On 24 February, three years to the day since Russia unleashed its all-out assault on Ukraine, the United Nations General Assembly voted on a Ukrainian resolution calling for an end to the war and a “lasting and just peace”. In an act that would have been unimaginable even a month ago, the US joined Russia, Belarus and North Korea in voting against the resolution. China and Iran abstained. It was a shameful day for US foreign policy and a vivid illustration of just how starkly the world has changed since Donald Trump returned to power. Two years ago Joe Biden travelled to Kyiv and rallied a crowd in Warsaw, vowing to “stand up for the right of people to live free from aggression”; today, the US is siding with the aggressor.
Not that the US, under its current leadership, seems prepared to countenance that term. Trump’s diplomats reportedly spent the preceding days attempting to excise references to Russian “aggression” from resolutions at both the UN and the G7, to the dismay of European allies. Sitting alongside Trump in the Oval Office on 24 February, the French president Emmanuel Macron flattered Trump, even praising his ostensibly predatory pursuit of a share of Ukraine’s mineral resources worth hundreds of billions of dollars. He also stated plainly that “the aggressor is Russia” and warned that any settlement “must not mean a surrender of Ukraine… No one in this room wants to live in a world where the will of the mightiest can just be imposed.”
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