Betrayal and Hope in Ukraine
Russia is not nearly as strong as Trump would have you believe—and Ukraine is not nearly as defeated.
THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine became a day of infamy for Donald Trump’s America. The United States was one of just eighteen countries (among them Russia, Hungary, North Korea, and Nicaragua) to oppose a U.N. resolution introduced by Ukraine that condemned the invasion, called for the withdrawal of Russian troops, and demanded accountability for Russia’s war crimes. Compounding this disgraceful farce, the United States then abstained from voting on its own anodyne resolution urging an end to the “conflict” and lamenting the loss of life on both sides because of amendments that clearly named Russia as the aggressor.
Meanwhile, Trump, who has recently been accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of being a “dictator without elections,” was asked during Trump’s Monday Oval Office meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron whether he would also call Putin a dictator. Trump replied, ridiculously, that he doesn’t “use those words lightly.” A few days ago, the caustic émigré Russian journalist Alexander Nevzorov quipped that Trump would “show up at his next press conference with a Z”—the Russian pro-war symbol—“scrawled in lipstick on his forehead.” He might as well have sported one during his sitdown with Macron.
This shameful moment for America can also be seen as signaling a very dark time for Ukraine. But many Ukrainians say that when they look back on their seemingly hopeless situation three years ago, their mood remains optimistic. In an interview on Channel 24, a leading Ukrainian newscast, political and military analyst Mykhailo Sheitelman mentioned a Facebook message from a friend, a train engineer who was working on a night train to Kyiv just as he had done on the night of the invasion—and who was struck by the contrast between the panic and bewilderment three years ago and the calm and confidence today. “I look around at the problems we’re dealing with,” Sheitelman quoted his friend as writing, “and I understand that there’s still a huge difference between Russian tanks at railroad crossings and Trump’s [social media] posts.”
Ukrainians and their supporters such as expatriate Russian journalist Michael Nacke point out that Ukraine’s first victories in this war, including the routing of the Russian forces near the Ukrainian capital and the liberation of Kyiv suburbs such as Bucha, happened before there was any significant Western assistance. Nacke also argues that even if U.S. aid is cut off completely, this does not spell doom for Ukraine—especially if other liberal democracies step up to the plate.
The math on aid to Ukraine from the United States and from other countries gets murky even aside from the false number of $350 billion that Trump has repeatedly claimed. A lot depends on whether you look at allocated or disbursed amounts, or at military assistance or all assistance combined. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, allocations for specifically military aid from the United States as of December 2024 have accounted for slightly more than the total from Europe, Canada, and Australia. But in most areas, U.S. deliveries of weapons are easily outpaced by donations from Europe. Thus, the U.S. contribution of howitzers (201) is exceeded by just the United Kingdom, Germany, and Poland combined (206). In tank deliveries, the United States is in fourth place behind Poland, the Netherlands, and Denmark. In supplies of air defense systems, it lags behind Germany. And one might add that some of the Ukrainians’ most effective weapons—such as the drones that have allowed them to neutralize the enemy’s superior air power—have been built with their own resources.
One could say, with plenty of justification, that the statistics on U.S. military assistance illustrate the inadequacy of the Biden administration’s approach, which amounted to promising help “as long as it takes” but never giving enough to give Ukraine a real shot at winning the war, i.e. achieving its goal of liberating all of its internationally recognized territories. Both the Biden administration’s timidity and the Republicans’ obstructionism—remember the Trump-instigated blocking of aid for months in 2023–24?—bear a good deal of blame for Ukrainian setbacks in the past year and a half, including the fall of Avdiivka and subsequent gains by Russian forces. But claims of a victorious Russian forward march, most recently recycled by JD Vance, are simply unsupported by the facts.
A country that enjoys “a massive numerical advantage in manpower and weapons,” as Vance puts it, does not import poor-quality North Korean artillery shells, let alone poorly fed, trained, and motivated North Korean soldiers. Nor does it send its own injured troops back to the frontlines on crutches, or use threats, intimidation, and deception to coerce draftees into signing up for long-term service.
It is also worth noting that Russian advances in Eastern Ukraine, very slow and achieved at staggering human cost, have slowed even further in recent weeks and are now virtually stalled in some areas of the front. As the Institute for the Study of War points out,
Ukraine’s defense has forced Russian forces to pay substantial costs for advances that remain far below a rate normal for modern mechanized militaries and that are not sustainable in the medium term.
