United States President Donald Trump did not stop the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of his inauguration, as he promised during the election campaign last year. But three weeks into his presidency, things got moving in that direction at a breakneck speed.

On February 12, Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin and then posted on Truth Social that they agreed to work together in order to stop “millions of deaths taking place” in the Ukraine-Russia war. This was followed by the announcement of a possible summit between the two in Saudi Arabia.

On February 13, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth laid out some of the specifics of the US proposal to end the war during a speech at the NATO headquarters in Brussels.

In an abrupt departure from the key talking points of the previous US administration, he said Ukraine cannot hope to restore sovereignty over its entire territory and that its NATO membership should be off the table to get the talks going.

With these statements, the Trump administration effectively struck down the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership which laid out mutual commitment to territorial integrity and inviolability of borders and identified Ukraine’s integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions (NATO and the European Union) as a priority policy goal.

Some Western media outlets were quick to declare “Ukraine’s betrayal” following the statements of Trump and Hegseth. Washington is indeed abandoning Kyiv, but this is not........

© Al Jazeera