U.S. businessman and volunteer Bill Cole holds portraits of fallen U.S. volunteer fighters Jericho Magallon and Collin Teem, who fought with the Ukrainian Army, at a memorial site in Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine, March 14, 2025.
Over and over, in various ways, the president of the United States says that Ukraine is responsible for the war with Russia. Ukraine, somehow, brought this aggression on itself — or outright started the aggression.
Last month, Trump pointed a finger at Ukraine and said, “You should never have started it.” Three days ago, he again pointed a finger at Ukraine and said, “You don’t want to pick on somebody that’s a lot larger than you.”
If anyone has “picked on” someone, Russia has “picked on” Ukraine — by invading Ukraine and seeking to annihilate it. The Ukrainians have no designs on their neighbors. They are fighting to save their independence, their freedom, their country.
I hope that most Americans continue to understand this, though Trump & Co. have considerable sway over what people think. By “Trump & Co.,” I mean the president, his movement, and their associated media.
“You are what you eat,” goes an old saying. I have taken to saying: “You are the media you consume.”
• In a column last week, I remarked on the power a U.S. president has — particularly a demagogic president. (Most politicians are prone to demagoguery, to one degree or another.) Trump has managed to whip up animosity against Canada — Canada, of all countries.
And he has whipped up animosity against Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky: a corrupt dictator who’s at 4 percent in the polls and started the conflict with Russia — according to Trump.
Many, many people believe this about Zelensky, including people fairly close to me. Nothing can shake them, as far as I can tell. If Trump says it and his media amplify it — that’s that.
This is a reality the Ukrainians have to contend with, even as they contend with Putin and the Russian military.
• Michael Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, spoke with Sean Hannity of Fox News. Hannity gave his idea of what an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, brokered by Trump, would look like. For example, NATO membership for Ukraine would be off the table. And Putin would keep the parts of Ukraine he is currently occupying.
“Am I wrong in my conjecture here?” Hannity asked Waltz. The national security adviser answered, “Sean, no surprise, you’re not wrong in any of that.” The “dealmaker-in-chief’ is on it.
To watch this conversation, go here.
What more is there to discuss, really? Everything is settled. Putin wins, aggression pays, before negotiations even begin. The Ukrainians are undercut. Call it what you like, but I would not call it “dealmaking.”
Do dealmakers give away so much in advance?
Ukrainians care about the occupied territories, because those territories belong to them. International borders should not be redrawn by force. Most of all, however, Ukrainians care about the people in those territories — their countrymen. Russian occupation is many things. Peaceful is not one of them.
• A headline from the New York Times: “U.S. to Withdraw from Group Investigating Responsibility for Ukraine Invasion.” The article’s subheading reads, “The decision is the latest indication of the Trump administration’s move away from holding President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia accountable for crimes committed against Ukrainians.”
If the United States turns its back on Ukraine, the Ukrainians can perhaps survive — perhaps. Their remaining allies would have to pick up a lot of slack. But if the United States goes beyond neutrality into actual support of Russia?
This is a very grave matter.
In the House of Lords ten days ago, Andrew Roberts spoke of “this startling American defection to the side of a dictator.” Jeff Jacoby uses another striking phrase in a new column: “Trump’s pitiless turn against Ukraine.”
Here is another part of that column:
It is Russia that launched this savage war, Russia that is responsible for its deadly toll in blood and treasure, and Russia that has repeatedly committed monstrous war crimes in Ukraine. It has been chilling to watch over the past three years as the mendacious narrative of Western isolationists, Putin apologists, and MAGA Ukraine-bashers — that Russia is the aggrieved party in the war — has been transformed from fever-swamp crazy talk to a key foreign policy plank of the current American administration.
• The United Kingdom is a different story — different from the United States. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago, the U.K. has had four prime ministers: three from the Conservative Party and one from Labour. All of them have been stalwart against Putin and for Ukraine. A former PM weighed in yesterday:
Vladimir Putin must pay for the destruction he has caused in Ukraine.
$300bn in frozen Russian assets sit in Western financial systems. If we don’t act, they could be handed back to Moscow to fund Putin’s next war.
Now is the time to seize them and make Russia pay.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) March 16, 2025
• I often quote Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian chief. When Putin paid a visit to Budapest in 2017, Orbán greeted him with the following words: “We all sense — it’s in the air — that the world is in the process of a substantial realignment.” Eight years later, that realignment is firming up.
A telling headline is this: “Portugal wobbles on buying F-35s because of Trump.” The country’s defense minister is quoted as saying, “We cannot ignore the geopolitical environment in our choices.” And “the predictability of our allies” must be taken into account.
(For that article, from Politico Europe, go here.)
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• From RFE/RL (our combination of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty): “Americans Killed Fighting for Ukraine Honored in Kyiv.” The subheading: “A memorial service was held on March 14 on Kyiv’s Independence Square for six Americans killed fighting Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”
According to the article, at least 50 Americans have been reported killed since that full-scale invasion began in March 2022. Most of them were veterans of the U.S. military.
Here are three names: Ethan Hertweck, Andrew Webber, and Ian Frank Tortorici.
• “Netflix’s Reed Hastings Donates $2M to Ukraine’s War Effort.” For that article, from Deadline, go here. Hastings gave to Operation White Stork, an organization led by U.S. military veterans. Previously, he gave $1 million to another valiant organization: Razom (whose name, in Ukrainian, means “Together”).
A year ago, I spoke with Howard Buffett, who has given half a billion dollars to Ukraine.
Americans are divided over the justice of this cause — not merely over U.S. policy but over the very justice of the cause.
In 2015, I answered the question — often put to me — “Why do you care so much about Israel?” For that article, go here. In 2023, I did the same with respect to Ukraine: here.
I don’t know whether Ukrainians can hang on to their country. The forces arrayed against them are formidable, and the position of the United States has changed dramatically. But they deserve to.