Putin finally managed to anger President Trump
On March 28, 2025, Putin, against whom the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for war crimes against Ukrainian children, had the nerve to question Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's legitimacy to negotiate a peace deal and propose his replacement by a transitional government, with the obvious inference that the ruling authorities in Kyiv should ultimately subordinate themselves to the Kremlin.
Putin's perfidious reasoning is based on the fact that the Ukrainian presidential elections scheduled for 2024 have been postponed due to Russia's genocidal war. In fact, martial law was declared on February 24, 2022, in response to Russia's widespread invasion of Ukraine. Since then, the Ukrainian parliament has extended martial law, mostly in 90-day increments, while Ukraine continues to be brutally attacked daily by Russia.
Article 19 of the Law of Ukraine "On the Legal Regime of Martial Law" expressly states that holding presidential elections under martial law in Ukraine is prohibited. This was confirmed in a resolution adopted on February 25, 2025, by the Ukrainian Parliament.
However, as the past often demonstrates, Putin is not particularly concerned about “impediments” to the rule of law, even as he amended the Russian Constitution to secure his fifth term, just a month after Alexei Navalny's death in a Russian prison.
In her article “Why Ukraine Can’t Hold Elections in Wartime,” Olga Aivazovska, Chair of the Board of Directors of the OPORA Civil Network, a leading independent NGO monitoring civil society and electoral campaigns, wrote: “Russia’s unprovoked aggression against a sovereign state makes holding presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine impossible. […] There is a strong consensus in Ukraine, supported by the government, the opposition, and society at large, for elections to be held no earlier than six months after the end of martial law. The legitimacy of the Ukrainian government is the exclusive prerogative of the Ukrainian people.”
The postponement of the presidential elections in Ukraine while the country is under martial law due to Russia's incessant targeted attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure is fully justified . However, the absurdity of the aggressor state, whose genocidal war against Ukraine is the direct cause of martial law, raising it as a complaint in the international arena is inconceivable.
Putin, who undeservedly appears to continue to enjoy President Donald Trump's trust, has finally managed to enrage the US president with this absurd challenge to the legitimacy of the Ukrainian president. This even led President Trump to threaten to impose secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil if the Kremlin continues these blatant delaying tactics and prolongs the bloodshed in Ukraine.
As the Ukrainian president rightly predicted, since Trump initiated talks to negotiate a ceasefire agreement, Russia has disrupted these processes and intensified its attacks against Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure with missiles and drones.
Putin's latest ploy to challenge the legitimacy of the Ukrainian president should serve as a warning of what lies ahead if the United States attempts to appease the Russian despot and his insatiable imperialist appetite. That is, Putin's appeasement will ultimately provoke another world war, just as Chamberlain and Hitler did with the 1938 Munich Agreement.
It's clear that Putin doesn't want peace. He wants to take over all of Ukraine, as a necessary first step toward rebuilding the Soviet Union and then expanding it. On March 31, 2025, Putin signed a decree ordering Russia's largest conscription campaign in 14 years: the goal is to mobilize some 160,000 men between April and June 2025.
If the United States wants to negotiate a real, fair, and lasting peace agreement, it must force Putin to accept it by unequivocally demonstrating that NATO member states will provide the necessary support to ensure Ukraine wins the war initiated by Russia.
In other words, the US president must adopt an uncompromising "peace through strength" approach to convince Putin to stop attacking Ukraine and threatening the West. Any proposal other than the one outlined above will be viewed by Putin as a sign of weakness that he can fully exploit in his imperialist pursuit.
President of the NGO Ukraine-2050
lanacion
