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Donald Trump has never hidden his infatuation with Vladimir Putin and his brutal dictatorial regime, or his disdain for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s resilient democracy.
Before entering the White House for the second time in 2025, Trump agreed with Putin’s fictional grievances over the expansion of NATO — which provided the pretense for Putin’s assault on his neighbor, saying “I could understand their feeling.” Nonetheless, the Trump regime still purported to be supporting Ukraine’s defense.
But last week, Trump gave up any pretense of being a “mediator” in Russia’s War on Ukraine, and openly threw in his lot with Putin.
The dire significance of Trump’s actions can’t be minimized. Trump has declared his desire to make the United States an ally in Russia’s ever more brutal effort to annihilate Ukraine, including by bolstering Russia’s flagging economy with US funds, and using Ukraine’s dependence on US defense systems against it by hobbling the country’s successful offensive and defensive actions.
But there may be a silver lining in a very dark cloud: Ukraine’s true supporters are being forced to face facts many have long avoided.
Over the past two years, many have clung to the false proposition that pandering and supplication could induce Trump to change his mind and support Ukraine. That baseless theory allowed some Europeans to avoid the reality that they must take on the full burden — including the costs and risks — of supporting Ukraine, or face the inevitability that Russia will come after them next.
The false notion that Trump was not fully committed to Putin also allowed many Republican supporters of Ukraine to justify looking the other way while Trump uttered his endearments to the Russian dictator.
Now that the Trump/Putin alliance has been indelibly formalized, denial is no longer a remotely reasonable option.
The fake peace plan
Trump’s announcement of his full-blown alliance with Putin was preceded by an attempt by his incompetent and absurdly corrupt team of “envoys,” real estate investor Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, to advance a predictably bogus Ukraine “peace plan.”
On October 9, Witkoff and Kushner made a show of inviting representatives of Ukraine, as well and European and NATO representatives whom they had previously frozen out of their “mediation” efforts, to a meeting at Witkoff’s Florida golf club.
The purpose, as columnist (and Kushner mouthpiece) David Ignatius explained in a recent column, was to announce a “peace” initiative.
As Ignatius touted, instead of going along with Putin’s demand for all of the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, the Trumper plan offered Ukraine the “carrot” of a ceasefire based on the current lines — “guaranteed” by the US (whatever that is worth).
The only problem with the “plan” was that Putin has resolutely refused such terms in the past, and there’s no indication he’s changed his mind.
Ingnatius asserted that the Trumper “envoys” had extended a generous offer of funding the rebuilding of Ukraine once Russia’s campaign of devastation ends. What Ignatius failed to mention, but later emerged from press reports, is that Kushner and Witkoff also demanded (as they have in the past) that Europe hand over to Trump as yet undisclosed portions of the billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets currently held in Belgium.
In sum, their “peace plan” was to use those monies — which rightfully belong to Ukraine — to fund the “rebuilding” effort, presumably after skimming a large amount off the top for Trump cronies.
The one-sided “ceasefire”
To cap off this great proposal, Witkoff and Kushner reportedly announced that the “peace plan” would involve an immediate halt on some of the most devastating attacks in the war … but solely by Ukraine.
For months, Ukraine has been striking key elements of Russia’s war economy, particularly its oil and gas industry, by attacking hydrocarbon industry plants and other infrastructure, including refineries and tankers. As a result, Russia’s ability to generate oil revenues on the black market is becoming impaired, as is Russia’s ability to produce the refined fuel that is crucial to the operation of its economy and prosecution of its war of conquest against Ukraine.
One would expect that Kushner and Witkoff, as supposed “mediators,” would want Ukraine to continue its strikes. After all — as demonstrated during Zelenskyy’s notorious February 2025 Oval Office encounter with Trump and JD Vance — Ukraine needs to have such “cards” of its own both to defend itself and obtain leverage over Russia in any actual negotiations.
But the very opposite was true. Over at least the past several months, it has come to light that US representatives from Vance on down have been demanding that Ukraine cease attacking Russian refineries. And during the Florida golf course meeting, Kushner and Witkoff formalized that demand for what Trump later called an “energy ceasefire.”
The problem, of course, is that such a one-sided “deal” would leave Russia free to continue hitting Ukraine’s heating and electrical infrastructure in advance of the winter, as Putin’s regime has been doing with ever greater ferocity — including immediately after Trump announced the “ceasefire.”
The peace “proposal,” therefore, was actually a proposal for Ukraine to hobble its own military and defense activities, while Russia assaults Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure.