Ukraine’s defenses are not even close to collapsing. And, perhaps most amazingly, Russia is not even close to recapturing its own territory held since last summer by Ukrainians in the Kursk region.
For all the triumphalism of the Kremlin-controlled Russian media, the pro-war blogs that enjoy somewhat more leeway are not in a very joyous mood on the invasion’s third anniversary, as Nacke points out in a roundup. Many of the “Z bloggers” point out that the Russian armed forces are in dire shape, that the losses in elite troops and equipment are irreparable in the short term, and that none of the Russian aims in the war have been reached: Ukraine is not “denazified” (a term these bloggers freely admit means “brought into the Russian orbit”) or “demilitarized” (quite the opposite), and not one of the four Ukrainian provinces annexed by Russia is entirely under Russian control. One such war cheerleader suggested that at least the third goal might be achievable: “What if Trump gives us those territories as a present?”
The comment was intended as bitter sarcasm. But it is reportedly not far off from what Trump actually intends to do in the “peace settlement” he keeps touting.
ONE COULD ARGUE that Trump’s Ukraine policy is still evolving. There are reports that Zelensky is close to signing that elusive, and outrageously exploitative, rare minerals deal. On the other hand, the European Union now seems to be offering its own, more advantageous agreement on “critical materials” to Ukraine—and Putin is dangling the possibility of rare mineral extraction deals between the United States and Russia, an arrangement that would apparently include illegally occupied Ukrainian territories. It is also far from clear that Putin is prepared to make any peace agreement or truce that would include meaningful security assurances for Ukraine, such as peacekeeping troops from NATO countries.
Meanwhile, apologists like Victor Davis Hanson are—to comic effect—still trying to spin Trump’s anti-Ukraine statements as hardball negotiating tactics in accordance with The Art of the Deal, intended to bring the parties to the negotiating table by applying pressure to Zelensky and cozying up to Putin. It’s that 64-dimensional chess in which the former real estate developer, we’re asked to believe, can easily outplay the former KGB operative.
But American foreign policy is not a backroom real estate deal. Even if one were to stipulate that Trump’s pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine statements are just a negotiating tactic—which would require ignoring most of Trump’s political history—such statements cannot be unsaid. The fact remains that the president of the United States publicly berated a democracy fighting an invasion by the autocrat next door while portraying that autocrat as a man of peace.
The fact remains, too, that Trump—echoing Russian disinformation—has publicly endorsed the claim that the invasion was “provoked” by Russia’s legitimate fears about NATO membership for Ukraine. His special envoy Steve Witkoff has also recycled that excuse.1
And the fact remains that on the invasion’s third anniversary, the United States voted with the aggressor against the victim.
Trump’s recent behavior has revived paranoid speculation that he could be a Russian asset, maybe even a Soviet-era KGB recruit complete with a code name. But there’s no need to resort to conspiracy theories about his motivation. A more plausible explanation, offered by expatriate Russian political strategist Stanislav Belkovsky, is that Trump’s affection for Putin is explained by an enemy-of-my-enemy mindset—the common enemy being the American and European “political establishment”—and by a more fundamental view of autocrats as kindred spirits, compounded by personal and political grudges against Zelensky and Ukraine more generally. But a more relevant question is: If Trump were a Russian asset, what—at least with regard to Ukraine—would he be doing differently?
Perhaps the most optimistic scenario was offered by exiled Russian writer (now a U.S. resident) Dmitry Bykov, who suggested that Putin’s war in Ukraine was going to drive a stake through the heart of Russian imperial ideology—and that, likewise, Trump’s current actions were “burying the idea of ‘Make America Great Again.’” Ukraine as the gravedigger of both Putinism and Trumpism sounds like a feel-good fantasy. But history has known even stranger twists.
Interestingly, the Putin regime’s own narrative about whether supposed Ukrainian ambitions to join NATO impelled Russia to invade has been illogical and inconsistent; Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian puppet president and deputy chair of the Russian Federation Security Council, has conceded that Russia’s objections to NATO member countries on its border did not apply to Finland but only to “former parts of our country.” In other words: It’s the empire, stupid.