What a difference three years makes: Time to get realistic about Ukraine with Trump now in power

It’s been three brutal years since Vladimir Putin launched his bid to conquer Ukraine; it’s time to find a lasting peace — which is only possible if all sides are realistic.One huge difference is that we have a new US president — one who’s stronger, but also understands how to negotiate.Putin knows he can’t snow Donald Trump as he did Joe Biden, who routinely folded in the face of Vlad’s nuclear bluffs — thereby failing to support Kyiv hard and fast enough to dislodge the Russians.Biden lost that opportunity for good: It’s now pointless to demand a return to Ukraine’s 2014 borders (to be fair, Barack Obama let Crimea go); any chance of admitting Kyiv to NATO isn’t just a deal-breaker for Putin, it won’t sell to the alliance’s current membership.On the other hand, these years have crushed Russia’s economy; Putin desperately needs to be able to sell his energy to the West again, especially if he’s to escape becoming a complete satrap of Beijing.(It’s a bonus to pretty much everyone that reopening Russian trade will bring down energy prices across the West.)So Vlad will take a deal that lets him preserve face and offers security that what he sees as Western efforts to undermine Moscow’s power in its “near abroad” will cease.In return, he must accept the voice of Volodymyr Zelensky in the peace talks, even if his real negotiations are with Trump.Trump, too, must recognize that Zelensky is key to a stable future: If Ukraine’s president is seen as being dictated to in some “peace in our time” farce, the whole country will look and feel weak — and Putin’s tanks are all too likely to get rolling again soon.Similarly, doing a deal with Kyiv on rare earths is a savvy move by Trump in securing US support for Ukraine and for peace: The public sees America finally “getting something” for standing with Ukraine, and it establishes a clear US interest that any future Putin aggression would threaten — thereby bolstering Kyiv’s ...