Like Hitler in 1938, Putin presents Russia as a country unfairly treated by history and, like Hitler, he is determined to reconstitute its great power status through territorial expansion. The central focus of this imperial campaign is Ukraine, which he falsely asserts is “not a real country” but rather an off-shoot of Russian culture and history. Hitler likewise asserted to Chamberlain that Czechoslovakia was not a real nation and should be dissolved. Both Hitler and Putin conducted aggressive campaigns of subterfuge and violence to weaken their target countries. Each accused Prague and Kyiv, respectively, of extremist actions against German and Russian minorities, respectively.
Trump and his advisors are urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to do what Chamberlain pressured Czech President Eduard Benes to do, accept Russian dominion over a significant portion of his nation. In addition, by pressing Ukraine to accept neutrality, especially when a vast majority of Ukrainians want their nation to join NATO, Trump is in effect demanding that Ukraine accept Russian imposed limits on its sovereignty.
While the former U.S. president asserts he just wants to “stop the killing” and to avoid World War III with a nuclear power — the latter being the appeasement of Putin’s nuclear threats — he forgets that Chamberlain’s concessions only whetted Hitler’s imperial ambitions. They convinced the Fuhrer that France, the United Kingdom and for that matter other potential adversaries including the United States, lacked the fortitude necessary to defeat his ambitions.
Were Trump to force Ukraine to effectively cede territory to Russia, what would Putin then be telling his generals about the United States and NATO? Ceding Crimea and other occupied territories to Putin will only reinforce his confidence in his ability to seize the rest of Ukraine, if not the Baltics and other parts of Central and Eastern Europe — just as Hitler later moved to seize Prague in early 1939 and then Poland in September of that year.