The Betrayal of Ukraine

When the betrayal came, it was swift and brutal. Donald Trump, having barely started his second presidency, phoned up Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, on Wednesday 12 February and paved the way towards negotiations to end the war without consulting Ukraine itself (BBC, 13 February 2025). When only a week later, high-ranking delegations of both countries including Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met in Riyadh/Saudi Arabia for extensive discussions, no Ukrainian representative was at the table (BBC, 18 February 2025). At the same time, ‘White House officials told Ukraine to stop badmouthing Donald Trump and to sign a deal handing over half of the country’s mineral wealth to the US’ (The Guardian, 20 February 2025). This was presented as a way to pay back all the assistance the US had provided over the course of the war.

The public humiliation of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a meeting in the White House was the final confirmation that the US had dropped its support for Ukraine. Denounced by many European leaders and commentators for what it is, a betrayal, this was not, however, the first betrayal of Ukraine. The country has been betrayed by the West on several occasions before, leaving it now in a perilous situation. In this blog post, I will discuss previous moments of betrayal taking a much longer historical perspective.