Trump’s Abandonment of Ukraine & Ukrainian Americans Deepens

Since his inauguration as President of the USA on January 20, 2025, Donald J. Trump has been behaving like an overt Russian asset rather than the duly elected chief executive of the American people.

Trump’s sidling up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin has become more visible by his actions and words every day. Much to the shock of the x-captive nations, notably Ukrainians, and their landsmen in the United States, Trump defiantly switched sides and began promoting Moscow’s line of imperial thinking. He blamed Ukraine for starting the war and he called President Zelenskyy a dictator. In Trump’s mind Ukraine was guilty of all transgressions while Russia was merely doing what others in its place would be doing—defending itself.

After the previous administration designated Ukraine America’s strategic partner, the current White House has stepped back. Its abandonment of Kyiv and Ukrainian Americans is deepening.

Two events took place this week that intensified the rejection.

After eight decades of providing truthful and needed analysis and information to the captive nations behind the iron curtain, President Trump has decided to silence the Voice of America. The VOA is an international broadcaster that operates in nearly 50 languages. USAGM also funds Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.

Tech billionaire and senior Trump adviser Elon Musk called for VOA and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to be terminated. “Europe is free now (not counting stifling bureaucracy). Hello?? 2. Nobody listens to them anymore,” Musk said in an early February post on the social platform X. “3. It’s just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money.”

Too bad that Musk is not in tune with what is happening in the now independent former captive nations otherwise he would know that VOA broadcasts, which kept previous generations informed about what was happening in the USSR and beyond, are still extremely viable and in demand, complementing the other media with its brand of news reporting.

Then, the White House announced that its participation in the commission investigating Russian war crimes in Ukraine has ended. This concerns the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (ICPA), which was established to hold Russia’s leadership and its allies in Belarus, North Korea and Iran accountable for aggression that violates the sovereignty of another country and is not conducted in self-defense.

According to sources familiar with the situation, the US Department of Justice has informed European officials about the US withdrawal from the group.

The decision was expected to be announced yesterday in an email to the group’s parent organization, the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust), according to The New York Times.

The Hague-based International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine is a judicial hub supporting national investigations into the crime of aggression committed by the Russian leadership, including President Vladimir Putin, who has been convicted of war crimes, and Moscow's allies against Ukraine.

While the group is made up of specialists from Ukraine, Poland, Romania, and the Baltic countries, the Biden administration appointed a special prosecutor to support the hub’s activities in 2023.

The Trump administration will also reduce the work of the U.S. Justice Department's War Crimes Accountability Team, which was launched in 2022 to investigate Russia for the atrocities it had committed during the full-scale invasion. That’s like allowing all criminals to have their way at ruling their roost.

Ukraine is investigating more than 150,000 possible war crimes committed by Russia as part of its all-out war, including the summary execution of prisoners and targeted aerial strikes against civilians. Russian brutality against prisoners of war and civilians and kidnappings has been condemned by the United Nations and other international organizations.

Since being elected to office, the U.S., at the instructions of Trump, has sought to water down joint statements labeling Russia as the aggressor and the “sole obstacle” to peace.

Despite America’s withdrawal, the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression said the group remains “fully committed” to holding “those responsible for core international crimes” in Ukraine accountable, Schmid said. The group consists of prosecutors from Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania.

It is obvious, therefore, that the progression of steps by the Trump administration leads many to believe, including us, that Trump’s and Putin’s plans and goals for Ukraine are aligned, as Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis observed. His thoughts have been echoed by Finnish President Aleksander Stubb who said, “Putin does not want peace. His original goal was to destroy Ukraine — and that goal has not changed."

Despite what will be the upshot of today’s telephone conversation between Trump and Putin, Moscow has its own plans for Ukraine and the region. A document prepared for the Kremlin by a Moscow-based think tank states that “a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine war cannot happen before 2026,” according to The Washington Post.

The document, drawn up in February, outlines the Russian plan to weaken the U.S. position on the Ukraine crisis by boosting tensions between the Trump White House and other nations as Russia moves ahead with its plans to pick apart the country.

The document, obtained by a European intelligence agency and reviewed by The Post, argues that the current Ukrainian government needs to be fully dismantled. “The current Kyiv regime cannot be changed from inside the country. Its complete dismantling is needed,” the report states. This is proof that Moscow intends to expand its invasion and then evict, destroy and perhaps kill the democratically elected government of Ukraine and in its place install its typical puppets.

The sad irony of Washington’s position is that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who immigrated to the United States and their descendants in the 19th century, during World War One, after World War Two and today, have been betrayed by the White House. Today, the President and his minions are implementing policies that do not benefit anyone except Russia.