Lobby the US Consulate 3 Regent Terrace, Edinburgh EH7 5BW
Saturday 18th January, 1pm-3pm
Trump and Ukraine
No-one is under more threat from Trump’s election than Ukraine and its people. Trump, a self-declared admirer of his fellow authoritarian Putin, has boasted that he will stop the war in Ukraine “in a day”. Trump is unlikely to make good on his boast, although all parties agree on the inevitability of peace talks in 2025.
Likely Negotiating Positions
Zelenskyy has said he is prepared for talks and to temporarily cede the occupied territories in return for security guarantees and NATO membership for Ukraine.
Russia, as of June 2024, is demanding:
- Ukraine officially cede and the international community recognise Russia’s annexations of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, including the 25% it doesn’t occupy;
- Ukraine must officially end its plans to join NATO; and
- the lifting of all sanctions against Russia.
These positions are mutually incompatible. Russia’s is a demand for the effective neutralisation of Ukraine.
President Zelenskyy commented: “These messages are ultimatum messages. It’s the same thing Hitler did, when he said ‘give me a part of Czechoslovakia and it’ll end here’.”
Dimitry Medvedev, Putin’s one-time stand-in President, and senior security council member, confirmed this, stating that Russia would eventually annex the rest of Ukraine even if it agrees to Putin’s ceasefire demands.
Trump and Putin are both authoritarian heads of imperialist powers. Neither gives a toss about the rights of small and oppressed nations to self-determination, any more than Biden has done, viz. Gaza.
No-one knows what Trump will do, but he has already threatened to force Ukraine into making concessions by stopping economic and military supplies on which it depends.
Ukraine and the Ukrainian people alone must freely decide on peace terms acceptable to them. True friends of Ukraine reject both Russian and US bullying and threats against a sovereign people.
In the meantime the US, the UK, and Ukraine’s European allies should maintain and step up their economic and military aid to Ukraine. The Labour UK and EU governments should be prepared to break with Trump and replace any supplies withdrawn by the his administration.
We in the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Scotland, the USC UK, and in Europe will continue to Stand with Ukraine, the Ukrainian people, and with their trade union and civil society organisations who defend them, and to demand Russian troops out of Ukraine.