Hope flickers in Ukraine and Europe as Trump and Putin conspire
Paediatric surgeon Ihor Kolodka, centre, and other medics amid the rubble at Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital following a Russian missile attack on Kyiv on July 8, 2024. Donald Trump's assertion that Ukraine started the war is belied by Russia's invasion three years ago and sustained attacks since. Picture: Roman Pilipey/AFP/Getty
Just over a week ago, a bomb slammed into the roof of Tatiana Vagramenko’s grandmother’s house in south eastern Ukraine.
The house was left in ruins.
“My grandmother’s house in Marhanets was shelled and destroyed,” Ms Vagramenko said. “These are photos of my grandmother’s house. I am still affected by this loss.”
Marhanets lies in the Dnipro region, not far from the frontline, on what is the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“I have the happiest childhood memories of her and her house, which she actually built herself,” Ms Vagramenko said. “Those were the happiest days when our large family gathered at her place.”
The bombing came just days before US president Donald Trump revealed to the world that he had spoken on the phone to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and that he thought the Russian autocrat “wants peace”.
Ms Vagramenko came to study in Ireland in 2008 and completed her doctorate in anthropology at Maynooth University in 2014.
Originally from Crimea, she was unable to return home to her parents as Russia had occupied the region at the beginning of that year and annexed it.
She is currently a senior post-doctoral researcher at University College Cork. Her parents remain in Crimea.
“Right now, there is an anti-missile system just a few metres in front of my parents’ house in Crimea,” she said.
Since the full Russian onslaught in February 2022, Ukraine has suffered “more death, destruction, and population displacement” than any other European country since the end of the Second World War, explained Conor Daly, who is attached to the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at Trinity College Dublin.
He said the UN documented 12,000 civilian deaths at the end of August 2024, but he said this does not include the “thousands” killed and buried in the ruins of Mariupol and other cities.
He said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy disclosed a year ago that 31,000 Ukrainian military personnel had been killed.
Mr Daly pointed out that 6m Ukrainians had left the country (over 100,000 came to Ireland) and that 4m are internally displaced.
He said the World Bank estimates that the cost of reconstruction is in the region of $500bn (€477bn).
Mariia Sasina, originally from the Donbas region, which is partially under the control of Russian forces, said that, in addition to the thousands of civilians killed and many more injured, Russia has been involved in “deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and residential areas”.
Studying for a masters in law at Trinity College Dublin, Ms Sasina said “significant psychological trauma” has been inflicted on the population, which will pass down the generations.
Ms Sasina is in Ireland three years, along with her parents, but said her grandmother, aunts, and her sister are still in Ukraine, with her sister in Crimea.
Donnacha Ó Beacháin, professor of politics at DCU, said: “Behind the raw statistics — 18% of Ukraine occupied, hundreds of thousands killed, millions forced from their homes — are stories of indescribable horror.
“Russian forces have systematically perpetrated widespread atrocities that constitute grave violations of international humanitarian law. These acts — well documented by international organisations — include mass murder, torture, ethnic cleansing, sexual violence, and abduction of children.”
Ms Vagramenko said the death and destruction is immense: “In the chaotic frontline zones, the situation is so dire that it is often impossible to collect the bodies of fallen soldiers — both Ukrainian and Russian — as well as civilian casualties. She said:
There were no prior conversations with Nato countries or EU leaders or even the Ukrainian president, before Trump spoke on the phone for over an hour to Putin.
Simultaneously, the US defence secretary Pete Hegseth was in Europe and appeared to echo the wish list of Putin.
He ruled out the prospect of Ukraine joining Nato and said the forthcoming talks “must start” by recognising a return to pre-2014 borders was “unrealistic” and an “illusionary goal”.
US vice president JD Vance doubled down on these remarks and lectured European leaders at the Munich security conference about efforts by the EU and its member states to protect democracy, whether in Romania or Germany.
