast.Whether the seventh American president actually said that remains disputed, but the sentiment is alive and well as the Trump administration defies federal court orders to at least pause its subversion of the constitution and destructive rampage through the federal bureaucracy led by Elon Musk.In the absence of action by Congress to defend its powers, it has been government workers, state attorneys general and unions who have counterattacked, with a flurry of lawsuits – challenging presidential orders to limit the constitutional right of anyone born in the US to be a citizen, a federal funding freeze, and the dismissal of corruption watchdogs, among other measures. Nearly 50 legal challenges have been filed in the last three weeks, an unprecedented pushback in the courts against a new administration.The lawsuits have resulted in a string of court rulings. They have put a hold on some of Trump’s executive orders freezing some spending. They have also restricted Musk, head of the so-called “department of government efficiency”, from sending his staff to rifle through the financial records of federal agencies such as the US Agency for International Development (USAid) and the education department as a means to restrict their work or even close them down.But it quickly became apparent that the administration was defying some of the court orders, while its supporters attacked what they called “rogue judges” for ruling against Trump – and Vance portrayed the courts as just another bureaucratic obstacle to the president implementing the people’s will.That has prompted warnings from legal scholars, including Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley law school, of a constitutional crisis in the making.“It’s very frightening to think that they will disobey court orders. If they don’t, it will be a constitutional crisis unlike anything this country has seen, because if the president can violate constitutional laws and disobey court orders then the name for that is a dictatorship,” he said.“This isn’t the realm of normal. What we’ve seen in the first three weeks is unprecedented in American history.”The judge John McConnell has accused the Trump administration of deliberately disobeying an order obliging the government to reinstate billions of dollars in grants. Another judge, Loren AliKhan, accused the administration of defying its legal obligations after she ordered the office for budget and management (OMB) to halt a spending freeze.Vance pushed back against the rulings on X.“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” he wrote.“Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”Musk called for one of the judges involved to be impeached.Trump won a victory on Thursday when a judge ruled in favour of Musk’s offer to almost all of the 2 million-strong federal workforce of eight months of pay for not working if they resign now. The email’s subject line, “Fork in the Road”, was the same as one he used in a message to employees when he bought Twitter in 2022 and got rid of about 80% of its staff. Shortly after the deadline set by the email for voluntary redundancy, which was accepted by about 65,000 federal workers, unions said involuntary dismissals had begun.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, praised the rare court victory.“This goes to show that lawfare will not ultimately prevail over the will of 77 million Americans who supported President Trump and his priorities,” she said.But mostly the courts have so far ruled against the Trump administration as it pursues a power grab.The American Bar Association, which represents hundreds of thousands of lawyers in the US, has condemned what it called the Trump administration’s “wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself”.“We have seen attempts at wholesale dismantling of departments and entities created by Congress without seeking the required congressional approval to change the law,” it said.The ABA also condemned “efforts to dismiss employees with little regard for the law and protections they merit” and social media posts intended “to inflame”.“This is chaotic. It may appeal to a few. But it is wrong. And most Americans recognize it is wrong. It is also contrary to the rule of law,” it said.It’s likely that at least some of the flood of lawsuits will end up before the supreme court. The administration may in fact want to see some cases reach the highest court, which has a solid conservative majority after Trump appointed three of its nine justices during his first term, as it seeks to consolidate even more power in the presidency over issues such as who has final control over spending allocated by Congress.But the process of moving through district and appeals courts before making it to the supreme court is unlikely to be swift, by which time Musk may already have achieved much of what he aims to do in wrecking the work of USAid, the education department and other federal agencies.Then there is the unpredictability of a supreme court that has already overturned precedent in striking down the right to abortion.Chemerinsky believes the Trump administration is all but certain to lose cases on birthright citizenship, the freeze on spending and the dismissals of commissioners that oversee labour rights, consumer protection and equal employment opportunities, because they are in breach of federal law. He said the court was also likely to order the administration to back down from attempts to eliminate individual agencies created by Congress.But what if the administration follows Vance’s call to openly defy the courts? Chemerinsky said that would set up “a constitutional confrontation unlike any we’ve seen”.“The courts have limited ability to enforce their orders. They could hold individuals other than the president in contempt of court. They could figure out who’s responsible for carrying out the court order and hold that person in contempt with fines or jail for civil contempt. But the idea of the courts holding a cabinet secretary, an attorney general, a secretary of defence in contempt is just unheard of in the United States,” he said.“It’s so hard to imagine where we’ll be in four years. When you think about what’s going on in just three weeks, it’s certain Donald Trump is claiming expansive executive power beyond what any president has ever asserted. How much will the courts allow that? There’s no way to know.” More

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      Trump and Vance are courting Europe’s far right to spread their political gospel

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      The Trump administration is making a big bet on Europe’s hard right.Speaking at a conference of Europe’s leaders in Munich on Friday, the US vice-president JD Vance stunned the room by delivering what amounted to a campaign speech against Germany’s sitting government just one week before an election in which the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim AfD is set to take second place.As Vance accused foreign leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs, a whisper of “Jesus Christ” and the squirming in chairs could be heard in an overflow room.Hours later he met with Alice Weidel, the leader of the AfD, breaking a taboo in German politics called the “firewall against the far-right”, meant to kept the anti-immigrant party with ties to extremists out of the mainstream and of any ruling coalition.“It’s an incredibly controversial thing for him to do,” said Kristine Berzina, the managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Geostrategy North, who was at the Munich Security Conference.The backing of Vance – or Elon Musk, who recently gave a video address at an AfD party summit – is unlikely to tilt the result of Germany’s elections, said Berzina. And it’s unlikely to browbeat the ruling Christian Democratic Union, which should win next week’s vote, into allowing AfD to enter any coalition.But the US right under Trump does have its eyes set on a broader transformation in Europe: the rise of populist parties that share an anti-immigration and isolationist worldview and will join the US in its assault on globalism and liberal values. They see those leaders in Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, as well as the UK’s Reform party and Marine Le Pen in France.“It is personal and it is political in terms of far-right political alignment,” she said. “It also opens the door to what other unprecedented things are we going to see in terms of the US hand in European politics.”Could the US president even threaten serious policy shifts like tariffs based on an unsatisfactory German coalition? “That would be normally unthinkable,” she said in response to that question. “But in 2025, very little is unthinkable.”Trump has claimed a broad mandate despite winning the popular vote by a smaller margin than any US leader since the early 2000s. And he seeks to remake politics at home and redefine the US relationship with its allies abroad, many of whom attacked him personally in the wake of the January 6 insurrection and his second presidential campaign.Vance also wanted to antagonise Europe’s leaders on Friday. He refused to meet with Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor who should be among the US’ key partners in negotiations with Russia over the future of the war in Ukraine. “We don’t need to see him, he won’t be chancellor long,” one former US official told Politico of the Vance team’s approach.That speaks to a trend in the Trump administration’s thinking: that voters abroad will handle what his negotiations and alliances cannot. As Vance stunned the European elite on Friday, he told them that “if you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you”.“You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years,” he said.This is something that Vladimir Putin, who waited years for the return of a Trump administration, knows well regarding his war in Ukraine: sometimes you have to bide your time until conditions are right.And it’s something that Trump intimated about Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he riffed on his plan to end the war through negotiations that would cede Ukrainian territory and give up Kyiv’s designs on Nato membership.“He’s going to have to do what he has to do,” Trump said of Zelenskyy agreeing to a deal. “But, you know, his poll numbers aren’t particularly great.” More