Before taking office, Trump vowed to end the war in Ukraine. The war intensified.

After winning an election and moving into the White House, many presidents end up breaking their campaign promises at some point. Donald J. Trump won’t even wait that long. The moment he is sworn in, he will break an important campaign promise.

While trying to regain power in the fall, Trump has repeatedly made a sensational but unbelievable promise with far-reaching geopolitical consequences: that he would bring an end to the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. And not just within 24 hours – he’ll do it before he’s sworn in as president.

“Before I get to the Oval Office, and soon after we win the presidency, I will address the terrible war between Russia and Ukraine,” Trump vowed at a rally in June. “I’m going to fix this before I become president,” he said during a televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September. “While I’m elected president, I’m going to solve the Russia-Ukraine problem,” he said again in an October podcast.

This was not an offhand comment, nor was it a one-time comment that he did not repeat. This was a staple of his public debate when it came to Europe’s largest land war since the fall of Nazi Germany. Yet not only did he fail to keep his promise; He has also made no serious efforts to resolve the war since being elected in November, and the battle will rage on even after President-elect Trump takes office again at noon on Monday.

“Wars cannot be solved with rhetoric,” Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said in an interview. “The missing link in his thinking was the failure to understand that Ukrainians could only reach a settlement if they had a strong position at the negotiating table. He effectively weakened their position, which is one of the reasons he was unable to reach a settlement before taking office. one.

Of course, Mr. Trump is no stranger to hyperbole. Trump’s blithe assertion that he could easily, quickly and single-handedly stop a war with the snap of his fingers is in line with the “I can solve problems” image that Trump likes to project to the public for a long time.

But over the past decade, in national politics, time and time again, rhetoric has become reality and grandiose promises have fallen short. While other presidents have paid a price when they broke their promises (just ask George H.W. Bush on his interpretation of taxes), Mr. Trump simply goes his own way with no apparent consequences.

For example, he didn’t quite build his much-lauded border wall, let alone force Mexico to pay for it. He did not eliminate the federal budget deficit or shrink the nation’s trade deficit. He stopped short of establishing a permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians, which he said was “not as difficult as people have imagined for many years.” He did not repeal and replace Obamacare. He did not increase economic growth to “4%, 5% or even 6%.”

During the transition to his second term, Trump did help force a temporary halt to the fighting in Gaza, effective Sunday, by sending an envoy to urge Israel to agree to the long-term ceasefire first proposed by President Joe Biden. While the deal was hammered out by Biden’s team, pressure from Trump played a key role in its eventual passage, a major success for the incoming president.

But in many ways, Ukraine is a more difficult challenge for Trump because he will be starting from scratch. Unlike Gaza, his predecessor did not have an existing peace plan in place, with all the complex logistics, timetables and formulas already worked out for Mr. Trump to simply adopt and cross the finish line.

Just this month, Keith Kellogg, the new president’s designated envoy for the Ukraine war, postponed plans to travel to Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, and other European cities to begin discussing the situation until after the inauguration. He told Fox News he hopes to resolve the issue within 100 days, and even if successful, that would be 100 times what Trump initially promised.

“This is a ridiculous promise,” said Katherine Stoner, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. “The only person who can actually end the war in 24 hours is Vladimir Putin, but he could have done it years ago. No matter when Trump starts the clock, any negotiations will take more than 24 hours.

Michael Kimmage, author of “The Conflict” about the conflict in Russia and Ukraine and the new director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, said Trump’s campaign promises were always “very liberal” in delivering, and perhaps more about sending signals rather than being interpreted precisely.

“His goals with this language may be as follows: to put the administration on notice that his approach to Russia and the war will be different from Biden’s, that his main goal is to end the war rather than win in Ukraine” and “that he will take power, not allow the U.S. A deep state locked in perpetual war.

The signals make it unclear how Trump expects he will reach a deal, but given his longstanding close relationship with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, his hostility toward Ukraine and his Analysts expect him to reach any resolution over resistance to U.S. military aid to Kiev. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance has proposed allowing Russia to retain the 20 percent of Ukrainian territory it illegally seized through aggression and forcing Ukraine to accept neutrality rather than align with the West, a framework that echoes Russia’s priorities.

Asked in an email why Trump had not fulfilled his campaign promise to end the war before taking office, Trump’s incoming White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt did not respond directly but reiterated that he would make it a “top priority.” . during his second term. “

Since being elected in November, Mr. Trump has met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and has discussed the possibility of meeting Mr. Putin after he takes office.

Rep. Michael Walz, R-Fla., who will become Trump’s national security adviser, stressed Sunday that ending the conflict in Ukraine remains a top priority for the new president, calling the war “literally a meat grinder.” meat machine”. The trench warfare of World War I “led to the escalation of World War III.”

But the idea Mr. Walz described on CBS’s “Face the Nation” sounds like a formula for a process that could take a while: “The key parts of it: Number one, who are we bringing to the table? Secondly, how do we bring them to the table? Thirdly, what is the structure of the agreement?

“President Trump is clear: This war must stop,” Mr Walz added. “I think everyone should agree with that.”

Even if everyone agrees on the goal — and there’s room for doubt — the likely terms will still be tricky. Even assuming that joining NATO is not possible, Ukraine wants strict security guarantees from the United States and Europe, especially if it is forced to give up territory, something Russia would oppose.

Then there are the issues of compensation and consequences. Who will pay to rebuild Ukraine’s destroyed cities and countryside? What will happen to the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against Putin and other Russian figures for alleged war crimes? Will the United States and Europe ease sanctions after a full-scale invasion in 2022? Who will oversee a deconflicted route?

Trump has yet to publicly answer such questions in depth, leaving many speculating. However, he expressed sadness at the ongoing casualties in Ukraine and an urgent need to find answers, whatever they may be.

“Part of the point – which may shed some light on his administration’s ultimate course of action – may be unscripted and therefore spoken in a way that obscures rather than reveals the actual script,” Mr Kimmage said. “The less we knew what he was doing, the more he was able to improvise.”