Let me begin this piece by stating clearly that Donald Trump and the Republican Party have provided Ukraine with no new military assistance beyond that already appropriated by the previous administration. Indeed, they spent months specifically holding up military aid, leading to the deaths of both soldiers and civilians in Ukraine. It’s essential to establish some baseline facts when it comes to Trump’s support for Ukraine, because it amounts to ZERO.
It would be fair to say that, indeed, Trump has acted as a proxy for Putin, for whom he has gifted the two key commodities he needed: TIME and denial of critical US support to Ukraine. Again and again, he has made sanction threats to punish Putin for his murderous behaviour, only to provide him with more and more time to continue his attacks with impunity. There has never been a time since World War II when the US has acted as a proxy to assist Russia in an illegal invasion of a US ally. An ally that had, at the request of the US government, given up its nuclear arsenal in return for American security assurances under the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. A memorandum that the US and the UK breached in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea. Their excuse? a security ‘assurance’ is not a security ‘guarantee’. Don’t ever let anyone tell you words don’t matter.
I can find absolutely no grounds for Trump supporting Russia based on trade or inward investment. Even before their invasion in 2022, the US ran a trade deficit with Russia of between $10 and $15 billion. The US has had ZERO benefit from any relationship with Russia. It exists to disrupt US global interests and has long been involved in election interference and geopolitical disruption wherever the US has strategic interests. Russia has long been considered a US adversary for good reason. Putin has been in power for 25 years, not because he’s a good guy, but because he’s a bully, a thug and a tyrant feared by his people who cannot trust him to act in their interests. In my opinion, this is what appeals to Trump: his ability to rule with an iron fist. In short, Trump is a fanboy, and that is killing Ukrainians.
Let’s be very clear, Putin is not interested in compromise. His goals were clear from the very outset. The 2014 invasion of Crimea was always a prelude to the whole invasion in 2022. He does not and never has recognised Ukraine as a sovereign nation. I think I can say with some confidence that even if a settlement were agreed today to end the war, firstly, he will concede no ground, and secondly, he will be back to finish the job once he’s had time to regroup. It’s who he is.
What Trump fails to grasp is that Putin has decades of geopolitical gameplay under his belt. In many ways, he is like Trump; he’s happy to lie and deceive to achieve his objectives. The thing is, he’s much better at it than Trump, and these negotiations are testament to his manipulative skills. Trump has become his geopolitical Stradivarius, which he has played like a maestro, while Trump has been left looking the fool time and time again. Trump is simply no match for the former KGB man who has been running circles around him for months now. It is my firm personal belief that Putin holds kompromat on Trump from his many visits to Russia in the past. Trump’s narcissistic nature has long made him a target for foreign security services, which is also why I think Netanyahu has a hold on him, too.
The meeting scheduled for Friday in Alaska is, in many ways, a very odd meeting. The US appears now to be only supporting Ukraine via weapons sales to NATO, which is effectively now a commercial relationship via a third party. Yet, the US is the primary negotiator for the victim of an illegal invasion by a now-indicted war criminal. Given Trump’s alignment with Russian goals, he can be considered nothing but a bad-faith actor who cannot possibly have the best interests of the victim at heart. It’s like sending the best buddy of a rapist into court to prosecute the rapist.
Let’s be clear, Ukraine agreed to an unconditional ceasefire on 11th March 2025. Russia failed to honour any ceasefire and continued to kill Ukrainians with ever increasing drone and missile strikes. The US applied NO pressure on Russia; it simply allowed Putin to continue to wage war with impunity. It has made no real effort to hold Putin accountable since, and now proposes to give away Ukrainian territory to Russia without either Ukraine or the European coalition, which is financing Ukraine’s defence, in the room. It is unconscionable and unacceptable. Russia is the sole aggressor and should never be rewarded for that aggression.
A coalition of the willing is now financing Ukraine's defence. As such, representatives from the alliance paying the bill, along with the president of Ukraine, should be leading any negotiating team on behalf of Ukraine. The US can’t, on one hand, say they don’t want to fund the war, then on the other insist on dictating the outcome. This is a European security issue. Russia is not sitting on US borders; it is sitting on the borders of NATO allies.
Trump is trading on military aid appropriated in bipartisan bills passed by Congress during the Biden administration. It is important to note that following these appropriation bills, Trump himself instructed the Republican caucus to starve Ukraine of military support, which they duly did. Once Trump was elected, he aligned US policy with Kremlin talking points, accusing Zelenskyy of starting the war, denying military support and withdrawing access to battlefield intelligence. Weapons now supplied to Ukraine now have to be purchased from the US via NATO, so how can Trump possibly negotiate in good faith?
