I spent Trump’s inauguration in Ukraine. This is what i saw.

By M Gessen

NEW YORK: On the day of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, an air raid was in effect in Odesa for much of the afternoon. People went about their business. Street vendors continued selling coffee. Trams kept running. At Pryvoz, the mammoth farmers’ (and everything else) market, electricity went out for a while, but that seemed to have no effect on the pace of commerce; if it was slow, that was because it was a Monday. In the two years and 11 months since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Odesa has gone through stages: months of shock and fear, followed by something akin to denial and, finally, adaptation.

Odesa is one of those cities — like, say, New Orleans — possessed of a distinct personality, a mythology of itself that fuels a fierce and joyful kind of patriotism. Odesa is rightfully proud of its sea views, its architecture, its food, its multiculturalism, its entrepreneurship and its libertine spirit, but its singular distinction is the well-turned phrase, the unsparingly hilarious joke.

Hanna Shelest, a military analyst, made one of those remarks early on in the war. As she recalled, not long after Russia invaded, an Italian journalist asked her — in that way that male journalists “ask” female experts they are interviewing while actually telling them what to think — “You do realize that you are going to have to give Putin something?” Shelest paused and said, “You are right. We’ll give him Lake Como.” It was a perfect way of pointing out the absurdity of the premise, that Ukraine owed Putin something just because he wanted it.

I asked Shelest to watch Trump’s inauguration with me. We used the TV in my hotel room. Shelest, who is 43, and her parents, who are both 65, have been living in a borrowed apartment since a Russian drone hit their building on Nov. 14. She had just finished an on-air interview with a French television channel when she heard a soft boom, and then the chandelier in her study fell to the floor, just missing her mother. It took them all a few minutes to realize that some of the rooms in their apartment were in ruins, and the apartment next door was in flames. Still, they were lucky: The drone didn’t explode. In the days that followed, after the fire had been put out, Shelest and her mother used a firetruck’s lift to get into their apartment through a window to salvage some clothes.

“That was kind of odd,” Shelest said when Trump finished his speech. “I am confused by the emphasis on sovereignty. Is anyone threatening the sovereignty of the United States? It’s particularly odd watching this from Ukraine, where we are actually fighting for our sovereignty. It has a way of diminishing our struggle.” She was a little surprised that Trump didn’t mention Ukraine, though he previously promised to end the Russo-Ukrainian war within 24 hours. One might assume that Trump was referring to Ukraine when he complained that the Biden administration had “given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders.” She said a probably unintended effect of not mentioning Ukraine by name was that Japan and Taiwan, for example, as well as military contractors, were put on notice. “And Panama!” she added. “What did calm, peaceful Panama do?”

To me, all of this sounded familiar. Russian President Vladimir Putin spent many years trafficking in imagined grievances and illusory threats to Russian sovereignty. As it often has been in history, this language was a prelude to launching his ruthless wars. Even Trump’s language about the Panama Canal, which he called a “foolish gift that should have never been made,” was a direct reprise of Putin’s statements on Crimea, which he repeatedly described as having been a gift to Ukraine from Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. As is his way, Trump is moving faster than his role model. No sooner had he introduced the idea of wounded sovereignty than he promised that “the United States will once again consider itself a growing nation — one that increases our wealth, expands our territory.” Totalitarian leaders, leaders who want to stay in power forever, undertake expansionist wars.

This axiom of totalitarianism makes it unlikely that Trump will be able to deliver on his promise to end the war in Ukraine. Putin needs this war.

Putin also wants a summit with Trump, which appears to be on track to happen this year. A meeting with the U.S. president would signal an end to the period of international isolation Russia entered after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. A meeting with Trump would not only show Russians — and the rest of the world — that Putin is once again a legitimate voice in the world; it would also give him what he has long demanded: a conversation about the fate of Ukraine that does not include Ukraine. In the week before Trump’s inauguration, some high-level Russian officials made aggressive statements indicating that Ukraine shouldn’t exist at all.

For most of the past three years, the Kremlin has either flat-out refused to enter talks on an end to the war or made demands for territory that far exceeded what Russia had been able to occupy. If any talks happen, Shelest said, Russia will be interested not in finding a sustainable solution but just in maximizing its own position.

But Shelest hopes that Putin will overplay his hand. He is well on his way. Last month, a Russian oligarch and Putin booster told The Financial Times that Russia would merely make a show of reviewing Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine, then reject it. (In response, Trump adviser Keith Kellogg, appearing on Fox News, mysteriously directed the oligarch to “get back in your box.”) In the past, Putin has sometimes indicated that he has a low opinion of Trump’s intelligence. “He may be tempted to humiliate Trump, to put him in his place,” Shelest said.

Could that get Trump’s ire up? “Maybe he will decide that he wants to be a victor,” Shelest said. Maybe he will give Ukraine what the Biden administration has held back: enough military resources and the freedom to use them to really hurt Russia. It’s a hell of a thing to see Trump’s propensity to act out of spite as your country’s best hope.

An hour after Shelest left my hotel room, the air raid siren went off again.