Carl Bildt

STOCKHOLM – Will U.S. President Donald Trump be able to forge a peace between Russia and Ukraine, or are we facing a repetition of the infamous Munich Agreement? When Britain and France forced Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany in 1938, they believed that doing so would ensure long-term peace. But appeasing a revisionist aggressor had the opposite effect, setting the stage for another world war one year later.

If peace means settling all the issues that now divide Russia and Ukraine, the likelihood of achieving such an outcome is extremely slim. The origin of the war lies in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s determination to prevent Ukraine from becoming “anti-Russia,” namely by forcing it back under Kremlin control. A democratic, sovereign Ukraine that sought cooperation and integration with the West was incompatible with what Putin regards as his historic duty. He has long maintained that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe, and that Ukraine is not, in fact, an independent nation-state.

This means that a true peace between Russia and Ukraine will not be possible until Putin has left the Kremlin, and a more realistic........

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