Europe was left in no doubt that the US would no longer be its security bulwark and that the US would be politically and physically moving out, the details and timescale yet to be finalised.
As political leaders, not least in Ukraine, began to grapple with the implications of these broadsides, news broke of an official meeting between senior US officials and Russian delegates, including foreign affairs minister Sergey Lavrov, in Saudi Arabia, to begin the process of “peace talks”.
No seat for the EU. None for Ukraine either.
When US media asked Donald Trump, at his Mar-a-Lago resort, about Ukraine’s unhappiness with this scenario, he said: “I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it’s going very well. But today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
He added: “I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished, and not one dome would have been knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way.”
Some days after that, he caused further outrage and consternation when he described Zelenskyy as a “dictator”, with only “4%” support among his people and how the country needed an election.
He suggested the Ukrainian leader was more interested in the “gravy train” that was US aid and issued this warning, which he repeated the day after, that Zelenskyy “better move fast or he is not going to have a country left”.
Raymond Murphy of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at University of Galway said: “I think Trump’s policy will embolden Putin and strengthen his grip on power in Russia. It also sends a message to Putin that you can seize territory by force and violate international law with impunity.”
He said Trump’s outlook poses “an existential threat” to Ukraine’s future independence and undermined Europe: “This should be a wake-up call for Europe. The US is not a reliable ally or partner.”
Prof Ó Beacháin, whose new book Unfinished Empire: Russian Imperialism in Ukraine and the Near Abroad is out next month, said Trump’s position had worrying implications for Ukraine.
He said: “Can you imagine how Ukrainians feel?
“Fighting and dying for three years to defend their country only to have a clearly indifferent, if not hostile, Trump, undercut their core interests by negotiating over their heads with the regime that has inflicted so much death and destruction on Ukraine?
“Putin wants Ukrainian lands while Trump wants Ukraine’s resources and has presented Zelenskyy with demands for $500bn in critical minerals.”
He said Donald Trump, who prides himself as a deal-maker, has approached the Kremlin with “extraordinary amateurism”, needlessly offering concessions on Ukraine’s behalf while accepting Russia’s bona fides.
“Putin has framed the conflict in a way that denies Ukraine agency and treats it as a proxy of the US. Trump’s reaching out to Putin over the heads of Ukrainians reinforces this narrative perfectly and is being amplified with Russia,” he said.
“Trump is already rushing to declare ‘peace in our time’ but appeasement only emboldens Putin. The Kremlin doesn’t plan to negotiate in any meaningful sense. Russia wants approval for the land grab and ethnic cleansing.”
He accused Trump, like Putin, of having a “neo-imperial” view of the world: “Trump says he wants to annex Greenland and Gaza, take Panama ‘back’ and make Canada the 51st state.
“Of course, he can understand why Putin wants to annex Ukraine and the former territories of the Russian empire.”
Prof Ó Beacháin said the description of Mr Zelenskyy as a dictator and having only 4% popularity was “an Orwellian perversion of the truth”. He said under Ukraine’s constitution it can’t run an election while under martial law — and it’s under martial law because of “Russia’s unrelenting attack”.
He added that people are in no position to vote and that millions of people are displaced.
“He [Trump] thinks he’s won three elections in a row and, of course, he inspired and pardoned those who tried to pull off a coup on 6 January 2021,” he said. “Additionally, Trump never calls Putin a dictator.”
Conor Daly said Mr Trump had an affinity to ‘strong’ leaders such as Putin and China’s leader Xi Jinping, and their common philosophy that “smaller states must yield to the will and pure force of larger ones”.
He said Trump’s restoration of full diplomatic relations with Russia “overlooks the warrant of the International Criminal Court for Putin’s arrest” on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
He said this has already “given Putin a huge propaganda victory at home”, with Russian state media “expressing contempt for what it portrays as a toothless, rudderless, disunited Europe”.
