Putin has finally succeeded in angering President Trump

by Eugene Czolij
former president of the Ukrainian World Congress
president of the Ukraine-2050 nongovernmental organization

Source: KyivPost

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On March 28, 2025, Vladimir Putin, against whom an arrest warrant has been issued by the International Criminal Court for war crimes against Ukrainian children, had the gall to challenge the legitimacy of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate a peace agreement, and to propose replacing him by a transitional government with the rather obvious inference that Kyiv’s governing authorities should ultimately be subservient to the Kremlin.

Putin’s perfidious reasoning stems from the fact that Ukraine’s scheduled 2024 Presidential elections have been postponed because of Russia’s genocidal war.

Indeed, martial law was declared on Feb. 24, 2022, in response to Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine. Since then, Ukraine’s Parliament has extended martial law, mostly by 90-day increments, while Ukraine continues to be viciously attacked by Russia on a daily basis.

Article 19 of the Law of Ukraine “On the Legal Regime of Martial Law” expressly provides that holding Presidential elections under martial law is prohibited in Ukraine.

This was confirmed in a resolution passed on Feb. 25, 2025 by Ukraine’s Parliament.

However, as he has often demonstrated in the past, Putin is not particularly concerned with “impediments” such as the rule of law, including when he amended Russia’s constitution to secure his own fifth term in office only one month after Alexei Navalny’s death in a Russian prison.

In her article “Why Ukraine can’t hold elections during wartime” Olga Aivazovska, Chair of the Board of Civil Network OPORA, a leading non-partisan NGO for public oversight and advocacy in the field of elections, wrote: “Russia’s unprovoked aggression against a sovereign state makes holding presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine impossible… There is strong consensus in Ukraine on the need for elections no earlier than six months after martial law ends, supported by the government, opposition, and society. The legitimacy of Ukraine’s government is an exclusive prerogative of the Ukrainian people.”

That Ukraine’s Presidential elections have been postponed while Ukraine is under martial law due to Russia’s relentless and targeted attacks against civilians and civil infrastructure in Ukraine is fully justified. However, the utterly absurd fact that the aggressor state, whose genocidal war against Ukraine is the direct cause for martial law, would raise it in the form of a complaint on the international arena is beyond all reason.

Putin, who undeservedly appears to still enjoy the confidence of Donald Trump, has finally succeeded in angering the US President with this preposterous challenge of the legitimacy of Ukraine’s President.

This even led President Donald Trump to threaten to impose secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil if the Kremlin continues with such blatant stalling tactics and prolongs the bloodshed in Ukraine.

As Ukraine’s President accurately predicted, from the time President Trump initiated talks to broker a ceasefire agreement, Russia has been derailing this process and stepping up its attacks on Ukraine’s civil population and infrastructure with missiles and drones.

Putin’s latest ruse of challenging the legitimacy of Ukraine’s president should serve as an eye-opener of things to come if the US tries to appease Russia’s despot and his insatiable imperialistic appetite; namely, the appeasement of Putin will ultimately lead to another world war, just as Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler did with the 1938 Munich Agreement.

It is clear that Putin does not want peace. He wants all of Ukraine, as a necessary first step to recreating the Soviet Union and then expanding it. On March 31, 2025, Putin signed a decree ordering Russia’s largest conscription campaign in 14 years, namely a draft of some 160,000 men between April and June 2025 to that end.

If the US wishes to broker a real, just and lasting peace agreement, then it must force Putin into it by unequivocally demonstrating that NATO member countries will provide the support required to ensure Ukraine wins the war initiated by Russia.

In other words, the US president must adopt an incontrovertible “peace through strength” approach to convince Putin to stop attacking Ukraine and threatening the West. Anything short of this will be dismissed by Putin as a sign of weakness to be fully exploited on his imperialistic path.

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