Never has it been clearer that the US has become an ally of Russia. We see Trump time and time again provide Putin more time to come to the table when it comes to negotiating a peace settlement in Ukraine. Let’s be clear, Putin has absolutely no intention of compromising what has been his goal since he realised he could not take the entire country. As reported by Guy Faulconbridge from Reuters on 22nd August 2025:
Vladimir Putin is demanding that Ukraine give up all of the eastern Donbas region, renounce ambitions to join NATO, remain neutral and keep Western troops out of the country, three sources familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking told Reuters.
This does not represent a peace agreement; it represents a surrender that no sovereign nation should ever agree to. Putin knows this and has no intention of signing any peace agreement because he has reached the point where stopping the war would threaten his presidency. The only thing that stands between him and humiliation is the President of the United States. He is relying on Trump to limit the military capabilities of Ukraine, and Trump is delivering.
In a report by Alexander Ward, Michael R. Gordon and Lara Seligman in the Wall Street Journal updated on 23rd August, the headline reads:
Pentagon Has Quietly Blocked Ukraine’s Long-Range Missile Strikes on Russia
The report notes:
A high-level Defense Department approval procedure, which hasn’t been announced, has prevented Ukraine from firing any U.S.-made long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, or Atacms, against targets in Russia since late spring, the officials said. On at least one occasion, Ukraine sought to use Atacms against a target on Russian territory but was rejected, two officials said.
The US excuse is that their actions are an attempt to encourage Putin to the peace table. Yet time and time again, they have played their hand before discussions with him. The naivety of this move is either a deliberate act of betrayal against Ukraine or an act of breathtaking stupidity, believing that Putin has any intention of giving ground. This deadly concession has led to the death of yet more Ukrainian civilians, including children.
I cannot believe that US military advisors are suggesting these deadly changes in policy because they make no tactical sense. It knowingly places civilians in harm’s way, as Russia can now forward-position missile launchers in the knowledge that Trump is protecting them from being destroyed by US and coalition weapons. The critical thing to understand here is that Trump is also preventing the use of NATO partner weapons too.
It is a blatant act of betrayal using the cover of encouraging an indicted war criminal who has NEVER honoured a peace agreement in his life, to do the right thing. He even had the audacity to attack a US-owned factory as a thank you. There is no world in which the Russian president does not hold kompromat on Trump; nothing else makes sense. In an unbelievable social media post last week, Trump himself stated, “It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking” the invading country, he wrote. “There is no chance of winning!”
Let’s get some plain, simple facts on the table. We’ll begin with US public support for Ukraine. This is a graphic charting public support from August 2024 and March 2025.
There is no question that Trump’s position like on most issues today is at odds with public sentiment. It is beyond comprehension that Trump is now selling new weapons to NATO for use in Ukraine that are useless except inside its own borders. Make that make sense. To be clear Ukraine is a US ally and one to which the US offered security assurances under the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, in return for Ukraine handing over their nuclear weapons. In contrast, Russia is a longstanding US adversary who has persistently acted against US foreign interests in Latin America, Africa and Syria, to name but a few. It is as I write this offering support to Venezuela, as the US has deployed 4000 troops off its coast.
It is clear that Trump’s policy on Ukraine is becoming a national security threat to the US. Military assistance to Ukraine represents just 0.38% of the US GDP for 2022-2024. For that investment Ukrainian military has vastly depleted the military capability of one of America’s biggest adversaries, at no human cost to the US.
I think you will find it interesting to view the various charts which monitor support supplied to Ukraine. These make for interesting reading and put to bed once and for all the bare faced lie that the US has provided over $300+ billion in aid to Ukraine.
If you want a more detailed breakdown, below charts support by month:
For an update on the current state of military aid to Ukraine, I have included the latest press release from the The Kiel Institute for the Word Economy from 12th August 2025. This is important, because it documents the shift from US reliance to Europe and the ‘coalition of the willing’, who have taken up the strain as the US has stepped away from their responsibilities. The US has now shifted from ally to a commercial arms dealer:
For the first time since the start of the Trump administration, the United States approved major arms exports to Ukraine in May—but not as military aid. Instead, these are sales that Kyiv must finance itself. In contrast, European countries continued their support for Ukraine: Germany allocated a military aid package worth EUR 5 billion, the largest bilateral aid of the current update. Norway followed with EUR 1.5 billion, followed by a Belgian contribution of EUR 1.2 billion. The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Denmark each allocated between EUR 500–600 million.
America has now become an arms dealer, with the ludicrous ability to decide how far the gun can fire. It is simply beyond comprehension that Trump can extort the victim of the war while protecting the perpetrator of the crime. What use is a gun you can’t fire at the desired target? Explain it to me like I’m a child.
None of Trump’s moves are in the interests of US national security, they are personal. He hates and blames Zelensky for his impeachment in his last term and this is a mixture of revenge and fanboy adoration of an indicted war criminal. Retribution is Trump’s middle name and Zelensky has long been a target for him not digging up dirt on Joe Biden.
We are now in yet another of Trump’s two week holding patterns to allow Putin the breathing space he needs to build more drones and missiles. You would have to be an idiot not to see what’s going on here. Trump and right wing talking heads constantly suggest that Russia could take Ukraine whenever they want and that Ukraine is slowly being strangled by a more powerful army. To that I say BULLSHIT.
