Former British prime minister posts apparent criticism of US president over his plans for peace deal with Russia
By Jessica Elgot
Boris Johnson has issued stern criticism of Donald Trump’s Ukraine peace proposals in one of his first apparent censures of the US president, saying under his terms the Ukrainians would “get nothing”.
The former British prime minister, a strong supporter of Ukraine who remains close to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has previously said there is “method in the madness” of Trump’s approach and that he believed the US president could bring peace.
But in a post on X, Johnson criticised the apparent terms of a deal that Trump is pushing Kyiv to accept.
On Wednesday, Trump accused Zelenskyy of jeopardising what he claimed was an imminent peace deal to end the war in Ukraine as he gave the clearest hint yet that the US would be willing to formally recognise Russia’s seizure of Crimea as part of any agreement.
Russia then carried out one of the most devastating air attacks against the capital for months, with Kharkiv and other cities also targeted.
“Putin indiscriminately butchers more Ukrainian civilians, killing and injuring 100 in Kyiv including children,” Johnson posted. “And what is his reward under the latest peace proposals?
“1. The right to keep sovereign Ukrainian territory he has taken by violence and in breach of international law. 2. The right to control Ukraine’s destiny by forbidding Nato membership. 3. The lifting of sanctions against Russia. 4. An economic partnership with America. 5. The chance to rebuild his armed forces for the next attack in a few short years’ time.”
He added: “As for Ukraine – what do they get after three years of heroic resistance against a brutal and unprovoked invasion? What is their reward for the appalling sacrifices they have made – for the sake, as they have endlessly been told, of freedom and democracy around the world?
“Apart from the right to share their natural resources with the United States they get nothing. What is there in this deal that can realistically stop a third Russian invasion? Nothing. If we are to prevent more atrocities by Putin then we must have a long-term, credible and above all properly funded security guarantee for Ukraine – a guarantee issued by the UK, the US and all western allies.”
Keir Starmer condemned Moscow’s Wednesday night’s strikes on Kyiv, saying it was “a real reminder that Russia is the aggressor here and that is being felt by the Ukrainians, as it has been felt for three long years now. That’s why it’s important to get Russia to an unconditional ceasefire.”
He added: “We’re making progress towards the ceasefire. It’s got to be a lasting ceasefire. But these attacks – these awful attacks – are a real, human reminder of who is the aggressor here and the cost to the Ukrainian people.”
Trump also criticised the strikes in a post on his Truth Social network. He said: “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!”
Johnson has previously criticised some of Trump’s language about Zelenskyy, including during their White House fallout, saying it was “ghastly to hear some of the language that’s been coming from Washington about who started the war and Zelenskyy being a dictator”.
But in the aftermath of the row, Johnson defended Trump again in a column for the Mail, saying the war of words “was not meant to happen” and that the US president did have a viable plan for peace.
Today’s major stories must be seen in the context of President Donald Trump’s dramatic losses in court and his plummeting poll numbers.
Yesterday, Trump told the Department of Justice to investigate ActBlue, the platform that handles the fundraising for almost all Democratic candidates and the issues Democrats support. This targeting of Democratic infrastructure would hobble the Democrats. It also plays to Trump’s base, which insists—without evidence—that ActBlue accepts straw and foreign donations, an accusation Trump repeated in his order about the investigation.
This morning, FBI director Kash Patel posted on social media, “Just NOW, the FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction—after evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week.” Patel quickly deleted the post, but the story had already gotten attention.
FBI agents arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan at the courthouse this morning in what, as Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo notes, appeared to be an attempt to draw attention and to illustrate that judges “must cooperate with the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign or else face overbearing actions from federal law enforcement.”
The story appears to be that on April 18, while Dugan was about to hear a pre-trial conference in the case of an undocumented immigrant charged with misdemeanor battery, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived to arrest the person. They had an administrative warrant rather than a judicial warrant and Judge Dugan asked them to produce a judicial warrant.
When courtroom discussions about the man’s case ended, Judge Dugan invited the man and his lawyer to leave by way of the jury door rather than the public exit, although both exits led back to the public hallway where ICE agents waited. The man appeared in the public hallway but got to an elevator before the agents did, enabling him to run down the street before the agents caught up and arrested him.
Federal prosecutors have charged Dugan with “[o]bstructing or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the United States” and “[c]oncealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.”
