As every schoolchild knows, Munich was where the UK and France made the 1938 agreement with Germany and Italy to appease Adolf Hitler by allowing him to annex the Sudentenland region of Czechoslovakia without her consent. But far from stemming Hitler’s ambitions, as they hoped, it only served to strengthen them.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has effectively been told by the US to give up hope of taking back all the land Russia has seized.
The West, once so proud of its rules-based approach to international affairs, is still learning how to handle Trump’s transactional perspective.
Ukraine and its allies were not shocked by the news announced by US Defence Secretary Pete Hesgeth on Wednesday in Brussels when he said Zelensky has no chance of achieving his goal of evicting Russian forces out of Crimea and the east of the country and returning Ukraine to its pre-2014 borders.
Zelensky and the Ukrainians weren’t surprised because they knew this moment was coming. They have been suffering a wave of deserters along the eastern front, keen to abandon a grinding war that could be in its final months after Trump signalled his intentions last year.
That stiff-upper-lip stance was mirrored in London. In the House of Commons on Thursday, defence minister Maria Eagle was asked if this was an act of betrayal by Trump. She said she wouldn’t accept the point. “The US Defence Secretary has said he wants a durable peace,” she added.
So far, the UK’s approach to dealing with the new White House has been a softly-softly approach. Starmer is not prepared to hit the US with reciprocal tariffs, for instance. Like so much of this administration, the Prime Minister is being tugged between the US and Europe.
The four ways war in Ukraine could end if Trump negotiates with Putin
Read MoreThe US has also suggested Ukraine joining Nato is now not a realistic prospect, even though the official position of the defence alliance is that Kyiv is on an “irreversible” path to membership. The UK will have to make that case to the US in the coming days and weeks, as well as lobbying for Ukrainian and European involvement in peace talks.
That’s because while Trump also spoke to Zelensky after the Putin call, he was non-committal about whether Ukraine would be an equal participant in US negotiations with Russia. Strong echoes of Czechoslovakia in 1938.
No one in the West could argue with the idea of peace. What differs wildly is the price they are prepared to pay, both in the short term and in the example that’s set by giving in to Russia’s aggression.
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