Dominic DeGrinney, Staff Writer 

Almost three years have passed since the Russian government led by Vladimir Putin declared war on the Ukrainian people, claiming Ukraine’s existence was a “fabrication of history.” This warped perspective is itself a bastardization of the history of the Eastern Slavic peoples and of the dangerous result of another authoritarian regime justifying their violence with nationalism. 

Over the past three years, the conflict has seen the displacement of over 10 million Ukrainians and one million killed, according to Western news outlets. Ukraine and Russia are both exhausted from the war, with Russia notoriously having deployed prisoners with commuted sentences and North Korean soldiers. Ukraine is stated to have limited its military service from men 25 to 60, yet many Ukrainian people live in fear of conscription squads which are said to abduct people and send them to enlistment centers. 

Both sides of the war are desperately fighting for survival, Gallup polls show that a slim but growing majority of Ukrainians agree that the war should end as soon as possible. The Atlantic Council states that 73% percent of Russians support the war, but those numbers are dropping. It is likely that Russian polls, even if from an external source, are not completely accurate. Separated by opposing governments, it is clear that both states are inhabited by people feeling the consequences of the lengthening war. 

Polls also included an additional question for 52% percent who answered that they wanted peace as soon as possible. The majority believed that the European Union should take a significant role in negotiating peace.

Only 54% percent agreed that the Harris administration would have played a significant role in negotiations, and 49% agreed that a Trump administration would play a significant role. Notably, a larger percentage of Ukrainians would rather a Trump administration have no role in peace negotiations at all. 

Ukrainians show a clear preference for the European Union to play a role in negotiations are a result of two things. The first reason is because of a tied fate, because of common interests in stopping Russian aggression and reobtaining access to Russian oil. The second is due to the increasing perspective that the United States is an unreliable and brutish bully in foreign affairs. 

Consistent with this perspective, U.S. officials have recently been conducting meetings with the Russian state to normalize relations with the hostile nation. These actions are direct attempts to sideline Ukraine in peace talks and an insult from the new Trump administration informed by their past grievances. These grievances only came about because of the Trump administration’s rake-stepping foreign affair policies. 

In 2019, a leaked phone call between Trump and President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, went viral. The audio of the call was of Zelenskyy declining to announce an investigation of former President Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 elections. Biden was accused of attempting to pressure Ukraine by withholding assistance, until Ukraine fired the prosecutor investigating Biden’s son. Hunter Biden was later found to have used his father’s name to influence politics, but Biden himself was not implicated in those actions. The call was a major cause of the first Trump impeachment 

Trump’s willingness to negotiate with Russia, without the presence of Ukraine validates the Russian justification that there is no such thing as a self-determined Ukrainian state. Self-determination has been the justification for the United States support of not only Ukraine and Crimea, but Taiwan as well. By ousting Ukraine from the talks, the United States is being honest for once and conceding to Russia that rule-based international order is dead, and that might make right in international affairs. 

The most optimistic peace for Ukraine is recognized statehood at the cost of their occupied territories gained through a seat at the negotiation table. Unfortunately, the only thing that immediate peace would embolden is future dictators and U.S. rivals. The U.S. pulling the life support on Ukraine does not mean we are suddenly an isolationist country, it means we have lost the global narrative that the actions of our foreign policy are driven by a desire to help democracy abroad.