As of yesterday, he’s back to blaming Zelenskyy for everything, casting doubt on his legitimacy as president and falsely claiming the US has spent $300 billion on the war. For the record, here are the facts as updated on 15th July 2025 by the Council on Foreign Relations:
The U.S. Congress has voted through five bills that have provided Ukraine with aid since the war began, doing so most recently in April 2024. The total budget authority under these bills—the “headline” figure often cited by news media—is $175 billion.
These aid packages provided support for not just military aid, but also for civil society in Ukraine. Also, what was appropriated does not necessarily equate to what was actually delivered. Congress passed these bills under the Biden administration with bipartisan votes. In addition, in December 2024, a further $20 billion loan, funded by interest generated from frozen Russian assets, was provided. To be very clear, NONE of the aid provided by Congress was in the form of loans, except the $20 billion payment in December 2024.
Trump and his Republican acolytes spent much of their time during the election campaign painting a picture of pallets of cash being flown into Kyiv and disappearing to buy yachts, etc. Even back then, they were echoing Kremlin talking points. The report continues:
A large share of the money in the aid bills has been spent in the United States, paying for American factories and workers to produce the various weapons that are either shipped to Ukraine or that replenish the U.S. weapons stocks the Pentagon has drawn on during the war. One analysis by the American Enterprise Institute found that Ukraine aid is funding defence manufacturing in more than seventy U.S. cities.
It is a simple fact that the biggest winner in the Ukraine war has been the US Military Industrial Complex, which has not only benefited from US aid appropriated, but from NATO allies who placed orders with US arms manufacturers for weapons then supplied to Ukraine.
If you want to really have your mind blown, I recommend you read this piece from the Washington Post from November 29th 2023, by Marc A. Thiessen. His report opens:
Here is the best-kept secret about U.S. military aid to Ukraine: Most of the money is being spent here in the United States. That’s right: Funds that lawmakers approve to arm Ukraine are not going directly to Ukraine but are being used stateside to build new weapons or to replace weapons sent to Kyiv from U.S. stockpiles. Of the $68 billion in military and related assistance Congress has approved since Russia invaded Ukraine, almost 90 percent is going to Americans, one analysis found.
Before the Ukraine war, arms manufacturing was working at a crawling pace. Marc notes:
For example, the United States had not built a single new Stinger antiaircraft missile since 2005. The terrorists we were fighting in recent decades did not have jet fighters, so production faltered. Now, thanks to the Ukraine aid that Vance opposes, the Pentagon signed a $624.6 million contract last year to build Stinger missiles in Tucson, to replace about 1,400 sent to Ukraine. Without our Ukraine resupply effort, the Stinger production line likely would have remained dormant — perhaps until bombs started dropping in a conflict over Taiwan.
The war provided jobs and big profits for US arms manufacturers, yet Trump wants to blame Zelensky for having the audacity to defend his people from Russian aggression. The aid packages were an investment in the US Military Industrial Complex that replenished old weapons stocks shipped to Ukraine with new, more modern stocks, while at the same time allowing the Ukrainian army to severely deplete the Russian war machine without a single American boot on the ground—a US military strategist's wet dream. There has been little economic downside for US taxpayers, and had the US not stopped military aid in a critical moment, I believe the Russian army would be in a far worse position than they are today.
The other misconception arises from Trump’s claim that Europe has provided less aid to Ukraine. This is simply untrue.
Where it gets really interesting is when you look at aid contributions by the GDP of the donor country. You will see that many Europeans have been digging deep.
As with all things Trump, he’s selling an illusion. He seems intent on selling out the Ukrainian people for what he sees as future economic benefit and an attempt to separate Russia from China on promises of jam tomorrow. Both are massive geopolitical miscalculations by a man completely out of his depth.
Another significant misconception concerns Ukraine’s perceived overdependence on US military aid. It’s true that Ukraine was not optimally equipped to defend itself against the so-called formidable Russian army. No European country would have been fully prepared for the scale of Russia's assault on Ukraine, but the level of resistance and resilience has amazed military strategists worldwide. In times of war, some nations can defy expectations and fight above their weight, and Ukraine is the poster boy for that indomitable spirit.
They never asked for boots on the ground; all they have ever asked for is the tools to get the job done, and let’s be brutally honest, we have let them down time and time again with delayed military aid, limitations on arms use and even deliberate removal of critical battlefield intelligence. However, time and time again, they have worked with what they have been given to resist what they are constantly told is a more powerful army from a country ten times their size.