Mr Daly pointed out that, following changes to the Russian constitution in 2020, Putin can effectively remain as its president until 2036.
He pointed out that Kyiv’s International Sociological Research Institute reported a 57% level of popular trust in Zelenskyy during the first week of this month.
He said Trump’s view of Ukraine bears “an uncanny resemblance to the views articulated by Putin in his interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in February 2024”.
Mr Daly said that some Ukrainian commentators are advising that Zelenskyy should move beyond “verbal jousting” and focus on practical actions and try and bring relations with the US administration “back to an even keel” and engage with Republicans with good access to Trump.
Ms Vagramenko compares the Trump-Putin relationship to that of the German and Soviet Union foreign ministers before the start of the Second World War, dividing up Poland between them.
“The situation bears an unsettling resemblance to a modern-day Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact: Pact 2.0, where two powerful nations could unilaterally and autocratically divide Ukraine and the spheres of influence in Eastern Europe — deciding the country’s future without its input.”
She said Trump’s “blunt declaration” that he wants control over half of Ukraine’s natural resources was “especially alarming”.
She added: “There is a risk that Ukraine could become a bargaining chip in a geopolitical deal between Washington and Moscow, potentially compromising its future.”
Ms Vagramenko said the Russian media portray the ongoing negotiations with the US “as a victory for Russia in the war”.
She added: “By portraying himself as the leader who has restored Russian influence over its “near abroad”, Putin would further solidify his image among nationalist factions, ultimately reinforcing his grip on power.”
She said president Trump was “parroting Putin’s narrative” about president Zelenskyy starting the war and that this “manipulation of language” had the purpose of “delegitimising” Ukraine and pushing for an election under conditions that would make a fair vote impossible.
She stressed she was “far from romanticising” Ukraine: “As a post-Soviet country, it has long struggled with systemic corruption within its political and economic elite — something no wartime leader could fully eradicate, especially under constant shelling.”
Ms Vagramenko said war is never “popular” and that a leader who directs a war and makes mistakes, as she said president Zelenskyy has done, is “bound to become unpopular”.
But she added: “However, unpopularity does not equate to illegitimacy, nor does it justify pushing for an election under impossible conditions.”
Irish political leaders have criticised Mr Trump’s comments on the war’s beginning, with Tánaiste and Foreign Minister (and Minister for Defence) Simon Harris likening them to “revisionism on speed”.
He said Ukraine was “not in anybody’s gift [and] is a sovereign country” and described the ‘dictator’ comments as “alarming”.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said Ireland was “steadfast” in its support of Ukraine and said one of the best ways to do so was to accelerate the process of it joining the EU.
He repeated that Irish defence spending must increase significantly — which, as reported in the Irish Examiner recently, was the lowest, as a percentage of our economic wealth, out of 37 European countries, including other neutral states.
The Taoiseach insists there would be no change in the policy of military neutrality, though he did state in an interview with the Irish Examiner recently that he thought Irish people were “blissfully unaware” of the high levels of fear of Russia in the Baltics and Nordic countries.
Ms Sasina, who set up the Ukrainian Society in Trinity College, said that while military neutrality had a strong history in Ireland, and may have served the country well in the past, that “it is no longer sufficient” to ensure Ireland’s security in a volatile world.
She said strengthening Ireland’s defence capabilities against cyberattacks, hybrid warfare, such as sabotage and disinformation, and fostering closer co-operation with international partners was “essential” for its stability.
Prof Murphy said Ireland’s official policy was one of “military neutrality, rather than neutrality” and said the distinction was important. He said:
“I think it is a mistake to conflate the issue of support for Ukraine with our defence expenditure and related issues.”
Prof Ó Beacháin said Mr Trump’s retreat from European security is likely to impact Ireland: “If the US is no longer underpinning (and underwriting) European security, that leaves the continent relying completely on its own resources.
“This will bring into sharper focus what obligations Ireland has to its fellow members of the EU.
