Donald Trump's Ukraine deal with Putin has 'stench of appeasement'
US President Donald Trump accused of making the same mistake as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who failed to avoid World War II
Donald Trump’s plan to end the war in Ukraine by allowing Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to keep captured territory has “the stench of appeasement”, a former Defence Secretary has warned.
Sir Ben Wallace compared the proposed deal, negotiated without Ukraine’s involvement, to failed attempts by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to avoid war with Nazi Germany with the 1938 Munich Agreement.
As world leaders prepared to gather for the Munich Security Conference this weekend, he said: “This year’s gathering seems set to mirror the disastrous conference of 1938 where the continent stood blind in the face of Hitler’s duplicity. The stench of appeasement is once again returning to Munich.”
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The warning was echoed by Tory former defence minister and ex-army captain Tobias Ellwood. He said: “Once again, in this city, a peace deal is being stitched together by ceding terrain to an aggressor in the hope of avoiding a wider conflict. The strategy of “Peace in Our Time,” as Chamberlain famously claimed in 1938, has no better chance of success today.”
A long-planned meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels yesterday was overshadowed by Mr Trump’s shock announcement that he and Mr Putin have agreed to end three years of bloodshed in Ukraine following a “lengthy and highly productive” discussion. The US President called Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky “to inform him of the conversation”.
Mr Trump plans to continue talks with Mr Putin at a face-to-face meeting in Saudi Arabia but it provoked an immediate split with European leaders including Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who insisted that Ukraine must be included in peace talks rather than having a deal imposed on it.
Sir Keir said: “There can’t be negotiations around Ukraine without Ukraine being at the heart of it.”
Defence Secretary John Healey said: “There can be no negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine and Ukraine’s voice must be at the heart of any talks.”
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Mr Zelensky urged the world to “not allow everything to go according to Putin’s plan” and made it clear he would resist efforts to impose a deal, saying: “We cannot accept it, as an independent country, any agreements without us.”
There was particular concern over comments from Pete Hegseth, the US Defence Secretary, who said it was “unrealistic” for Ukraine to expect to regain all the territory it has lost to Russia since 2014.
John Bolton, Mr Trump’s former national security adviser, said: “They’re drinking vodka straight out of the bottle in the Kremlin tonight.”
