President Trump this week pressured Ukraine to accept his administration’s peace proposal, one that heavily favors Russia. This as his administration’s national security strategy has put him at odds with American allies. Moderator Jeffrey Goldberg, Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, Amna Nawaz of PBS News Hour and Vivian Salama and Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic discuss all this and more.
It’s almost as if the Trump administration doesn’t want to admit or can’t understand that the war only ends when the pressure is put on Russia. It’s the most obvious solution to the problem, and it’s the one they just won’t take.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy greets Pope Leo XIV during a meeting at the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo Dec. 9, 2025. Credit: CNS photo/Vatican Media
Pope Leo and President Volodymyr Zelensky met at a particularly delicate moment in the international effort to arrive at a peace plan that can be accepted by both Ukraine and Russia.
Pope Leo XIV and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky “focused on the war in Ukraine” when they met at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo this morning, Dec. 9, the Vatican said.
“The Holy Father reiterated the need for the continuation of dialogue and expressed his urgent desire that the current diplomatic initiatives bring about a just and lasting peace,” the Vatican said in a statement issued afterward.
They also discussed “the questions of prisoners of war and the need to assure the return of Ukrainian children to their families,” the statement added.
President Zelensky also issued a statement on X after his meeting, expressing appreciation for “all the support” of Pope Leo and the Holy See in the humanitarian field. He said he informed the pope about the diplomatic efforts with the United States to achieve peace and revealed that he again invited Pope Leo to visit Ukraine. “During today’s audience with His Holiness, I thanked him for his constant prayers for Ukraine and for the Ukrainian people, as well as for his calls for a just peace,” he wrote.
Pretty much every week I notice that Ukraine figures in international news as a David fighting against a Goliath. A Polish colleague just me asked whether the book I’m writing about the Russian war against Ukraine would have the word “David” in its title, since I also write about other things that begin with the letter “d”: decentralization and democratization. I laughed, because for quite a while I have indeed been thinking about the image of David and Goliath in the context of Ukrainian-American relations.
The metaphor of a struggle of David against Goliath tends to resurface each time we have to deal with another burst of so-called “negotiations,” when American leaders say, for example, that the Ukrainian president has few cards, and therefore must make concessions. If Russia is a Goliath, if that image is what matters, then Ukraine’s arguments and indeed the actual correlation of forces on the battlefield do not matter. On the force of a stereotype, or an archetype, the White House insists (now, as several times before) that Ukraine must enter an agreement which would worsen not only the current battlefield situation but grant Russia things that it could not in fact get without American help.
The classic example of this, which has emerged several times and just emerged again this month, is that Ukraine must cede to Moscow the full Donetsk region, which Russia is not capable of taking. It is the best-defended section of the front line, which of course is why Russia wants American help to get it without a fight. It is certainly possible to imagine Ukrainians accepting a full ceasefire; but this text did not even provide for one, focusing instead only on such concessions to Russia.
We are told that international relations is a realm of interests and logic. But other things are clearly at play, and journalists right now are exposing some of them. But I want to dwell on an underlying issue, the moral issue, or perhaps the psychological issue. Why Moscow and the Russian war of aggression seem to arouse sympathy in the White House? For those of us who root for David, this can be hard to understand. Indeed, for most people, it seems to me, David is an unequivocally positive figure. He embodies the capacity of a small individual to resist a vast and dangerous world. It’s not only about one man; it’s about the idea that good can overcome evil, that something apparently weaker can prevail thanks to confidence, persistence, and intelligence. And indeed, sometimes that does happen. It is not just a wish, it can be a reality. David slew Goliath.
But the question of David and Goliath is not just one of the past few days or months. A year ago, during the 2024 US presidential election campaign, I was writing for American publications. I had the feeling that editors were asking me over and over again for the same article —that I had to make the case again and again that Ukraine, as a David fighting a Goliath, deal with Trump, a man who constantly shows admiration for “Great Russia,” who values the strong, the apparently obvious winner?
All of my answers, back then, were variations on David’s smartness, ingenuity, and determination. At that time, Kyiv still clung to the argument that if Western support were more decisive—if there were specific actions from the West rather than just praise for Ukraine’s resilience—much would change. This was the context in which Ukraine was presenting Victory Plan to both Democrats and Republicans in the autumn of 2024.
During that campaign, and in the weeks after Trump’s victory, Ukrainian diplomats generally insisted that Trump did not personally dislike President Zelens’kyi. After all, he seemed to perceive Zelens’kyi as a fighter, not a weakling. Ukrainians tended to think roughly the same thing, to see themselves not as a nation of victims but as underdog fighters. Instead of constantly trying to interpret Trump’s moods or adjust to them, Ukraine spent the year working to reduce its dependence on the United States, building its own military-industrial complex [ . . . ]
