Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid a surprise visit to Kyiv on Monday along with other Western political leaders to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
It is an important, symbolic moment and comes less than a week after U.S. President Donald Trump’s public attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom Trump dismissed as a “dictator.”
Zelenskyy announced Trudeau’s visit on Sunday during a press conference. The Ukrainian president said the prime minister is one of 13 foreign leaders attending a summit on peace and security for Ukraine, and he hoped Trudeau would enlighten him on “what is happening with the relationship with the U.S.”
Washington and Moscow met to discuss how to end the war — an initial round of discussions that took place without Ukraine at the table and over the heads of European allies who Trump expects to shoulder the burden of a possible peacekeeping military deployment.
Trump made ending the war in Ukraine one of his signature campaign promises in last year’s bid to regain the White House — claiming he could end the bloodshed in one day. The notion was dismissed by Ukraine, Western allies and Russia itself.Â
The U.S. president suggested that Ukraine bears responsibility for the ongoing war, “should have never started it” and could have avoided the bloodshed by making a deal with Moscow.
The statements shocked international allies and some Republicans, including former vice-president Mike Pence, who took to social media last Wednesday to denounce his former boss.
“Mr. President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The road to peace must be built on the truth,” Pence said in a Wednesday post on X.
Much of what Trump said last week parrots Kremlin talking points.
At Issue this week: Donald Trump disrupts the world order when he calls Ukraine’s democratically elected president a ‘dictator’ and seemingly sides with Russia on the war. Canada’s political leaders pitch themselves as the right response to U.S. aggression. And Justin Trudeau unveils plans for high-speed rail.
Bill Monahan, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C., said Trump has talked a lot about peace through strength in Ukraine, but it appears to be “rhetorical flourish” without any real substance.
“I think [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is very happy he has been able to achieve one of his strategic goals, which is to create disunion and division amongst the United States and its allies in the transatlantic relationship,” Monahan said during an online press briefing last week, ahead of the anniversary.
“But as we go forward and define what our goals are for the negotiations, I think we’ll need to work very closely with our allies and with Ukraine to make peace through strength happen.”
At the moment, Russian forces control about 20 per cent of Ukraine, mostly in the east and southeast. Estimates from various Western and Ukrainian intelligence sources suggest that more than 800,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or severely wounded, making the war one of the deadliest conflicts for Moscow in recent times.
Last week, Zelenskyy said 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the start of the full-scale invasion, and another 390,000 have been wounded in action. Western intelligence agencies have put that estimate higher.
The United Nations estimates Russia’s invasion has cost more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians their lives, and many observers wonder how much longer the country can hold on.
“The biggest challenge we face [going forward] is confidence in Ukraine,” said retired U.S. Army lieutenant-general Ben Hodges, who spoke last week on a panel at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He said Ukrainians are wondering what the U.S. is going to do and what European powers will do in the face of Washington’s deal-making and potential withdrawal.
U.S. President Donald Trump said he intends to end the war in Ukraine, but exactly how that could unfold is up for debate. Andrew Chang breaks down what Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. all want from a resolution, and how conflicting interests make their goals incompatible. Images provided by Getty Images, Reuters and The Canadian Press.
“Are they going to be traded away for some grand deal? Or are we going to commit to help them defeat Russia, which is entirely within our ability to do if we had the political will? Or are we going to force them to accept some kind of settlement?”
Sam Greene, who is also at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said those are the same questions NATO allies are asking themselves concerning where negotiations over Ukraine are going.
Increasingly in the U.K., and potentially in France, he said, allies “are beginning to see the U.S. as part of the problem.”
And that, Greene said, is going to put pressure on Europe to come up with its own solution to the war on its doorstep.