Trump’s “diesel deal”
But Trump himself all but put the kibosh on his purported mediators’ “peace plan” by announcing his intention for the US to join Iran, North Korea, and China in becoming an open ally in — and profiteer from — Russia’s “Special Military Operation” against Ukraine.
The vehicle for that announcement was Trump’s declaration that he had reached a “diesel deal” with Russia, pursuant to which the US would purchase diesel fuel from Russia and facilitate the sale of the fuel by Russia to other countries.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States has cut off purchases of Russian oil and gas and has strongly pressured allies, particularly Europeans, to do the same. Some countries, particularly Germany, have substantially reconfigured their economies to end dependence on Russian hydrocarbons.
Furthermore, just weeks ago, Trump signed into law the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026, which was to impose massive secondary tariffs on countries that continued to purchase Russian oil and gas, including China and India. Trump’s announcement was, therefore, a complete about-face, rendering the US into a buyer and marketer of the very same Russian oil products the US has pressured others to shun.
It was hard to make sense of Trump’s actions in light of actual energy market realities.
Because of Ukraine’s successful refinery strikes, as Secretary Chris Wright acknowledged during two Sunday interviews, Russia has been experiencing a serious shortage of diesel.
Indeed, Putin has had to turn to other countries, including South Korea, for supplies of the fuel. Furthermore, the US produces more diesel that it consumes, so it’s unlikely that Russian diesel would be imported to the US even if it was available.
But Trump’s actual purpose was plainly not to increase US diesel supplies, or otherwise lower consumer prices, but rather to make clear his intention to definitively change sides and become Russia’s wartime ally — and to undermine the international sanctions regime against Russia that the US worked so hard to implement over the past nearly five years.
This became all the more clear when reports began leaking out that Trump’s “peace” envoys, Witkoff and Kushner, have been working on a plan with their close associate, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, to pressure Germany to start buying Russian gas again — but this time in a commercial arrangement that will give Trump-associated American firms a cut. This jibes completely with another Kushner/Witkoff scheme that was recently leaked to sell the assets of a large Russian oil company, Lukoil, to an American investor named Todd Boehly who has donated millions to Trump.
If Russia is going to be an ally, why shouldn’t Trumpers get a piece of the resulting gusher of oil profits?
Trump capped off the week by announcing last Friday that he was “implementing” the Graham Act by suspending its provisions and preventing the sanctioning of purchasers of Russian goods, including the diesel fuel Trump has effectively been marketing for his ally Putin’s part.
The Graham Act requires the president to provide certification that any such waiver “is in the national interests of the United States” and to report to Congress on why that’s the case. But Trump made a mockery of these requirements by simply declaring that his about-face in US policy is in the national interest without any substantial explanation.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in typically disingenuous fashion, later said that Trump “wants to take the 60-day period of time to sort of analyze what imposing both sanctions and tariffs will mean to the global economy and even to the US economy,” despite the fact that the president signed a law calling for those sanctions and tariffs just days ago.
But, of course, by that time, everyone knew Trump’s actual purpose was to help Putin vanquish Ukraine and endanger the rest of Europe.
The scheme to hobble Ukrainian defenses
Trump’s decision to ally the US with Russia became clear last week, when the Defense Department — which uses its sophisticated aerial intelligence to warn Ukraine of incoming Russian ballistic missile attacks — repeatedly failed to provide such warnings in advance of massive Russian assaults on Kyiv. That came on the heels of reports that Kushner and Witkoff had threatened a complete cutoff of US intelligence sharing with Ukraine during the “peace” talks in Florida.
Then, on October 12 — entirely without warning — the Ukrainian armed forces began to incur sudden speed and connection interruptions in the SpaceX-owned Starlink systems used for navigation of many Ukrainian drones. As a result, Ukraine’s ability to both intercept incoming Russian drone attacks and conduct the midrange attacks the country has been pursuing with great success on Russian military logistics hubs were drastically impaired.
The unexplained cutoff was met with such anger and dismay by Ukraine and its allies that even Putin-friendly oligarch Elon Musk distanced himself from it, stating it was ordered by the US military. Defense Department sources then pointed the finger at, you guessed it, the White House.
Rubio later acknowledged that the US government has wholly cut off Ukraine from the “military” elements of Starlink. Rubio went on to say that it is “under discussion right now how [Ukraine] would want to use” the services Trump has cut off, more than implying that Trumpers are continuing to try to blackmail Ukraine into a one way “energy ceasefire.”