Tellingly, Attorney General Pam Bondi immediately went on the Fox News Channel to talk about the arrest, attacking the judge. “What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” she said. “The [judges] are deranged is all I can think of. I think some of these judges think that they are beyond and above the law. They are not, and we are sending a very strong message today…if you are harboring a fugitive…we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”
Later today, news broke that the administration appears to have deported a U.S. citizen. Chris Geidner of Lawdork reports that the administration deported a two-year-old born in the United States and thus a U.S. citizen, along with her mother and her sister, to Honduras, her mother’s country of origin, even as the child’s father tried frantically to keep her in the U.S. Judge Terry A. Doughty of the Federal District Court in the Western District of Louisiana, a Trump appointee, said that “it is illegal and unconstitutional to deport” a U.S. citizen, and set a hearing for May 16 because he has a “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”
These actions to seize power and to hammer into place extremist MAGA immigration policies are dramatic demonstrations of the Trump administration’s attempt to destroy democracy. Indeed, the attempt to attack the judges could well be a reaction to the major losses the administration took from the courts this week.
As Jacob Knutson of Democracy Docket wrote, Trump suffered at least 11 legal setbacks this week as judges blocked Trump from gutting the Voice of America media outlet, blocked the administration from removing people in Colorado and New York under the Alien Enemies Act, ordered the administration to comply with discovery requests from Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, told the Department of Education not to implement anti-DEI measures, blocked Trump’s executive order about elections, stopped the administration from impounding money from cities that don’t comply with its mass deportation orders, and blocked the administration from ending collective bargaining rights for federal workers.
The dramatic actions against ActBlue and immigrants are also signs of weakness as administration officials attempt to distract supporters not only from the disastrous tariffs, but also from the growing evidence that Trump is not functioning as a president should.
As legal analyst Anna Bower noted about Bondi’s Fox News Channel performance: “If you’re a prosecutor who is serious about obtaining a conviction, you don’t go on Fox and talk about the (alleged) facts of the case like this.”
It seems likely these extreme actions are an attempt to throw some red meat to those base voters whose support for the president is wavering, and to grab power while it is still possible.
In an interview with Time magazine, published today, Trump did not seem at the top of his mental game. He reiterated that the country is about to become richer than ever and that the problems in his administration can all be blamed on his predecessor, President Joe Biden. He claimed that he has already made 200 trade deals, which could be possible if he is cutting private deals with corporations but not if he is talking to countries: there are only 195 countries in the world. He claimed China’s president Xi Jinping has called him to make a deal, although Chinese officials deny this.
In the interview, Trump repeatedly deferred to his lawyers to answer questions about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man the administration says it sent to an infamous terrorist prison in El Salvador because of “administrative error.” He said that he did not personally approve payments to El Salvador to hold the men his administration sent there.
He said when he vowed to end Russia’s war against Ukraine on day one he was only speaking “figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration, because to make a point, and you know, it gets, of course, by the fake news [unintelligible]. Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest, but it was also said that it will be ended.”’
Finally, the Time interviewer asked him: “Mr. President, you were showing us the new paintings you have behind us. You put all these new portraits. One of them includes John Adams. John Adams said we’re a government ruled by laws, not by men. Do you agree with that?”
Trump replied: “John Adams said that? Where was the painting?”
When the interviewer pointed out the portrait, Trump said: “We’re a government ruled by laws, not by men? Well, I think we’re a government ruled by law, but you know, somebody has to administer the law. So therefore men, certainly, men and women, certainly play a role in it. I wouldn’t agree with it 100%. We are a government where men are involved in the process of law, and ideally, you’re going to have honest men like me.”
“Vladimir, STOP!” wrote President Donald Trump on his social media site this morning. Yesterday Trump berated Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky for rejecting a peace deal that heavily favored Russia; hours later, Russia launched its deadliest assault on Kyiv since last July, killing at least eight people and wounding more than 70 others. “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing,” Trump posted. “5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!”
Trump won the presidency by assuring his base that he was a strong leader who could impose his will on the country and the world. Now he is bleating weakly at Putin.
Trump was the logical outcome of the myth of cowboy individualism embraced by the Republicans since President Ronald Reagan rose to the White House by celebrating it. In that myth, a true American is a man who operates on his own, outside the community. He needs nothing from the government, works hard to support himself, protects his wife and children, and asserts his will by dominating others. Government is his enemy, according to the myth, because it takes his money to help undeserving freeloaders and because it regulates how he can run his business. A society dominated by a cowboy individual is a strong one.
Leaders who pushed this ideology knew it attracted voters. Once they were in power, they could slash government programs and cut taxes and regulations that kept wealth and opportunity accessible to poorer Americans. They argued that a society works best if wealth and power are concentrated among a few elites, who can direct capital more efficiently than government bureaucrats can. Their rhetoric worked: from 1981 to 2021, $50 trillion moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. But those same people talking about individualism to secure votes also knew that the world has never worked this way. In the twenty-first century, U.S. security and the economy depended more than ever on coalitions and government investment.
