President Trump fired off rare public criticism of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and sat for a dramatic one-on-one talk with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Vatican over the weekend, marking a starkly pro-Ukraine tilt for the president as he pushes for a peace deal.

But it comes after details emerged last week of a U.S. peace proposal that tracks largely with Putin’s interests and demands, including Ukraine staying out of NATO and global recognition of its occupied Crimean Peninsula as Russian territory.

And Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have threatened to walk away from talks entirely if a deal doesn’t materialize soon, with no indication of whether the U.S. would continue funding Ukraine’s war against Russia’s invading forces.

Danielle Pletka, distinguished senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Ukraine’s leader would be well advised to focus on getting security guarantees within the framework of Trump’s proposal before it’s too late.

“Ukraine is out of options right now. If it wants to prosecute the war, it needs sufficient weaponry, and America is the only source for a good deal of it,” she wrote on her Substack, “What the Hell is Going On.”

“And America, in the person of our President, does not want the war to continue. We can jump up and down and say that’s wrong, but it’s his view, and he’s not going to change it.”

Trump has suggested some sort of watershed moment in Russia-Ukraine talks coming soon, though he’s provided few hints on........

© The Hill