Trump Hammers … Ukraine?

On Wednesday, President Trump decided to go whole-hog on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Let me be very clear about where I stand when it comes to the Ukraine war.

Russia attacked Ukraine. There was no good reason for Russia to attack Ukraine. Russia’s goal was to take over all of Ukraine and, originally, to kill Zelensky and anyone else who was ruling in power and not going to act as a puppet in the Putin regime.

None of this is speculative; that was the reality in February of 2022. Ukraine did a masterful job fending off that attack. By summer of that year, it was quite clear that a stalemate had basically set in. Despite all of the best attempts by the Europeans and the half-hearted attempts by the Biden administration to provide Ukraine with additional arms, the lines just weren’t moving that much.

So since summer of 2022, the lines have been pretty much set. The Donbas area and Crimea have been occupied by Russia. And neither love nor money was going to move Russia off that particular land unless the Biden administration was willing to do much more, which they simply were not.

What does that mean?

It means any sort of settlement between Russia and Ukraine was always going to have the following basic outline:

First, Russia was going to retain control over Donbas and Crimea, because there would be no off-ramp for Russia otherwise. Putin was not going to lose face as the dictator of Russia by simply handing back territory that Russia originally invaded in 2014 and has held ever since. Ukraine is not going to win back that territory. It has been a victory for Ukraine simply to continue existing in the face of the Russian bear. 

Second, Ukraine has to have some pretty significant security guarantees to make sure Putin doesn’t do this again. One of Putin’s demands has been that Ukraine essentially disarm. That was never going to happen.

Thus, that was going to be a deal: security guarantees for Ukraine, and Russia keeps Donbas and Crimea. That’s always how this was always going to look. It’s been this way for almost three years at this point.

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There are additional elements here; President Trump believes the United States has spent an exorbitant amount of money in Ukraine and somehow Ukraine should repay all of that money forthwith. And he has a couple of proposals on the table for that.

One of those was a sort of economic proposal, punitive with regard to Ukraine’s future industry. The case in favor of that particular economic proposal — which, effectively speaking, forced the Ukrainian government to split pretty much all exportable material with the United States (or at least profits from that exportable material with the United States) — was that it was good news for Ukraine. A deal like that would have tied the United States into Ukrainian security for the future. That’s because if the United States and Ukraine had an economic deal already in operation, then the United States would have a pretty significant interest in making sure that Ukraine was not invaded once again by Putin.

The case against that deal involves the actual amount Trump was asking of Ukraine, as it is extraordinarily burdensome. The New York Post reported, “The proposed contract, which reportedly hit Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s desk last week, demands half the country’s revenues from natural resources, ports and infrastructure indefinitely as payback for US military aid since the war began.”

That apparently was met with a rather cold reception in Kyiv which ticked off President Trump. Generally speaking, Zelensky has a way of getting on President Trump’s nerves. There’s just no question about this.

This goes back years, all the way back to the phone calls between Trump and Zelensky during Trump’s first term. Then, of course, Zelensky decided to make best friends with Joe Biden. Nothing ticks off President Trump more than that sort of nonsense.

In the late stages of the election, Zelensky actually went around to munitions factories with Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, which the Trump campaign correctly saw as an attempt to warm up Kamala Harris in anticipation of a Harris victory. Trump didn’t like that either.

A couple of days ago, Trump made some not-so-nice remarks about Zelensky, and Zelensky responded by suggesting Trump was part of a disinformation echo chamber. This led to a big blow-up on Wednesday.

President Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle.”

Just on the facts, this is not true. Ukraine did not talk the United States into the war. Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is the aggressor in this particular situation. As far as the United States’ expenditures, the United States has spent an extraordinary amount of money and has lent (or, rather, gifted because it won’t be repaid) somewhere in the arena of $120 billion to Ukraine through the end of last year.

About $25 billion of that is basically coming back to the United States in the form of defense expenditures. To be fair, the result has been the complete evisceration of Russia’s forward military power, which as a bit of a bargain is not terrible, especially considering Russia has historically been a geopolitical enemy of the United States.

Trump continued, “The United States has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe, and Europe’s money is guaranteed, while the United States will get nothing back.”

I see no evidence of this particular proposition. Europe has apparently spent slightly more money than the United States. When all of the European countries are aggregated together, they spent (or committed) somewhere in the neighborhood of $138 billion. That amount has gone up again recently, reaching closer to $180 billion committed to Ukraine. As to the idea that Europe’s money is guaranteed, meaning Ukraine is going to pay it back? No way.

His post continued, reading, “Why didn’t Sleepy Joe Biden demand Equalization, in that this War is far more important to Europe than it is to us — We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation.”

This is the first point that is actually correct: Why is the United States footing the bill for this war? The Europeans really need to step up.

