LATIKA M BOURKE: Worrying signs Donald Trump may be receding on Ukraine ahead of meeting with Vladimir Putin

Donald Trump has been warmer towards Volodymyr Zelensky and increasingly annoyed with Vladimir Putin in recent months, but there are some worrying signs that the gains made since the Oval Office blow-up are receding at the most critical point.

The US President meets the Russian leader in Alaska on Friday for their first face-to-face pow-wow since 2019.

The topic will be ending the war in Ukraine, although Mr Trump was quick to play down expectations, describing it as a “feel-out” meeting.

He promised to consult Mr Zelensky immediately after and then European leaders and said he would try to reclaim some “prime oceanfront property” taken by Russia during the war.

But that was the best of it. Then came what seemed like a reversion to type — the type displayed in the Feburary dressing-down in the White House.

“I get along with Zelensky,” Mr Trump said.

“But you know I disagree with what he’s done – very, very severely disagree.

“This is a war that should never have happened.”

Blaming Ukraine, and not Russia, for starting the war is a fashionable view in many parts of MAGA.

The argument that Mr Putin was spurred by Ukraine’s desires to join the EU and NATO is wrong on two accounts, even if Mr Putin cites it as a reason.

Firstly, his invasion with NATO doubled overnight when Finland and Sweden joined after his strike on Ukraine, but prompted no Russian invasion or attack.

Secondly, it is ultimately up to Ukraine, and not Russia, to decide which clubs it wants to join.

So Mr Trump is wrong both factually and morally to blame Ukraine for Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, which has been an independent state since 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Indeed, Mr Zelensky famously tried to tell the world’s media to stop reporting that his country was about to be invaded in the lead-up to the full-scale invasion.

But when it happened, it was his heroic decision to whip out his smartphone and record himself in central Kyiv, saying that he needed not a ride out of Ukraine but ammo, so his country could fight, which galvanised international support.

And fight they have done, as Ukraine’s growing cemeteries tragically attest.

But Mr Trump continued to insult the Ukrainians.

He wrongly claimed that the Russians decided to drive tanks through muddy farmland and not on highways that prevented them from seizing Kyiv in the early days of the invasion.

“They (Russians) would have been in Kyiv in four hours going down the highway,” Mr Trump said.

“But a Russian General made a brilliant decision to go through the farmland instead.

“And the rains were still bad, and it was mud, and those tanks got stuck in the mud.”

It wasn’t mud. Footage shows tanks on Ukrainian highways and roads making their way to Kyiv. It was brave Ukrainians who defeated them.

“I don’t know who that General is, but knowing Vladimir, he’s probably not around any longer,” Mr Trump mused.

It’s not the first time Mr Trump has appeared to share a greater synergy with authoritarian leaders, and specifically Mr Putin, over his fellow democratically elected counterparts.

During the February blow-up in the Oval Office, he spoke of his shared trauma with Mr Putin, having undergone the “Russia hoax” — accusations that Russian meddling propelled his first victory.

On Monday, he bemoaned another perceived weight of democracy, raising his annoyance at Mr Zelensky who has said that Ukraine would not agree to any “land swaps” with Russia and that the constitution forbade it.

“I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelensky was saying, well, I have to get constitutional approval,” Mr Trump complained.

“I mean, he’s got approval to go into war and kill everybody, but he needs approval to do some land swapping.

“Because there’ll be some land swapping going on.”

Again, there was the Ukrainian-blaming.

Also concerning was the insight Mr Trump shared about having consulted Hungary’s illiberal leader Viktor Orbán, who told him Ukraine could never win against Russia.

“I asked a question to a very, very smart man, Viktor Orban from Hungary — I said: “Can Russia be beaten by Ukraine?”

“He looked at me like, “What a stupid question”.

“He said, ‘Russia is a massive country, they fight wars. That’s what they do’.”

So Mr Trump goes into his meeting believing war and victory are in Russia’s DNA and that Ukraine started the war.

Mr Trump likes to make deals. “It’s what I do,” he crooned at his press conference.

He is notoriously unpredictable. He can change his mind. As is often the case, it could come down to the last person who briefed him.

On Wednesday, European leaders will again press their case ahead of the Alaska meeting, which Mr Trump twice referred to as taking place in Russia.

It is not necessarily a bad thing that Mr Trump meets Mr Putin without Zelensky or European leaders. Mr Trump expressed a desire to eventually put Mr Putin and Mr Zelensky in a room together to thrash out a resolution. He could be the only man in the world to force such an encounter should it happen.

But it does mean an ill-informed Mr Trump could be bested by a ruthless, cunning and well-prepared Mr Putin, whom Mr Trump appears to be reflexively sympathetic toward.

What Mr Trump has not been saying is also instructive. The key to any real and meaningful peace in Eastern Europe is preventing 72-year-old Mr Putin from striking again in his lifetime.

This can only come in the form of a security guarantee, and given the United States is adamant Ukraine cannot join NATO — a position also held by Joe Biden — it remains unclear what sort of deterrent Mr Trump thinks would work to stop Russian imperialism in Ukraine for good.

More importantly, is the US willing to help fund and provide any guarantee?

The most positive way to view this is that Mr Trump is giving himself an escape clause, for if he can’t broker a deal to end a war he said he’d finish in 24 hours — a claim he has already tried to revise as “obviously sarcastic.”

“Probably within the first two minutes, I’ll know exactly where or not a deal can be made,” he said.

But it may also be that Mr Trump is laying the groundwork to blame any failure on Mr Zelensky.

At this point, he might lose patience and interest altogether, and bank on the recent peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan winning him his Nobel Prize.

“Now I may leave and say ‘good luck’ and that’ll be the end,” Mr Trump foreshadowed.

“I may say, this is not going to be settled.”

If this is genuine, and not a negotiating tactic, it would make a mockery of Mr Trump’s continued claims that he desperately wants to stop the killing.

And would expose the other reason Mr Trump gives when talking about ending wars — making cash — as more important.

Don’t forget, his vision for Gaza — another “oceanfront property” — was to turn it into the “Riveria of the Middle East.”

Mr Trump was asked if he wants normal trading ties with Russia in the event of any peace.

“I do,” he said. It is ironic, although perhaps telling, that a President so comfortable using trade tariffs to assert US dominance over friends, but is so reluctant to do so against an indicted war criminal who bombs nursing homes, schools and playgrounds.

And if he can’t broker a peace and blames it on Mr Zelensky will that free Mr Trump and his MAGA acolytes to normalise economic ties with Russia while the bombs continue?