Trump has promised to end the war in Ukraine before taking office. The war rages on.

After they win the elections and move to the White House, a lot of presidents at some point eventually break a campaign promise. Donald J. Trump won’t even wait that long. He will break an important campaign promise when taking the oath of office.

As he stood for a return to power in the fall, Mr. Trump repeatedly made a sensational if implausible promise with deep geopolitical consequences: he would broker an end to the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. And not just in 24 hours – he has to do it before he is sworn in as president.

“Before even getting to the Oval Officeshortly after we win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine,” Mr. Trump promised at a rally in June. “I will have it resolved before I even become president.” he said during his televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in September. “I established Russia-Ukraine while I am president-elect,” he said again during a podcast in October.

It wasn’t an offhand comment, not a single one that he didn’t repeat. It was a basis of his public argument when it came to the biggest land war in Europe since the fall of Nazi Germany. Yet not only did he fail to keep his promise; has yet to make a known serious effort to resolve the war since his election in November, and the fight will still be raging even Monday afternoon, when President-elect Trump returns to President Trump.

“Wars cannot be solved by bombast,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an interview. “And the missing link in his thinking is the failure to understand that the Ukrainians will reach the settlement only if they are at the negotiating table from a position of strength. In effect, he has undermined his position, and it is a reason why he did not reach a solution before his inauguration”.

Mr. Trump, of course, is no stranger to hyperbole. The brazen assertion that he could easily, quickly and single-handedly stop the war with the proverbial snap of his fingers was in keeping with the long-standing I-alone-can-fix-it image that Mr. Trump likes to present to the public.

But time and time again over nearly a decade in national politics, rhetoric has met reality and grand promises have fallen by the wayside. And while other presidents have paid a price when they broke a promise (ask George HW Bush to read his lips on taxes), Mr. Trump is moving forward without obvious consequences.

It has not, for example, built completely its much-heralded border wallmuch less force Mexico to pay for it. He did not remove it federal budget deficit or shrinks national trade deficit. He did not forge a permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians, which he said he would “not as difficult as people have thought over the years.” It did not repeal and replace Obamacare. It did not stimulate economic growth “4, 5 and even 6 percent.”

During this transition to a second term, Mr. Trump helped forcing a temporary halt in the fighting in Gaza which went into effect on Sunday, sending a mandate to pressure Israel to accept the long-standing ceasefire that President Biden had previously put on the table. While the deal was made by Mr. Biden’s team, Mr. Trump’s pressure played a critical role in the completion of the act, a major achievement for the incoming president.

But Ukraine in many ways is a much more daunting challenge for Mr. Trump because he has to start from scratch. Unlike Gaza, there is no existing peace plan from his predecessor, with all the intricate logistics, timetables and formulas that have already been worked out, for Mr. Trump to simply adopt and push across the line of arrival

This month, Keith Kellogg, the special envoy appointed by the new president for the war in Ukraine, postponed plans to travel to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, and other European cities to begin explaining the situation until after the inauguration. He told Fox News he hopes so resolve within 100 dayswhich would be 100 times longer than Mr. Trump initially promised even if successful.

“It was an absurd promise,” said Kathryn Stoner, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. “The only person who can really end the war in 24 hours is Vladimir Putin, but he could have done it years ago. Any negotiation will take more than 24 hours, regardless of when Trump starts the clock.

Michael Kimmage, the author of the book “Collisions”, about the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the newly appointed director of the Kennan Institute of the Wilson Center, said that the promises of the campaign of Mr. Trump are still are given “very freely” and perhaps more. sending signals that are interpreted precisely.

“His goals with this language may be the following: put the government in compliance that its approach to Russia and the war will be different from that of Biden, whose main goal is to end the war and not for Ukraine to win” and “that he will be in charge and not the deep state that will bury the United States in wars forever”.

Those signals have left it unclear how Mr. Trump envisions he will reach a deal, but given his long-standing affinity for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, its hostility towards Ukraine and its resistance to US military aid to Kiev, analysts expect any agreement it seeks to be favorable to Moscow. Vice President-elect JD Vance has suggested letting Russia keep the 20 percent of Ukraine it illegally seized through aggression and forcing Ukraine to accept neutrality rather than alignment with the West, a framework that redefines Russian priorities.

Asked by email why Mr. Trump had not followed through on his campaign promise to end the war before his inauguration, Karoline Leavitt, Mr. Trump’s incoming White House press secretary, did not respond directly, but instead he repeated that he will make it “an absolute priority”. in his second term.”

Since his election in November, Mr. Trump meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and talked about meeting with Mr. Putin after his inauguration.

Representatives Michael WaltzThe Florida Republican, who is set to become Mr Trump’s national security adviser, stressed on Sunday that ending the conflict in Ukraine remained a priority for the new president, calling the war “literally a meat grinder” similar to the First World War. trench warfare “with escalating consequences of the Third World War”.

But the thought Mr. Waltz described during an appearance on “Face the Nation” on CBS sounded like the formula for a process that could take some time: “The key pieces of this: Number one, who do we get to the table? Number two, how do we lead them to the table? And then three, what are the frameworks of a deal?

“President Trump is clear: this war has to stop,” Mr. Waltz added. “Everybody, I think, should be on board with that.”

Even if everyone is on board with that goal — and there’s room for doubt — the possible terms remain thorny. Even assuming that NATO membership is not in the cards, Ukraine wants serious security guarantees from the United States and Europe, especially if it is forced to give up its territory, something that Russia he opposes

Then there are questions of reparations and consequences. Who would pay to rebuild Ukraine’s devastated cities and countryside? What happens to the International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Mr. Putin and other Russian figures for alleged war crimes? Will the United States and Europe lift the sanctions imposed after the large-scale invasion of 2022, and if so under what conditions? Who could police a de-confliction line and what happens if any ceasefire is violated?

Mr. Trump has not publicly addressed such questions in any depth, leaving many to guess. However, he expressed anguish over the continued casualties in Ukraine and the urgency to find answers, whatever they may be.

“Part of the point – and this may shed some light on the eventual course of action of his administration – may be to not have a script and therefore to speak in ways that obscure rather than reveal who it’s the actual script,” Mr. Kimmage. he said. “The less we know what he’s doing, the more he can improvise.”