He’s right. Europe is going to have to step into the breach. They have much more of a stake in Ukraine remaining Russia-free than the United States does.

Trump continued, “Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is ‘MISSING.’ He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle.’ A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”

As far as refusing to have elections, martial law was declared in Ukraine because of the current war, a war that has currently cost — at a minimum — 43,000 dead between February 2022 and December 2024 in Ukraine.

Millions of people have fled Ukraine, becoming refugees and leaving after the war began; hundreds of thousands of men are in fighting positions. It makes it difficult just on a logistical level to actually have a workable election.

Zelensky being low in Ukrainian polls is not particularly true either. He is riding at about 50% in the Ukrainian polls but is inching up — in part because of the conflict with Trump.

“A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” continued Trump’s post.

This may be just a tactic of Trump’s to put pressure on Zelensky to come to the table and recognize the obvious. But the truth is that he doesn’t have to recognize the obvious: the United States can basically just sign his name on the dotted line.

Since August of 2022, I have been suggesting that the United States would basically have to go around Ukraine, cut a deal Ukraine doesn’t like, and then crack down on Ukraine. I still don’t believe that requires the moral blindness of suggesting that Zelensky is a dictator (as opposed to Putin, who has not held a legitimate election in the country of Russia for a quarter-century).

By the way, Trump’s statements have resulted in Zelensky’s opposition in Ukraine coming to his defense. So the idea that he is a dictator who’s quashing the opposition doesn’t really explain why all the opposition parties are now coming to Zelensky’s defense.

President Trump wrote, “In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do.”

That is true. Trump is the only one attempting to find a solution. Biden never did try. This is one of the signal failures of the Biden administration; I pointed this out throughout Biden’s entire term.

“Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the “gravy train” going.” Trump is correct about this. Zelensky probably wants to keep the gravy train going, but saying Zelensky is willing to let tens of thousands of his own people be slaughtered in the streets simply so the money can keep flowing to Ukraine is a pretty nasty accusation.

“I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died – And so it continues…..” These are the sorts of words that presumably the Russian delegation is very happy to hear. Just in terms of return on the United States’ investment, the Russian military machine has been absolutely crippled by the war in Ukraine, as reported by a NATO official, who said Russia’s overall dead and wounded in this war amount to 837,000 people. That is a massive number.

Biden was a signal failure in leading the world on this. When it comes to practical policy, the policy that is likely to emerge from what Trump is doing is likely to be a much better policy than anything Biden was doing.

However, Trump’s statements about Zelensky, the attacks on him as a “dictator,” the suggestion that somehow Russia is the moral party, are wrong; they are not true.

Trump reiterated this post’s message in a speech. Whether it is animus for or frustration with Zelensky on a personal level or a sort of Machiavellian attempt to pressure Zelensky, to make him look so bad Trump is able to cut a deal without Zelensky, I am unsure. I don’t know why Trump is saying this, and his motivations are unclear to me.

Russia is attempting to make economic overtures to President Trump. President Trump has a very long-standing policy when it comes to foreign policy, which is that the United States should earn money.

That’s not a bad policy. There are just other countervailing interests that sometimes overcome those interests. You can earn a lot of money doing business with China. You can also completely undermine your manufacturing base, have all of your IP stolen, and pave the way to Chinese aggression all over the region. So money is not the only consideration. It is, however, a fair consideration.

On Wednesday, President Putin praised the U.S. delegation in Riyadh for not criticizing Russia as previous administrations have done.

The case could be made that Trump is not criticizing because there is no point. If he were to shout at Putin about being a dictator, then is he able to get to the actual endpoint that he wants? But by the same token, is there a realpolitik rationale for attacking Zelensky in this way? If there is, I’m hard-pressed to see it.

On a moral level, what he’s saying is obviously not true. Russia attacked Ukraine. Vladimir Putin is, in fact, a quite murderous dictator who has no problem poisoning his enemies or throwing them off of the tops of buildings.

The predictable result of all of this, however, could be salutary in the end. If the result of the war’s end is already known, which many of us have been asking for and demanding for three years at this point, perhaps it will come to an end faster because of the kind of activities that Trump is participating in.

Europe is going to be forced to step up, and Trump really does have that part right when it comes to Russia and Ukraine.

I think Zelensky is taking a rather unwise position criticizing the Trump administration, because a position of personal animus on President Trump is a bad place to be as a foreign leader.

But no matter how much pressure President Trump puts on Zelensky, Putin is not going to end up with Kyiv. He’s not going to end up running Ukraine.

Trump does not want that happening. No matter how much he personally dislikes Zelensky, he does not actually want Putin walking down the streets of Kyiv in triumph.

It was Democrats who blew this, and that’s how they ended up with Donald Trump as president.

In the end, he’s the one who’s going to have to negotiate the deal.