Image by Jon Tyson.

Donald Trump’s forging of a political alliance with Russia’s Vladimir Putin at the expense of Ukraine’s struggle for self-determination may not be totally unexpected, but its speed and extent represent a dramatic transformation of world politics.

Nothing more sharply—and crudely—signals this transformation than Trump and J.D. Vance’s public browbeating of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28 at what was supposed to be a brief session to take questions from the press prior to a private meeting to discuss conditions for ending the war. In a breathtaking display of imperial arrogance, Trump and Vance turned the session into a shouting match as they insulted and threatened Zelensky for stating the obvious—that Putin cannot be trusted, and that any peace deal requires security guarantees for Ukraine. Trump then cancelled further talks with Zelensky and ordered him to immediately leave the country. This brazen take-down and humiliation of a democratically elected head of state for not totally submitting to U.S. dictates is unprecedented. It is as ominous as Trump’s inauguration five weeks earlier. Ukraine will be left to feel the full wrath of Putin’s murderous war machine just as Palestine is being left to face Netanyahu’s fascistic effort to annihilate its very existence.

This is hardly the first time a major imperialist power has suddenly forged an alliance with a longstanding adversary. One can recall war criminal Richard Nixon’s sudden opening to China in the early 1970s, which led to a rapprochement that ended up extending the Vietnam War by several years (Mao reduced aid to North Vietnam to curry favor with the U.S. and Nixon used his entente with him to demand greater concessions from Hanoi). But an even more striking antecedent is the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939. This may sound like an exaggeration—after all, the alliance between fascist Germany and Stalinist Russia gave the green light to World War II, and no one is suggesting a third world war is imminent-—although the risks of it are ever-present. Nonetheless, the 1939 Pact is worth recalling since it produced a shift in world politics that had crucial ideological ramifications, as many leftists supported it in the name of opposing Western imperialism while others denounced it as a betrayal of the principles of socialism. Today’s U.S.-Putin alliance likewise has profound ideological ramifications, as seen in how leftists opposed to Ukraine’s struggle for self-determination now find their position being shared by MAGA Republicans, while others on the Left are searching for revolutionary new beginnings opposed to all forms of occupation and colonialism, from Gaza to Ukraine.

The Betrayal of Ukraine

The Trump-Putin alliance was forged with the convening of direct talks on February 18 between representatives of U.S. and Russian imperialism in Saudi Arabia, a meeting that excluded both the Ukrainians and the U.S.’s European allies, some of whom were not even informed of it beforehand. These were not negotiations: Trump simply adopted virtually all of the Kremlin’s talking points without so much as suggesting a single concession from Putin. The Russian delegates could hardly conceal their shock and glee at what Trump gave away at zero cost to themselves.

On February 24, following the talks in Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration voted against a Resolution of the UN General Assembly condemning Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine—the first time it did so, joining Russia, China, Belarus, North Korea, and Israel, as well as 12 other Moscow-friendly countries (93 other countries voted yes, 65 abstained). Brandishing the lie that Ukraine, not Russia, started the war, Trump clearly allied the U.S. with Putin.

Not a peep of opposition to this was heard from a single Republican member of Congress—even though many of them spent years bashing Russia and voting aid to Ukraine. Many Democrats expressed outrage but seem lost as to what to do next. So much for the claim that the U.S. ruling class has a vested interest in helping Ukraine!

Trump insists that Ukraine cannot recover twenty percent of the country that Russia occupied since 2014 and 2022, and that no U.S. troops will be used to patrol a ceasefire which is to be imposed largely on Russian terms. Nor can it join NATO, until now the inter-imperialist alliance of the U.S. and Western Europe.

Most revealing, Trump demanded that the Ukrainian government repay $500 billion to the U.S. (at least four times as much as the value of all the military and economic aid it received under Biden) by surrendering 50% of the proceeds from its sale of national resources, such as minerals, oil and gas, and port fees. Ukraine was moreover expected to repay the U.S. twice the value of any future U.S. aid (it does not indicate whether this would include any military assistance). This amounts to paying $100 percent interest on top of the total principle of a “loan.” Taken as a whole, this would entail that a higher percentage of Ukraine’s GDP become turned over to the U.S. than the allies demanded in the form of........

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