About a week and a half ago, I interviewed Dr. Kateryna Shynkaruk. A native Ukrainian, she worked as a political analyst at the US Embassy in Ukraine for several years. In February of 2022, she fled her home during the early days of the Russian invasion, and ended up in the United States where she’s now a senior lecturer at the Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington DC.
Shynkaruk remains very much on top of her country’s domestic and geopolitical developments. She discusses them on various media outlets, and when I spoke to her, she was actually back in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, which is under constant threat of Russian missile strikes.
It was an insightful conversation. A skilled diplomat, Shynkaruk was careful not to take a position on the U.S. politics surrounding the Ukraine situation, but she did offer her thoughts on a topic that crosses my mind quite often: the spirits of her countrymen, three-plus years into the war, especially at a time when White House support for her country had been — at best — wavering.
She explained that morale was mostly up, and joked that Russian president Vladimir Putin is viewed in her country as a “founding father” of Ukraine nationalism, because every time he brutally attacks her nation, unity and resilience among her fellow Ukrainians only increases.
She then said something about the will of the Ukrainian people that I’ve been thinking about ever since. She described their general sentiment this way:
“If I get to die for Ukraine, I am willing to do it. I just don’t want to be — you know — cannon fodder. I want to do it in a meaningful way.”
She added that there was no internal debate as to whether Ukraine should survive as a state. To the Ukrainians, the survival and security of their country is worth sacrificing their lives for.
To me, that said (confirmed, really) a lot about the strength and character of the Ukrainian people. They deserve much better what they’ve been getting from the United States over the last six months: obscene efforts by the Trump White House to appease Putin… to the point that our president has indeed seemed perfectly willing to let the Ukrainians become, as Shynkaruk put it, cannon fodder.
Case in point, just a few days after I spoke to Shynkaruk, the administration abruptly halted, at a very sensitive time, promised shipments of munitions to Ukraine. The armaments included PAC-3 Patriots, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, Hellfire and AIM-7 missiles, guided multiple-launch rocket systems (GMLRS), and 155mm artillery rounds. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board called the suspension a “hostile act that favors Vladimir Putin.”
This came in conjunction with reports that the Trump administration was set to let existing sanctions against Russia expire, while choosing not to pursue new ones.
Russia responded to the good fortune by upping its strikes on Kyiv, including a massive attack — the largest since the war began — right after a phone conversation between Putin and Trump.
This cycle of failure had been in motion since the beginning of Trump’s peace negotiations with Russia and Ukraine — negotiations that reliably, as a popular online meme over the weekend depicted, resulted in more death and destruction in Ukraine… as well as more finger-pointing at the previous administration.
Of course, it’s not just Joe Biden that Trump and his devotees have been blaming. They’ve also regularly gone after Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as we saw in February during the infamous Oval Office presser. You may recall that Trump capped off that debacle by similarly suspending U.S. military aid to Ukraine — an act that compelled Russia, at the beginning of this cycle, to up its strikes (including on civilian areas).
The one person that Trump had bent over backwards not to assign meaningful blame to was Vladimir Putin — the guy actually behind the invasion, who could end this war tomorrow if he wanted to. Putin, recognizing the advantages of our president’s longtime, unreciprocated affection for him, seemed to be having a pretty good time basking in the United States’ pacification on the matter.
“Ukraine has done everything the Trump administration asked of it,” National Review’s Noah Rothman reminded readers last week. “It signed the onerous mineral rights deal with the Trump team. It dutifully participated in the peace process to which Trump seemed wedded, even when the Russian side did not. It supported Trump’s modest efforts to pressure Moscow into making concessions. That initiative culminated in Trump giving Russia just two weeks to come to the table in good faith — a deadline that expired three weeks ago.”
“Ukraine has never asked America to send in the 82nd airborne; they’ve asked for the weapons to defend their homeland and people from Russia attacks,” wrote Trump’s former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. “Letting Russia win this war would be a unmitigated disaster for the American people and our security around the world.”
“Mr President, your policy towards Russia is not working,” wrote Republican congressman, Don Bacon. “While we negotiate, Putin bombs Ukrainian cities… It is time to change strategy. We and our allies must arm Ukraine to the teeth & we need the toughest sanctions. Putin is mocking you and America.”
Just about the only consequential people who didn’t seem to recognize these things (or even accept that Putin was the bad guy in the conflict) work in the Trump administration.
But something rather encouraging happened Monday night.
When asked point-blank in a presser if he was going to send more weapons to Ukraine, Trump surprisingly answered, “We’re gonna send some more weapons. We have to. [The Ukrainians] have to be able to defend themselves… They’re getting hit very hard now. They’re getting hit very hard. We’re gonna have to send more weapons. You have defensive weapons primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard. So many people are dying in that mess.”
Soon after, administration officials confirmed that the munitions-halt had been lifted. Trump even tried to distance himself from the decision to suspend their delivery in the first place.
Hallelujah!
It’s beyond painful (especially inside Ukraine) that it took six months of this deadly song and dance to finally produce a positive development for the good guys in this conflict — the Ukrainian people. Based on what went down in those six months, and the GOP’s broader conduct in regard to Ukraine over the past few years, I don’t have a lot of confidence it will hold.
But I’m hopeful. Trump effectively neutered MAGA non-interventionists last month when he bombed Iran, and that operation was far more provocative and interventionist than anything Ukraine has ever asked of us. If Trump has finally accepted (or is capable of accepting) that Putin is neither his friend, nor worthy of his admiration (let alone his adoration), this could be a big win for the free world.
We’ll see.
At bare minimum, Ukrainians becoming cannon fodder feels less likely now than it did a day or two ago. And that’s cause for some optimism.
Perfect, thanks John. Maybe this back and forth, "keep 'em guessing" style of leadership works in the business world (although his many bankruptcies call that into question), but it just doesn't work in global politics. (and finance, with his back and for tariff crap.)
Good article John. I see that Russian Transport Minister Roman Starovoyt was found dead in his car with a gun which police called a suicide. At least he didn't fall out of a hospital window. The Ukrainians fighters are warriors. Biden was slow to bring the right weapons to the field and Trump's peace initiative is being played by Putin. I understand Putin's purpose more than
Trump on this issue.