To the Editor:

Re “U.S. and Russia Eye Thaw in Relations as Diplomats Meet” (front page, Feb. 19) and “Zelensky Urges ‘More Truth’ After Trump Suggests Ukraine Started the War” (nytimes.com, Feb. 19):

President Trump is now blatantly and irresponsibly blaming Ukraine for the Ukraine war — “You should have never started it” — as he seeks common cause with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Mr. Trump’s headlong plunge into ending the war has all the signs of amateur diplomacy, with potentially destabilizing consequences for the United States, Ukraine and overall European security.

His hastily arranged summitry could essentially dictate, along with Mr. Putin, terms for a likely unacceptable peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia that relegates Ukraine and NATO allies to junior status.

It appears to be the president’s opening salvo in an unmistakable shift in American foreign policy focus away from Europe while strengthening ties with Mr. Putin. The president is clearly upending an 80-year period of European stability, held together by American guarantees.

Mr. Trump’s shortsighted foreign policy could embolden Mr. Putin in the future to again try to incorporate a less secure Ukraine into Russia and threaten a demoralized and weakened NATO as America disengages.

A fairly negotiated end to the Ukraine war — with solid security guarantees — would lead to that country’s rebirth. But Ukraine and the rest of Europe will always need an American security blanket, something they sadly may be about to lose, hopefully to get it back in a post-Trump world.

Roger Hirschberg
South Burlington, Vt.

To the Editor:

There shouldn’t be too much surprise over President Trump’s resetting relations with Vladimir Putin. After all, Mr. Putin’s rule over Russia is much more to Mr. Trump’s liking than that of the democratic governments of the NATO nations.

His admiration for dictators is well documented!

Doris Fenig
Boca Raton, Fla.

To the Editor:

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the United States and its Western allies have pursued a policy of more war rather than attempt to achieve a peaceful settlement.

I am no fan of Donald Trump, and didn’t voted for him for president, but I do feel that while it may seem messy, he is at least trying to end the war.

John A. Viteritti
Laurel, N.Y.

To the Editor:

During a recent interview on Ukrainian network TV, I was asked a sweeping question: “What message does America need to know about Ukraine at this moment of almost three years under siege?”

As a Ukrainian American who was born and grew up in the United States, I wasn’t sure I had the vocabulary, let alone the insight, to answer that question, but I summoned what I could. Americans need to see and know that Ukraine is more than destruction and casualties.

Our current president, vice president and secretary of defense have not seen how beautiful the country still is despite all the bombing. They need to realize that Ukrainians are fighting so tenaciously not just to defend borders but also to protect their very land, their very soil, which has nurtured the world with its grain exports for centuries.

This very land has been ravaged by its neighbor to the north not just in the current war but for centuries as well: the land grabs of the Russian Empire, the forced starvation (Holodomor) of millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s, vulgar industrialization by the Soviets and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.

Russia sees Ukraine’s varied land and its pluralistic population merely as resources to plunder. Time and again, it has proved itself capable only of destroying Ukraine and killing its citizens. Ukrainians know this history of invasion and destruction not just mentally but viscerally.

Seeing the beauty of its land and learning this history, U.S. leaders might comprehend simply this: Only Ukrainians can be entrusted to care for Ukraine, the land they love and nurture as sacred.

Marika Kuzma
Madison, Conn.
The writer is an emerita professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of “Carols of Birds, Bells and Sacred Hymns From Ukraine.”

The Republican Attack on Higher Education

To the Editor:

Re “The G.O.P.’s Next Target: Academia,” by Michelle Goldberg (column, Feb. 15):

We share Ms. Goldberg’s concern about the Trump administration’s “deep hostility to the entire academic enterprise.” As she points out, the effort to slash reimbursements for the indirect costs of scientific research will make it financially prohibitive for most colleges and universities to pursue the kinds of scientific discoveries that have long “fueled American scientific and technological dominance.”

This attack on basic science is just one component of a much larger takedown of higher education. The Trump administration and its allies in Congress also seek a huge increase in the excise tax on colleges and universities with large endowments; new taxes on student scholarships; hyperpartisan investigations of institutions suspected of continuing to pursue diversity, equity and inclusion goals; and the diminution or abolition of the Department of Education.

The full cost of undermining American higher education won’t be felt for many years. In this respect, it resembles the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development and its foreign assistance programs. While the immediate cost in lives, U.S. national security and “soft power” are enormous, the full impact will become apparent only years from now, as China and other countries fill the void we have left.

When the bill comes due, we will all have to pay it.

Glenn Altschuler
David Wippman
Dr. Altschuler is an emeritus professor of American studies at Cornell University. Mr. Wippman is president emeritus of Hamilton College.

A Former Watergate Prosecutor, on the Eric Adams Case

To the Editor:

Re “All the President’s Sock Puppets,” by Daniel Richman (Opinion guest essay, Feb. 17):

Kudos to Mr. Richman for lauding the prosecutors Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotten for their courageous refusal to carry out the craven and legally indefensible order of the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, to dismiss the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams of New York.

Their reasoned rejection of Mr. Bove’s order and the rationale he cited to support it were in the highest tradition of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, with its reputation for being apolitical and incorruptible.

Mr. Bove’s bad-faith order is made worse by hypocrisy: As an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District, Mr. Bove was eager to prosecute Jan. 6 rioters. But that was before he became one of the president’s minions.

Mr. Bove, like Robert Bork, who in 1973 carried out President Richard M. Nixon’s order to fire the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the infamous Saturday Night Massacre, has consigned his reputation to the dustbin of history. Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, both Republicans, cemented their reputations for integrity and righteousness by refusing to carry out Mr. Nixon’s order.

Richard Ben-Veniste
Washington
The writer, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, was an assistant special prosecutor on the Watergate Task Force.