As the middle class hollowed out, Republicans hammered on the idea that government action was socialism and the government was a swamp of waste and corruption. Donald Trump rode that rhetoric to the White House in 2016 but was still restrained by establishment Republicans who understood that the modern state underpinned America’s strength. President Joe Biden’s rejection of the Republicans’ economic vision and reorientation of the economy around ordinary Americans made Republicans rally against another Democratic president. They turned back to Trump, backed as he was by the MAGA base marinated in the rhetoric that government is bad, even though their counties are more dependent than Democratic counties on government aid.
Now the dog has caught the car. In 2024, Americans reelected Donald Trump, but he is no longer restrained by those who understood the importance of alliances and government programs. Instead, he is surrounded by those who appear convinced that displays of dominance will make the U.S. even stronger than it was when Trump took office and that destroying the government will free up great men to reorder society.
This impulse showed as soon as Trump took office in the takeover of the U.S. government by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a group of individuals without government experience or security clearances working in a group whose legal status is doubtful. They were overseen by billionaire Elon Musk, who was neither elected nor confirmed by the Senate. Musk vowed to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget.
In the early days of the administration, Musk dominated Trump’s press opportunities and at least one Cabinet meeting. He appeared to be in charge. But his support soured quickly. From the start, Musk and the DOGE staff slashed willy-nilly, firing vital employees that the government then had to rehire, creating mayhem.
Then, in February, Musk tried to muscle in on the prerogatives of actual Cabinet members by demanding all government employees send a weekly email listing five things they had accomplished that week. Then, earlier this month, Musk publicly disagreed with Trump and his trade advisor Peter Navarro over both tariffs and immigration. He has also fought with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
According to Hannah Natanson, Faiz Siddiqui, and Emily Davies of the Washington Post, it is not clear the emails Musk demanded were ever used for anything, and that initiative is quietly dying. But Musk’s fights with other members of the administration have escalated until, as Dan Diamond, Faiz Siddiqui, Trisha Thadani, and Jeff Stein of the Washington Post reported today, Musk and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent got into a yelling match in the West Wing of the White House.
And Musk’s vow of $2 trillion in cuts has dwindled down to $150 billion, although that number is not yet verifiable. Elizabeth Williamson of the New York Times reported today that the cost of firing workers will be more than $135 billion this year, while cuts to the IRS will cost about $8.5 billion in revenue in 2026 alone. And then there is the cost of lawsuits over DOGE’s actions.
Rather than working with those government officials already in place to save government money, Musk appears to be trying to display his power over government employees. At the same time, he is scooping up data from various government agencies about individuals in the U.S., a treasure trove that he could use for shaping society, garnering government contracts, or raising money either by selling it or by blackmailing people with it. After today’s news that Tesla’s earnings plunged 71% in the first quarter of the year, Musk tried to reassure investors by saying he would focus more on the company.
Trump ally Steve Bannon warned about Musk’s true interests: “We have to have a full accounting that makes sure any government data—classified or not—and any personal financial data, people’s tax returns, and their health records, have not gone to any entity not controlled by the Trump administration or the U.S. government.”
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also promised to sweep through the government bureaucracy he hates and come up with a new, better plan for making Americans healthier. Kennedy has a history of opposition to vaccines and has refused to urge people to get vaccinated to stop the spread of measles. That outbreak is already the largest since the disease ceased to be consistently present in the U.S. population 25 years ago. Today scientists reported that, at current rates of vaccination, measles could become commonplace again.
Kennedy has also pledged to find the causes of autism by September, pushing aside the deep research already done on the subject and instead announcing that the cause is “environmental toxins.” Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Dr. Jay Bhattacharya told reporters on Tuesday that in order to conduct the study, the NIH is collecting Americans’ private medical records from federal and commercial databases, including from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Indian Health Service, medication records from pharmacies, and data from smartwatches and fitness trackers. It is in talks with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to see if it can get access to that database, too.
The idea that the right sort of men can do a better job than the government officers who have spent decades learning how to do their jobs is on view as well in the appointment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who previously worked as a Fox News Channel weekend host. Hegseth vowed to champion strong “warfighters” at the Pentagon, but he has had no experience running an entity as large and complicated as the Defense Department, with its annual budget of $850 billion and its almost 3.5 million employees.
The results of his appointment have been disastrous. Under Hegseth, department officials are openly feuding. Paul McLeary and Jack Detsch reported today in Politico that Hegseth is using just his wife, his lawyer, and two lower-level officials as advisors, meaning he is operating without anyone who has significant expertise in the department.