Just yesterday, reports emerged the United States has been holding off on giving necessary approvals to Ukraine of the transfer of Patriot missile interceptors — which provide virtually the only effective defense to increasing Russian ballistic missile attacks. This comes as the US itself has largely refused to provide these interceptors to Ukraine from its own stockpiles.
Also on Monday, Trump opined that Russia "hasn't been doing much" to Ukraine and that its brutal war of annihilation is “fine.”
Facing facts
During a Sunday morning interview Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was repeatedly asked if Ukraine is an ally of the United States. He refused to give a straight answer, but effectively responded in the negative by berating Zelenskyy.
Trump himself is far less cagey than Bessent on the topic of who his allies are. He recently announced that he was going to invite Putin to attend the G20 meeting, to be held in December at his own Doral golf club. It is now clear that if Putin attends, it will be in his newly anointed role as US, or rather Trump, ally.
Trump’s open effort to join nations like Iran, North Korea, and China in aiding Putin’s murderous assault on Ukraine is nothing short of disastrous, and it will leave a lasting moral stain on the United States. But there may be something of a silver lining to this dark cloud.
Since Trump returned to the presidency, many of Ukraine’s supporters — including some allies in Europe and Republicans in the US — have clung to the theory that, despite Trump’s fondness for Putin, he was not ineluctably committed to a pro-Russian position. All that was needed, these “optimists” argued, was continued sweet-talking and submission from Ukraine’s leaders — including a lot of plaintive “thank yous” — and Trump would come around.
This never made much sense, particularly given the ample evidence that Russia helped Trump get elected, and continues to cultivate him through elaborate disinformation campaigns and by offering lucrative financial “deals” to the likes of Kushner, Witkoff and other Trump cronies.
But it was also, in certain respects, a reassuring fiction.
Many European countries have been notably hesitant to take all of the steps necessary to assist Ukraine in defending itself against Russia. Those include sharing weapons systems and stocks of anti-missile defense weapons (if the US allows it), and by providing Ukraine with access to frozen Russian assets, which are needed both to keep the Ukrainian economy afloat and fully fund the country’s defense.
That European hesitation has continued despite, and possibly in some respects because, Russia has been increasing its so-called hybrid war on other European countries, consisting of everything from cyber attacks to kinetic terror attacks on airports and infrastructure. The use of the term “hybrid warfare” itself reflects a form of self-denial by Europeans, many of whom are hesitant to acknowledge that they are now effectively at war with Russia.
Trump’s now open alliance with Russia may increase the impetus for European leaders to take more steps necessary to provide Ukraine — which after all is the frontline defender of the entire continent against Russian aggression — the resources it requires to prevail. But even if such full-throated resolve is forthcoming, it could also be too late given that (with the help of Russia) pro-Russian politicians may soon come to power in France and potentially Germany.
There also remains a chance, albeit a small one, that some of the vast majority of Republicans who have long claimed to support Ukraine against Russia’s murderous assault will finally stand up to Trump, even feebly. Lindsey Graham’s sister, who Trump plucked out of obscurity to become her late brother’s successor, took a first step in that direction last week by opposing Trump’s “diesel deal” with Putin. A drubbing in the midterms and Trump’s descent into the political basement could encourage that process.
Recent history makes it hard to say that optimism is warranted. But continued, and ever greater, efforts by Ukraine’s supporters are nonetheless essential. The stakes not only for Ukraine, but also the world, could not be higher.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
I didn't expect much from Donald Trump's administration with Ukraine given that he has clearly been more fond of Putin than Zelensky. But in hampering the speed that Ukraine's high speed interceptor drones can reach to neutralize russia's jet drones we have Trump and the US becoming an active supporter and enabler of russian war crimes....Because striking Ukrainian residential buildings is exactly what these jet drones do.
History will look upon him with contempt as it will be for the mass of Republicans and conservative commentators who fail to raise Cain about this.....I've been looking and up to now there's nowhere near enough dissent in Republican ranks.
My feeling is that a lot of the relationship is probably based on personal corruption. Bribing people is one of Putin's stock efforts and he still has enought money to offer handsome bribes. Trump himself is openly corrupt and ever eager to enrich himself.
That said Ukraine's long range drones on russia are unrestricted and have every chance of escalating. Russia isn't even exporting diesel because it can't supply enough at reasonable prices to its farmers and truckers. It will almost certainly be producing less as the damage accumulates. I think there's every chance that the US won't get a drop of diesel and the experts all say even if it happens it will make hardly any difference to US prices.
Vote blue no matter who.
Vote red democracy dead.