Trump’s Alignment with Russia is Killing Ukrainians, Prolonging War

With Ukraine valiantly defending itself against Russia’s barbaric onslaught, America’s chief executive dangerously refuses to give Ukrainian leaders, soldiers and people any credit and encouragement for surviving more than three years in the latest phase of Moscow’s war.

His flippant comments, anti-Ukrainian rhetoric, blatant vulgarity, offensive behavior and Russian preference are enough to wound the hearts and souls of every Ukrainian and Ukrainian advocate.

The acrimonious donnybrook in the Oval Office on February 28, with President Trump, chastising President Zelenskyy for defending his country, was not a one-off ambush of the Ukrainian chief executive. Since then, President Trump has on numerous occasions belittled Ukrainian battlefield achievements while solidarizing with the Russian aggressor. 

As is he has repeatedly done, when Ukraine successfully strikes back at Russia, Trump finds a way to denounce Zelenskyy for undermining peace efforts by provoking the Russians. In other words, Trump doesn’t want Ukrainian soldiers to return fire but rather to roll over and die.

The case in point was last week’s Spiderweb surprise drone attack that struck Russia’s bomber fleet. Asked by a reporter on Air Force One if the June 1 attack, which disabled or destroyed as many as 40 Russian planes, had changed his view about how many “cards” Zelensky has to play, Trump criticized Ukraine for poking the bear. “They gave Putin a reason to bomb the hell out of them,” Trump said. “That’s what I didn’t like — I saw it and thought, ‘Here we go, now there’ll be a strike.’”

Trump also claimed that Ukraine provoked the war in 2022 by fighting back against the invader.

The comment follows Trump’s assessment comparing the war in Ukraine to a schoolyard fistfight, in which, in his view, it’s best not to intervene. “It's a pretty known analogy. You have two kids, they fight, fight, fight,” Trump said during his meeting last week with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “You try and pull them apart; they don't want to be pulled. Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while.”

Trump demonstrated again that he either doesn’t know anything about Ukraine or he doesn’t care. 

In an interview with ABC, Zelenskyy resented the analogy. “We are not playing in the park with the Russians like two boys, two kids. Putin is not a kid,” Zelenskyy told ABC’s Martha Raddatz. “So, we can’t compare, and we cannot say, OK, let them fight for a while.” Zelensky said if anyone has shown no interest in ending the war, it’s Putin, who he described as a “maniac.”

“I feel strongly Putin does not want to end the war without total defeat of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy told Raddatz. “With all due respect to President Trump,” Zelensky said, “I think it’s just his personal opinion. Trust me, we understand the Russians much better, the mentality of the Russians, than the Americans understand the Russians. I know for sure Putin doesn't want to stop the war.”

Trump claimed on May 27 that Russia would already be facing serious consequences if not for his actions, following one of the most intense Russian aerial assaults on Ukraine. “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean really bad. He's playing with fire,” he wrote on Truth Social.

Wait a second, braggadocio or not, you mean the American President is protecting Russia from being bombed by Ukrainian drones and warplanes? And then the President had an hour-long conversation with Putin in which Trump learned about the Russian dictator’s plans, which he chose not to reveal. That’s certainly not the American way; that’s certainly siding with the enemy of humanity.

Zelenskyy and five other European leaders during their recent meeting in Albania joined a conference call with President Trump immediately after his call with Vladimir Putin hoping to hear that Putin had agreed to a ceasefire — or the US would impose penalties on him for refusing to do so.

Instead, Trump said Putin had agreed to negotiate, stressed the US wouldn't be involved in those negotiations, and pushed back against the idea of imposing sanctions on Putin at the current time, two sources who were on the call and a third source briefed on the call told Axios.

Why it matters: Trump gave the impression he was getting closer to withdrawing from the issue altogether. Some leaders on the call seemed “surprised” or “shocked,” the sources said.

“I think something's going to happen. And if it doesn’t, I just back away and they’re going to have to keep going. Again, this was a European situation, and should have remained a European situation,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office several hours after his calls.

So, Trump wants to refrain from so-called European situations. History has shown that others have tried this but failed, only giving rise to greater European dictators.

As for sanctions, Trump floated the idea of imposing sanctions on Ukraine.

Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, is another White House official who can’t say anything favorable about Kyiv. Kellogg even sympathizes with Moscow’s opposition to Ukraine’s accession to NATO. He said Russia’s concern over the eastward enlargement of NATO was fair and the United States did not want to see Ukraine in the U.S.-led military alliance.

Asked by U.S. network ABC News about a Reuters report that Russia wanted a written pledge over NATO not enlarging eastwards to include Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, Kellogg said: “It’s a fair concern.”

David Petraeus, retired United States Army general and CIA director, observed what no one in the White House will have the courage to declare: that Russia’s aim was to topple president Volodymyr Zelensky in order to “install a puppet leader and to control all of Ukraine.”

He added: “Once that's done, you are going to see them focus on one of the Baltic states. Lithuania has featured prominently in his speeches and we should have listened a lot more.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky, responding to the May 25 overnight bombardment, called for urgent new sanctions and warned that “America's silence, and the silence of others around the world, only encourages Putin.”

The European Union and US lawmakers have also called for tougher action. It seems as if the White House is the lone American institution out in the cold.