After three years of brutal warfare in Ukraine, more than a million lives lost and hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid spent on defending the country’s sovereignty, Donald Trump is abandoning Volodymyr Zelenskyy and even refusing to acknowledge the Eastern European nation’s bid to join NATO. Trump’s strategy in regards to foreign policy has been to relentlessly taunt U.S. allies like Canada and the European Union. The 47th wishes to annex Greenland, put tariffs on goods from the EU, China, and Canada, and turn the latter into the 51st state. He has gone after the Panama Canal, and signed an executive order to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Now, all of this has been done without rhyme or reason. Some even believe this aggressive push and bullying on an international scale is unhinged, even by Trump’s standards. But perhaps the zenith of his oppressive tendencies, the pièce de résistance of his unchecked populism, came in the form of his political backstabbing of Ukraine. Trump has called Zelenskyy a “dictator” — because he hasn’t allowed the presidential election to take place in wartime conditions — and has resolutely excluded Ukraine from the peace talks with Russia. Trump’s handling of the Russo-Ukrainian war has caused outrage all over the political spectrum — with even the most ardent MAGA enthusiasts casting aspersions on his backroom dealing. But the man himself remains unphased, doubling down on anti-Ukrainian rhetoric and now refusing to entertain the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO. Taking questions during his first cabinet meeting, Trump was asked to discuss the situation with Ukraine again, whereupon he reiterated Putin’s claim that his “special military operation” was due to the threat of Ukraine joining NATO as a neighbor country to Russia. “I can tell you that, NATO you could forget about. I think that’s probably the reason the whole thing started.” Trump’s words also imply that the United States, as one of its founding countries, will be withdrawing support for Ukraine joining NATO, even though President Zelenskyy has repeatedly made it clear that he would only be willing to sign a peace deal and step down if Ukraine joined the military alliance. Putin believes that his all-out invasion of Ukraine is justified mainly due to the negotiations between Zelenskyy’s government and NATO. He claims that such a development would not only undermine the Warsaw Pact but also damage Russia’s national security, conveniently forgetting the fact that NATO is exclusively a defensive alliance and not an offensive one. Still, with Trump hell-bent on achieving peace and ending the war, as this was one of the main promises of his presidential campaign, he might be willing to concede a lot to Putin, including all the illegally annexed land. The will of the Ukrainian people will hardly influence these decisions, as all experts unanimously agree that the country would not be able to last long without the West’s, and especially America’s, support. What message such an eventuality sends the United States’s allies remains to be seen, but I think it’s safe to say that Trump will be forever tarnishing the country’s image if he continues down this path.