Trump’s claim that Zelensky could have made a deal
In a Jan 24th interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump claimed that Zelensky could have made a deal with Russia at the beginning of the war. IN the excerpt embedded below, Trump claims “He shouldn’t have done that. Because we could have made a deal. It would have been a deal. It would have been a nothing deal. I could have made that deal so easily. And Zelensky decided that ‘I wanna fight!’”
In a fact checking article, The Kyiv Post (KP) made the following points:
“Simply put, Trump is conflating a non-existent fair deal with a total Ukrainian capitulation to Russia and the effective end to Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign state.”
[In April and May 2022 talks mediated by Turkey] “Russian terms to Ukraine for an end to hostilities were clearly stated by Russian officials including President Putin and they were brutal: Turnover of Ukraine’s Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions to Russia; reduction of Ukraine’s armed forces to a shell of 100,000 personnel, permanent Ukrainian neutrality; and Ukrainian “forever” commitment never to join NATO nor allow foreign troops on its territory.”
In addition to arguing that Zelensky had a moral obligation to reject such an unfavorable deal, the KP noted that “in the early months of the war public will to resist Russia was massive, recruiting centers were turning away volunteers.” Therefore they conclude with the following:
“Trump’s assertation that a deal surrendering Ukraine to Russia with Zelensky’s complicity, would have been agreed to by the Ukrainian population, implies that Zelensky had near total control of forces resisting Russian invasion, and that if his government had ordered a surrender. Ukrainians doing the fighting would have obeyed.
Arguably, Trump’s error in the Hannity interview is the same as the Kremlin’s was in 2022: He depicted Ukrainian civil society as obedient and subordinate to the political leadership, when in fact Ukraine is a democracy where voters expect the political leadership to execute the majority will.”