“If we expected countries like Estonia and Latvia to offer us full support on Brexit, even though we were the only member to share a border with the UK, they are entitled to feel that, as Russia’s neighbours, we should support them as much as possible even though we don’t share a border with Russia.”
Mr Daly pointed out that Ireland’s traditional polity of military neutrality still enjoys strong public support — at 75%, according to a recent poll by Ireland Thinks.
At the same time, he said there was an increasing recognition that even with the increased budget of €1.35bn for 2025 it was only beginning to address a large gap allowed to build up over recent decades.
He said there was “particular concern”, given recent events in the Baltic Sea, over undersea cables off Ireland’s coast.
“The feeling that Ireland can continue to seek shelter, without contributing, beneath a de facto UK and USA military umbrella is starting to dissipate”, he said, adding that other neutral countries in Europe, such as Switzerland, take defence more seriously.
“However, the gut feeling of most Irish citizens (‘sure, who would want to attack us?’) will not dissipate. The assumption that we are protected by our remote geographical location on the westernmost part of the European continent is widely held, and it will take a major event to upset it.”
Given the dizzying speed of events in just a few weeks, it may be difficult to see where Ukraine will be when the fourth anniversary of the war comes around.
“It is impossible to predict but any cessation of hostilities and the prospect of building a sustainable and just peace must be welcomed,” Prof Murphy said.
"I am most doubtful of reaching a just and sustainable peace for Ukraine if we allow Trump determine the outcome.”
He added all the talk around establishing a peacekeeping force was “premature” as first there needed to be peace between Ukraine and Russia: “This is clearly not the case right now and a ceasefire is not enough.
“After that there are many practical political, military and logistical challenges, including involving the UN.”
Ms Sasina sees some reason to be hopeful: “In one year, I anticipate that Ukraine will be on a path towards recovery, though the scars of war will remain deeply embedded in its society.” She anticipates the international community continuing to support Ukraine but said the issue of concessions is a “critical issue” for both Ukraine’s sovereignty and long-term stability.
Prof Ó Beacháin said there were simply “too many variables” to predict where Ukraine will be, but said a “sustainable peace, not a stop-gap ceasefire” was key.
He said Trump has “much more leverage over Putin” than he did in his first term, given Russia’s military failures in Ukraine, its inability to save their ally Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and the “considerable strain” the Russian economy is under. He said:
“Instead, Trump is determined to bring Putin in from the cold, undermining an already crumbling rules based order in the process and throwing Ukraine to the wolves (or in this case the bear).”
Mr Daly believes that ultimately Trump “will be made to realise that Putin has no interest in compromising”, but that if he doesn’t “Ukraine could easily become a Russian client state similar to Lukashenko’s Belarus”.
This would present Mr Trump with a foreign policy failure similar to the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan under Joe Biden.
He said he thought Trump will ultimately not deliver on his threats to withdraw US forces from the Baltic states.
But he said that if he does withdraw, and Putin believes Nato’s Article 5 is redundant, then Eastern European states will, in particular, be “very vulnerable” to opportunistic attack.
Ms Vagramenko said that if the fighting ends, a multitude of problems will be waiting inside Ukraine: “The post-war period, whenever it comes, will bring its own painful reckoning — economic devastation, a surge in crime, and the difficult process of reintegrating a society shattered by years of conflict.
Before then, she worries about a “new era of power politics” and questions if we are shifting from diplomacy, democratic values and human rights to an era of power dynamics and business interests dictating international relations.
But she has hope: “I believe that both Europe and Ukraine will endure the challenges posed by Trump and Putin, and that the principles of international diplomacy grounded in democracy and human rights will ultimately prevail.”
If not? “If the international community fails to recognise these dangers, we risk repeating history—allowing authoritarian powers to redraw borders, suppress democratic aspirations, and prioritise business interests over environmental threats.
“The consequences for Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and the global order could be profound and lasting.”
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