In a report by Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) from June 3rd 2025, it notes:
Russian forces have advanced an average of only 50 meters per day in such areas as Kharkiv, slower than during the Somme offensive in World War I, where French and British forces advanced an average of 80 meters per day. Russian rates of advance have also been significantly slower than during such offensives as Galicia in 1914 (1,580 meters per day), Gorzia in 1916 (500 meters), Belleau Wood in 1918 (410 meters), Leningrad in 1943 (1,000 meters), and Kursk-Oboyan in 1943 (3,220 meters). Even Russia’s rate of advance in parts of Donetsk Oblast, averaging 135 meters per day, has been remarkably slow.
It’s domestic air defense systems are unable to prevent Ukraine from decimating their oil and gas refineries, to the point where Russia has halted gasoline exports. Ukrainian military strategists are doing what Trump is now unable to prevent. It is hitting at the very heart of Russia’s ability to generate revenue from energy, and Russian air defenses appear powerless to stop them.
The thing about Ukraine is its ability to innovate and this has been crucial to them both holding ground and attacking Russian energy infrastructure. They are now unquestionably the global leader in drone warfare. They have demonstrated that in the new battlespace multi-million dollar military hardware is powerless against thousand dollar drones. The Ukrainian military is probably the most battle hardened Western force who despite Trump’s deliberate obstruction, have held the Russian army at bay with little sign of breaking.
Trump might be limiting the use of long range missiles, but Ukraine now has it’s own production capabilities, producing missiles based on everything they have learned about their enemy’s air defense systems. Their new Flamingo cruise missile has the capability to hit Moscow and certainly oil refineries currently out of reach. The bottom line is that Ukraine is building resilience which it is being forced to do because it’s own ally now looks upon it as nothing more than a profit center.
It’s time people stopped thinking of Russia as a dominant power. Without the threat of its nuclear weapons, it is a busted flush with an economy on the edge of collapse. It is beyond comprehension that the so called ‘leader of the free world’ is running interference to protect it. Ukraine is literally destroying the lifeblood of the Russian economy and they appear powerless to stop them.
Russia is the third largest producer of crude oil at almost 9 million barrels a day. In addition, they are the world’s fourth largest natural gas exporter. Without these two commodities they do not have an economy and that is why Ukraine is seeking to incapacitate their production capabilities. This cripples their war effort, because Putin’s ability to fund the war is diminished. He needs to refine the oil produced to even be able to provide the fuel they need for his own military assets. To date, Russia has lost around a third of its refining capacity and the attacks from Ukraine continue daily.
Russian oil on the world market remains dirt cheap and the market is seeing no real price shock from Russia’s reduced export capacity, because Opec and the US is simply increasing supply. The Russian economy is now a wartime economy servicing its industrial military complex. Even before the war there was little diversification beyond energy, so they are unquestionably an economic one trick pony and that pony is lame.
While global oil prices remain largely unaffected, the domestic impact of falling production is now affecting its domestic economy as gas prices rise. As a result, Russia is now a country that has food lines and lines at gas stations, prices are rising because the cost of distributing goods is increasing. I believe that if Ukraine continues to destroy oil production and refineries, it’s only a matter of time before the economy collapses and that’s why increasing sanctions may well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Russia doesn’t want to negotiate, because it literally can no longer afford to stop the war. The whole Russian economy is devoted to servicing its military. If the war stops, what happens to all the jobs that are producing military hardware? Of course there will still need to a military industrial complex, but demand will fall. Then there is the problem of how wages will be affected when hundreds of thousands of soldiers return from the war seeking work? It will take time to transition to a peacetime economy and how will they do that when their ability to refine oil has been destroyed by Ukraine?
So people need to cut the crap when it comes to Russia ‘holding all the cards’, because it’s simply not true. Europe and the coalition of the willing needs to forget about the US because rest assured the US has forgot about them. It’s time to lean into helping Ukraine destroy energy production in Russia regardless of the impact it will have on them. There will be time to negotiate helping Russia repair it’s energy capacity as part of any peace settlement.
I believe as I have all along that Russia has overplayed its hand, we just need to help its economy over the edge of the cliff, then a lasting peace settlement can be agreed upon which forces Russia to withdraw from Ukraine. Putin is on borrowed time and in my opinion the US is making itself irrelevant. Trump is simply getting in the way of a true negotiated settlement that sees Russia withdraw and pay reparations to rebuild Ukraine.
The only wildcard is whether Russia is prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons in an last ditch attempt to gain leverage. While it would be a stupid move on Putin’s part, cornered animals can be unpredictable, so the truth is, it can’t be ruled out. Given the proximity of the US to Ukraine the use of these weapons is certainly not a major threat to them, but for Europe it would be a different story.
My position on this is that Russia only understands strength and Putin believes that Trump presents no threat, indeed he is easy to manipulate and his actions only serve to help Russia. Ultimately this will come down to NATO and Europe and I think we are fast approaching decision time. One thing is for sure, the current status quo is unsustainable and simply continues to play into Putin’s hands.
Never has it been more important to support independent media, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to Truth Matters, because the truth really does matter in these times of peril.
The US has NOT become a Russia ally. Trump and his administration have. One of many reasons they should all be FIRED and prosecuted.
You give me hope that Russia can be defeated in its war on Ukraine. I hope Europe steps up to make it happen does an end run around Trump's attempts to give Putin everything he asks for. Then Putin might just get peeved enough to reveal what he has on Trump. I'd relish that!