Tuesday, we learned that in the unsecure second Signal chat—the one with his wife and brother and other personal friends—Hegseth posted from his personal phone information he had just received from Army General Michael Erik Kurilla, who leads U.S. Central Command, the command responsible for operations in the Middle East.
That got even worse today when Tara Copp of the Associated Press reported that Hegseth directed staffers to install Signal on his desktop computer so he could use Signal in a secure area where his own cell phone was not allowed. The computer was connected to the internet on an unsecured commercial line, making it highly susceptible to hacking.
Trump’s own belief that he could—and should—force the world to bow to his tariff levies revealed his conviction that he could tear up mutual agreements and impose his will. He predicted that other countries would come begging to him to lift the tariffs. Instead, the reality is that he has maimed the country’s thriving economy. On Tuesday, with the stock market lurching wildly and investors dumping U.S. investments, Trump suggested that he was negotiating with China and the 145% tariff rates he imposed would soon come down “substantially.” Yesterday he said “everything’s active” in negotiations with China.
Today, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry said “China and the U.S. are not having any consultation or negotiation on tariffs, still less reaching a deal.” China’s commerce spokesperson agreed that “Any claims about the progress of China-U.S. trade negotiations are groundless as trying to catch the wind and have no factual basis.” He said that China was willing to talk, but only “on the basis of mutual respect and in an equal manner.”
When a reporter asked Trump about China’s denial, he said: “Well, they had a meeting this morning.” The reporter answered: “Who’s they?” Trump replied: “I can’t tell you. It doesn’t matter who ‘they’ is. We may reveal it later.”
Journalist Chris Hayes wrote: “It’s incredible that now the *best case* scenario is basically Trump engaging in a humiliating climb-down, but having already inflicted permanent damage and uncertainty that [can] never be undone.”
The rate at which America’s government, health, defense, and economy is degrading shows that reality will not conform to the myth of the American cowboy. The cover of The Economist today shows a battered and heavily bandaged eagle under the caption: “Only 1,361 Days To Go.”
The American people seem to be realizing that the rhetoric of cowboy individualism is a very different thing than its reality. Trump’s poll numbers are dropping sharply. A Reuters poll found that just 37% of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, which was supposed to be his strong suit. An Economist/YouGov poll found Trump’s approval rating was –13, with 54% of Americans disapproving of the way he is handling the presidency and only 41% approving.
After previously suggesting that the U.S. would not involve European representatives in negotiations to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff met in Paris last week for talks with Ukrainian and European officials. The U.S. presented what it called “the outlines of a durable and lasting peace,” even as Russia continued to attack Ukrainian civilian areas.
A senior European official told Illia Novikov, Aamer Madhani, and Jill Lawless of the Associated Press that the Americans presented their plan as “just ideas” that could be changed. But Barak Ravid of Axios reported on Friday that Trump was frustrated that the negotiations weren’t productive and said he wanted a quick solution.
Talks were scheduled to resume today, in London, but yesterday Rubio pulled out of them. The U.S. plan is now “a final offer,” Ravid reported, and if the Ukrainians don’t accept it, the U.S. will “walk away.”
On a bipartisan basis, since 2014 the United States has supported Ukraine’s fight to push back Russia’s invasions. But Trump and his administration have rejected this position in favor of supporting Russia. This shift has been clear in the negotiations for a solution: Trump required repeated concessions from Ukraine even as Russia continued bombing Ukraine. Axios’s Ravid saw the proposed “final offer,” and it fits this pattern.
The plan would recognize Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea and its occupation of almost all of Luhansk oblast and the portions of Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts Russia has occupied. This would essentially freeze the boundary of Ukraine at the battlefront.
Ukraine would promise not to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the post–World War II defensive alliance that first stood against the aggression of the Soviet Union and now stands against the aggression of Russia.
Sanctions imposed against Russia after its 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine would be lifted, and the United States, in particular its energy and industrial sectors, will cooperate with Russia.
In essence, this gives Russian president Vladimir Putin everything he wanted.
What the Ukrainians get out of this deal is significantly weaker. They get “a robust security guarantee,” but Ravid notes the document is vague and does not say the U.S. will participate. We have been here before. After the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, Ukraine had the third-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. In exchange for Ukraine’s giving up those weapons, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia agreed to secure Ukraine’s borders. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, they agreed they would not use military force or economic coercion against Ukraine.
Russia violated that agreement with its 2014 and 2022 invasions, making it unlikely that Ukraine will trust any new promises of security.
