You should always give peace a chance. That US President Donald Trump “thinks out of the box” is already the cliche of the moment.
And he may bring a fresh way of thinking and a new energy to ending Russia’s war in Ukraine where others have failed.
But there are some ominous signs already, bolstering fears Ukraine has been betrayed before the talks have even started.
Mr Trump could not bring himself on Wednesday even to say Ukraine and Russia were equal partners in any future negotiations.
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President Trump and Vladimir Putin shake hands in Helsinki in 2018. Pic: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Asked if they were, he said: “Hmm, that’s an interesting question.”
The Ukrainians, he said, “will have to make peace”.
“Their people are being killed, and I think they should make peace,” he added.
More worryingly, he seems as prepared as ever to trust Vladimir Putin.
He seems happy to take the word of a man who sent agents to Britain to kill with chemical weapons, who lied repeatedly about his plans to invade Ukraine, and who has murdered in cold blood every rival who dared to challenge him.
“He insisted that if it (the conflict) ends, he wants it to end,” Mr Trump said, as if that was all there is to it.
“He does not want to end it and then go back to war in six months.”
In the same way, Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938 waving a piece of paper declaring “peace in our time” after winning what he thought were similar assurances from Adolf Hitler.
For Ukrainians, the parallels with 1938 do not end there.
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They are being told even before negotiations start that they will have to give up some of their land that has been taken by brutal force.
Ukrainians compare that with Czechoslovakia being forced to hand over the Sudetenland to Hitler. Chamberlain believed that would be enough to appease Hitler. We all know what followed.
They have every reason to be worried.
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There is nothing in what the Russian president has said to make anyone believe giving him a fifth of Ukraine will be enough to appease him either.
In fact, in speeches, he has been emphatically and explicitly clear time and time again. He wants all of Ukraine because he believes it is part of Russia.
And then he wants the security architecture of Europe refashioned.
And Mr Trump seems to be caving into Mr Putin on that as well, giving into one of the key pre-war demands he made in 2021 before invading his neighbour, the reduction of America’s footprint in NATO in Europe that was declared by US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth in Brussels yesterday.
Trump is surrendering much of the leverage he had over the Russians before talks have even begun. This is from a man who declared in his book The Art of the Deal that leverage is everything in negotiations.
“Don’t make deals without it.”
Ukraine getting all land back ‘not realistic’
It is curious and inexplicable. Except that Mr Putin has always appeared to have some kind of hold over Mr Trump.
When they last met in Helsinki, the president sided with Mr Putin over his own spies on the question of Russian election interference.
As a spy in east Germany, Mr Putin was trained in KGB techniques of understanding your enemy and deceiving them.
He has used those skills all his career, not least with George W Bush who famously naively said: “I looked into his eyes and I saw a soul. I trusted him.”
If Mr Trump is persuaded to side with Mr Putin over Ukraine, a dictator will have been rewarded for invading his neighbour. Aggression will have prevailed.
A precedent will have been set that has alarming implications for other countries neighbouring Russia and further afield.
In the east, as he ponders how to seize Taiwan by force, China’s Xi Jinping will be learning lessons too.
The outcome of all this may well not be peace in our time. Quite the opposite.
