Anne Applebaum writes:

In the past 72 hours, Donald Trump has dropped all pretense, torched a couple decades of American policy, and undermined 18 months of his own diplomacy. He lifted sanctions on the import of Russian diesel fuel, in violation of the letter and spirit of laws that he himself signed. He has threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine, unless Ukraine agrees not to target Russian refineries, thus demanding that Kyiv give up its most effective weapon while asking nothing from Russia in exchange. He has not criticized Russian attacks on Ukrainian power plants or factories, even those owned by American companies. He has offered no condolences for the recent deaths of Ukrainian children in Russian bombing raids.

He has lied repeatedly. He declared that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to an “energy cease-fire,” an announcement that surprised the Ukrainians and that in any case the Russians immediately broke, hitting a power plant in Kharkiv only hours later. He accused Ukraine of blocking negotiations, when in reality the Ukrainians have repeatedly proposed cease-fires and Russia has never agreed to a cease-fire or any meaningful negotiation at all.

He has described Ukraine’s democratically elected president as an obstacle to negotiations and told him to leave office. But on Friday, before making these new decisions, he held yet another long, friendly telephone conversation with the Russian dictator, who really could end the war today. All Vladimir Putin has to do is tell his soldiers to stop fighting, and then the war is over. The Ukrainians cannot stop fighting because, if they do, their country will be conquered and they will suffer the fate of their occupied territories: leaders murdered, children kidnapped, repression and concentration camps for everyone else. If Trump knows this, then he does not care.

The president has implied that the point of his new policy is to lower fuel prices for Americans. Perhaps he wants to convince voters that the cause of high prices is Ukraine and not his own war of choice in Iran. But this is not a sufficient explanation or justification for these dramatic actions. The amount of fuel that Russia could export is too small, the impact on pricing too slight, the narrative too late to shape electoral outcomes.

This looks, instead, like something very different: an abrupt, Hail Mary attempt to force Ukraine to surrender and to save the Russian economy, perhaps in order to finally complete the multiple business deals that the Russians are known to have discussed with American negotiators and others in Trump’s orbit. These include deals involving the Nord Stream gas pipelines, mineral mining in the Arctic, the Russian assets frozen in European banks, and more. [Continue reading…]