The level of innovation they have brought to the battlespace is nothing short of remarkable, given the resources available to them. They have redefined warfare for the modern age with both aerial and sea drones. They have denied the Russians both air and sea superiority. Their multi-million dollar air defence systems and strategic bombers have fallen victim to $1000 drone attacks. They have developed their own long-range missiles and can attack deep into Russian territory. Adaptation and innovation have been their superpower. US and NATO strategists are learning from the lethal tech innovation brought to the table by the Ukrainian military. The return on investment for all those supporting Ukraine is beyond measure, and we all have a deep debt of gratitude to the Ukrainian people for the enormous sacrifices they have made to help keep Europe safe. They are now building a formidable military-industrial base of their own, and Europe should be investing heavily. This is precisely why Putin wants Ukraine to be demilitarised as part of any settlement.
In conclusion, Trump is neither qualified nor capable of representing the interests of either Europe or Ukraine in any negotiations to end this conflict. He is compromised and invested in nobody but himself. Europe needs to stop sitting around pretending it even figures in Trump’s thinking; he doesn’t give a damn about European security. Why should he? He’s an ocean away, and for some bizarre reason, is more interested in handing off Ukraine to Putin as a reward for his abhorrent behaviour. Bizarre that is, until you understand the vast deposits of rare earth metals in Ukraine.
You will recall that in April/May, Ukraine signed an agreement to provide access to rare earth minerals. These were tense negotiations in which Trump initially tried to extort Ukraine, but was forced to loosen demands as talks progressed.
If you would like some context on where things landed, I highly recommend taking a look at this piece by Bob Savic, who is head of international trade and sanctions consulting at the Global Policy Institute. It is a piece which he penned for the Geopolitical Intelligence Services. He notes:
U.S. strategic interest in Ukraine’s mineral wealth lies not in outright ownership, but in securing vital commodity flows. Consequently, the agreement permits Ukraine to maintain sovereign control over its subsoil, infrastructure and natural resources, as well as decision-making authority regarding extraction. American firms, in turn, will gain preferential access to explore and develop these resources via the U.S.-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund, a partnership established between the two nations’ government agencies to oversee such ventures.
He goes on:
Currently, Ukraine has 20,000 registered deposits of minerals and metals, of which nearly 9,000 are proven reserves. These include Europe’s largest quantities of rare earths, lithium, graphite and titanium. However, the majority of these deposits are scattered over the war-contested provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv. Control over these resources will likely be crucial to Ukraine’s post-war economic recovery, Europe’s green future and Russia’s global resources status.
It’s not until you see the big picture that you see why Trump is insisting on being the one who strikes this deal behind closed doors. Russia currently controls the majority of these deposits on the ground that they have taken. I suspect that Trump and Putin have already agreed on a deal that would effectively cut out Ukraine from a large segment of these deposits, which would vastly reduce revenue available for reconstruction. It would mean the US could cut loose Ukraine, leaving Putin with a larger permanent sovereign footprint in Ukraine, which he could expand in the future, leaving the region vulnerable to Russian aggression moving forward. All he has to do is share the spoils with Trump.
The original agreement with Ukraine was merely a backstop in the event Russia lost ground in Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv. Suppose Trump can get Europe and Ukraine to agree to the land swap proposals. Trump will likely finalise a deal with Putin for easy access to critical resources. Then he will use the agreement signed with Ukraine to mop up access to the remaining resources outside the new Russian-held territory.
In my humble opinion, Trump is about to shaft Ukraine and regional allies in a straightforward move, leaving them on the hook for reconstruction, which, when complete, Russia will annexe. At the same time, the US is insulated from any fallout. The current coalition is asleep at the wheel, failing to consider the broader perspective. If they don’t wake up to this threat, Putin will be enjoying his most significant victory against Europe in history. They are going to have to stop this, or Putin wins BIG TIME. At the moment, European leaders are insisting on online talks between the coalition, Ukraine and the US before the planned talks on Friday, but as yet there is no indication the US will take part.
I am pretty sure that Russia can be routed from Ukraine by a coalition of the willing without the US. The Russian army is bogged down with no air superiority, poorly trained conscripts, and ageing military hardware. At some point, someone will have to stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough’, and grasp the nettle, because until they do, the Russian threat will be forever present.
Such a thorough report. But it just makes me disgusted with the response from the US since January. We are allowing this to happen.
Regarding your last paragraph, I would not be surprised if Trump found a "creative" reason (e.g., gaslighting) to help Russia defend itself against military action by a coalition of western countries. We should never underestimate his level of "regard" for V Putin.