Forcing Ukraine to agree to a 30-day cease-fire with Russia was easy. President Trump merely had to halt the flow of military equipment and suspend most intelligence sharing with Kyiv. As a result, Russian troops were able to recapture the largest town in the Kursk region occupied by Ukraine last August, in the process killing hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers. Faced with such a ruthless demonstration of Washington’s power to get its way, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was left with little choice but to knuckle under to the American demand.

Once Ukraine caved, Trump was all goodwill again. He restored Kyiv’s military and intelligence support, declared that the fate of the cease-fire is “up to Russia now,” and dispatched envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin. Secretary of State Marco Rubio amplified the White House message. The Russians would be told that “Ukraine is ready to stop shooting and start talking” and that the ball is now in Moscow’s court, Rubio told reporters on Tuesday. “If they say no, then we’ll unfortunately know what the impediment to peace is here.”

As if there has ever been any doubt about the “impediment to peace” in the deadliest European conflict since World War II.

It is Russia that launched this savage war, Russia that is responsible for its deadly toll in blood and treasure, and Russia that has repeatedly committed monstrous war crimes in Ukraine. It has been chilling to watch over the past three years as the mendacious narrative of Western isolationists, Putin apologists, and MAGA Ukraine-bashers — that Russia is the aggrieved party in the war — has been transformed from fever-swamp crazy talk to a key foreign policy plank of the current American administration. “On every front,” an alarmed Jim Geraghty wrote in National Review the other day, “the Trump administration is changing U.S. policy to make it more conducive to the interests and operations of Russia and weakening our ability to defend ourselves.”

Ukraine is far from the first nation to experience the sort of perfidy summed up by the idea that “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” In the last half-century, the brutal calculus of realpolitik has led US presidents to abandon, undermine, or deceive friends and allies ranging from the government of South Vietnam to the Kurdish resistance in Iraq to the women and girls of Afghanistan.

But Trump’s pitiless turn against Ukraine may be the worst such betrayal of all. The White House and Republican Party’s sycophant caucus piously proclaim that they are motivated solely by a desire for peace. To anyone who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid, however, it is evident that Trump’s policy is fueled above all by his unshakable admiration for Putin.

Recall that when Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, Trump’s reaction was to marvel at the “genius” of the authoritarian Russian ruler.

“Putin declares a big portion of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent,” Trump told an interviewer. “Oh, that’s wonderful…. Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent,’ a large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that!’”

For years, Trump has spoken approvingly of Putin, boasted of his friendship with him, and repeatedly credited him with good motives. “I know him very well,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last month. “I believe he wants peace.” His characterization of Zelensky, in contrast, has been poisonous. Trump has called the Ukrainian leader a “dictator without elections” who has “done a terrible job” — language he has never used about Putin. In one especially appalling exchange, he publicly blamed Ukraine for the war: “You should never have started it,” he said on Feb. 18.

In none of this has there been anything like a strategic reckoning with America’s global interests. There is no indication that Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine is being driven by a clear cost-benefit analysis. Can a compelling argument be made that US interests will be advanced by allowing Russia to get away with illegally invading and annexing Ukrainian territory? If so, no one has made it. Republican leaders had no trouble understanding why terrible consequences ensued when Barack Obama declined to enforce his “red line” in Syria or when Joe Biden allowed the Taliban to seize power in Afghanistan. What do they imagine will be the consequences of letting Putin prevail in his murderous, unprovoked war against Ukraine?

On Thursday, Putin rejected the proposed 30-day cease-fire on the grounds, The Wall Street Journal reported, that “any pause in fighting at this point would be in Ukraine’s interests.” But even if Putin changes his mind and signs on to a cease-fire, what will change? Russia has a long history of agreeing to cease-fires or peace agreements and abiding by them only long enough to prepare its next invasion. It is delusional to imagine that Putin — who passionately denies that Ukraine has a right to exist as an independent state — would adhere to any peace agreement with Kyiv.

That was the point Zelensky was trying so hard to explain during his ill-fated White House encounter with Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Since 2014, when Russia began seizing Ukrainian territory, Putin’s government has repeatedly signed and then broken cease-fire agreements — 25 of them, according to Zelensky. Again and again, Russia has been guilty of duplicity.

Americans should not forget that in 1994 their government convinced Ukraine to make an extraordinary sacrifice for peace. In exchange for giving up its arsenal of nuclear weapons, Kyiv was given a guarantee that Russia would permanently “respect the independence and sovereignty” of Ukraine and never threaten that independence with military force. That commitment was formalized in a political agreement, the Budapest Memorandum, which was signed by Ukraine, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States. The Ukrainians upheld their end of the deal. They turned over their nuclear warheads to Russia, voluntarily relinquishing their greatest bargaining chip.

In retrospect, it was a grievous blunder. When Putin seized and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, and again when Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the United States ruled out any direct intervention to force Russia to retreat. Washington would not even press NATO to admit Ukraine as an ally, which was arguably the surest way to end the war. Now, amid much phony talk about “peace,” a US president is readying a final betrayal. To be America’s friend is fatal.