U.S. Presses Kyiv to Accept a Deal Favoring Moscow

Freeze of Territory — Zelensky Rejects the Plan, Trump Calls Him 'Inflammatory'

Author

Matt Davis
April 24, 2025

Last night I went to a fundraiser for the Hannah Arendt Center. Among other things, Arendt covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann for the New Yorker. In her book Men in Dark Times, Arendt explains that darkness does not name the genocides, purges, and hunger that mark the tragedies of the twentieth century. Instead, darkness refers to the way these horrors appear in public discourse and yet remain hidden.

SO LET’S ALL READ THE NEWSPAPER, SHALL WE?

But first...thanks for your $upport by engaging with this adverti$ement! (If you’re a paid subscriber you won’t see it because you’re even more wonderful than my thousands of free subscribers who I also love because they want to stay media literate in an era where the majority of people would rather give up on that). Still…

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Those are some robots, eh?

This morning’s front page covers the Trump administration’s glorious foray into global affairs. Having backed down on the trade war it seems Mr. T has decided he can capitulate in a real war, too.

President Trump and his top aides demanded on Wednesday that Ukraine accede to an American-designed proposal that would essentially grant Russia all the territory it has gained in the war, while offering Kyiv only vague security assurances.

The American plan, which would also explicitly block Ukraine from ever joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was rejected by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, whose long-running dispute with Mr. Trump broke into the open two months ago in the Oval Office. The proposal also appears to call for the United States to recognize Russia’s 2014 takeover of Crimea, a region of Ukraine.

“There is nothing to talk about,” Mr. Zelensky said. “This violated our Constitution. This is our territory, the territory of Ukraine.”

Mr. Trump shot back on social media that Mr. Zelensky was being ‘inflammatory.’ And I have a meme for this one.

It was not clear whether the U.S. announcements were part of a “pressure campaign to force Mr. Zelensky to make territorial concessions or whether they were designed to create a pretext for abandoning American support for Ukraine,” the story continues.

European allies have rightly said that Mr. Trump is essentially switching sides in the war because he really just wants to normalize trade relations with Moscow so that he can make some money.

This puts Marco Rubio in a tough spot because three years ago, he sponsored an amendment to prohibit the United States from ever recognizing any Russian claim of sovereignty over parts of Ukraine that it has seized.

“The United States cannot recognize Putin’s claims or we risk establishing a dangerous precedent for other authoritarian regimes, like the Chinese Communist Party, to imitate,” he said at the time, an allusion to Taiwan.

It appears that approach is being walked back slightly, now.

The Europeans are frustrated.

I don’t know what to tell you. Donald Trump let Vladimir Putin invade a sovereign country, keep 20% of it, and walked away. If you call that global leadership then best of luck to you.

“The situation for Ukraine is dire,” Mr. Trump wrote. “He can have peace, or he can fight for another three years before losing the country.”

It’s a bit like Mr. Trump’s own prospects as the president of America, I suppose. Dark times, indeed.

Say, is there a story on the front page that might cheer me up a bit?

Glad you asked! Why not read a Minka Kelly profile?

And thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to.

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.

Standard disclaimer: I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each weekday morning at around 9 a.m. (depending on how long it takes me to read the newspaper). If you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later). If you subscribe to my Youtube channel it’ll also send you a notification when I’m “going live.”