Under the new plan, Ukraine would also get back a small part of Kharkiv oblast Russia has occupied. It would be able to use the Dnieper River. And it would get help and funds for rebuilding, although as Ravid notes, the document doesn’t say where the money will come from.
There is something else in the plan. The largest nuclear power plant in Europe is Ukrainian: the Zaporizhzhia plant. It will be considered Ukrainian territory, but the United States will operate it and supply the electricity it produces to both Ukraine and Russia, although the agreement apparently doesn’t say anything about how payments would work. The plan also refers to a deal between the U.S. and Ukraine for minerals, with Ukraine essentially repaying the U.S. for its past support.
Ravid notes that the U.S. drafted the plan after envoy Steve Witkoff met for more than four hours last week with Putin. But the plan has deeper roots.
This U.S.-backed plan echoes almost entirely the plan Russian operatives presented to Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort in exchange for helping Trump win the White House. Russia had invaded Ukraine in 2014 and was looking for a way to grab the land it wanted without continuing to fight.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election explained that Manafort in summer 2016 “discussed a plan to resolve the ongoing political problems in Ukraine by creating an autonomous republic in its more industrialized eastern region of Donbas, and having [Russian-backed Viktor] Yanukovych, the Ukrainian President ousted in 2014, elected to head that republic.”
The Mueller Report continued: “That plan, Manafort later acknowledged, constituted a ‘backdoor’ means for Russia to control eastern Ukraine.” The region that Putin wanted was the country’s industrial heartland. He was offering a “peace” plan that carved off much of Ukraine and made it subservient to him. This was the dead opposite of U.S. policy for a free and united Ukraine, and there was no chance that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who was running for the presidency against Trump, would stand for it. But if Trump were elected, the equation changed.
According to the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, Manafort’s partner and Russian operative Konstantin Kilimnik wrote: “[a]ll that is required to start the process is a very minor ‘wink’ (or slight push) from D[onald] T[rump] saying ‘he wants peace in Ukraine and Donbass back in Ukraine’ and a decision to be a ‘special representative’ and manage this process.” Following that, Kilimnik suggested that Manafort ‘could start the process and within 10 days visit Russia ([Yanukovych] guarantees your reception at the very top level, cutting through all the bullsh*t and getting down to business), Ukraine, and key EU capitals.’ The email also suggested that once then–Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko understood this ‘message’ from the United States, the process ‘will go very fast and DT could have peace in Ukraine basically within a few months after inauguration.’”
According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the men continued to work on what they called the “Mariupol Plan” at least until 2018.
After Russia invaded Ukraine again in 2022, Jim Rutenberg published a terrific and thorough review of this history in the New York Times Magazine. Once his troops were in Ukraine, Putin claimed he had annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, two of which were specifically named in the Mariupol Plan, and instituted martial law in them, claiming that the people there had voted to join Russia.
On June 14, 2024, as he was wrongly imprisoning American journalist Evan Gershkovich, Putin made a “peace proposal” to Ukraine that sounded much like the Mariupol Plan. He offered a ceasefire if Ukraine would give up Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, including far more territory than Putin’s troops occupy, and abandon plans to join NATO. “If Kyiv and the Western capitals refuse it, as before,” Putin said, “then in the end, that’s their…political and moral responsibility for the continuation of bloodshed.”
On June 27, 2024, in a debate during which he insisted that he and he alone could get Gershkovich released, and then talked about Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Trump seemed to indicate he knew about the Mariupol Plan: “Putin saw that, he said, you know what, I think we’re going to go in and maybe take my—this was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream.”
Now that plan is back on the table as official U.S. policy.
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his country will not recognize the Russian occupation of Crimea. In this determination, he speaks for the global rules-based order the U.S. helped to create after World War II. Recognition of the right of a country to invade another and seize its territory undermines a key article of the United Nations, which says that members won’t threaten or attack any country’s “territorial integrity or political independence.” French president Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders are standing behind those principles, saying today in a statement from Macron’s office that they reject Russian territorial gains under the U.S. plan. “Ukraine’s territorial integrity and European aspirations are very strong requirements for Europeans,” the statement said.
But Trump himself seems eager to rewrite the world order. In addition to his own threats against Greenland, Canada, and Panama, in a post today on his social media site he echoed Putin’s 2024 statement blaming Ukraine for Russia’s bloody war because it would not agree to Putin’s terms. Today, Trump said Zelensky’s refusal to recognize the Russian occupation of Crimea was “inflammatory,” and he pressured Zelensky to accept the deal.
Curiously, he felt obliged to write that “I have nothing to do with Russia…”.
