By Jim Geraghty
Thursday, February 20, 2025
Kyiv, Ukraine — When he’s challenged, Donald
Trump’s reflexive instinct is to double down, no matter how foolhardy or
untenable his initial step was. On Tuesday, Trump told the Ukrainians regarding
the war, “You should have never started it!,” and he was destined to get
criticism and pushback for that absurd assessment of how the war began.
Wednesday, Trump unleashed another tirade on Truth Social, dismissing Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “modestly successful comedian” who had
“talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion” to take his
country “into a War that couldn’t be won.”
According to the U.S. government’s special inspector general for Ukraine
aid, as of September 30, 2024, “the U.S. Ukraine response funding totals
nearly $183 billion, with $130.1 billion obligated and $86.7 billion
disbursed.” (The last major U.S. aid package for Ukraine passed in April of last year.)
So Trump overstated the figure by a factor of four if
you’re counting what’s actually been delivered, and as
supporters of Ukraine aid keep pointing out, and critics keep ignoring,
“nearly 70 percent of total Ukraine assistance is spent in the United States or
on U.S. forces.” We send the Ukrainians the old stuff, and we spend money to restock our Department of Defense stockpiles
and warehouses with new stuff:
The two primary mechanisms through
which the United States is sending military support to Ukraine include
presidential drawdown authority (PDA) and the Ukraine Security Assistance
Initiative (USAI). PDA allows for the rapid transfer of weapons and defense
services directly from U.S. stocks in the face of unprecedented crises. The
value of equipment transferred to Ukraine under PDA is not a part of the $113
billion appropriated by Congress. Since PDA uses existing weapons stockpiles, this equipment has long been
paid for, and in some cases has been sitting in U.S. warehouses for decades. As
such, the value of the defense articles is assessed using what is called the “net book value,” or the historical cost of the equipment
minus depreciation based on use life. As of December 2023, nearly $24 billion worth of equipment had been transferred
to Ukraine from stockpiles under PDA. The benefit of PDA transfers to the
United States has been the ability to clear out old stock and replace it with
newer, more modern equipment.
Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth talked about
the importance of building up and investing in the defense
industrial base. The Ukraine aid packages do that, by creating demand and
orders for factories producing munitions, equipment, and systems in 37 states. We
keep saying this, and critics of Ukraine aid keep pretending they don’t hear
it.
Trump also called Zelensky “a dictator.” To the best of
my research abilities, Trump has never called Vladimir Putin a dictator. Nor
have I found any case of Trump calling China’s Xi Jinping a dictator. Trump did
tell Joe Rogan in autumn, “He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist,” but from
the context, it is clear Trump meant it as a compliment.
Zelensky won a free and fair election to a five-year term
in 2019. When Russia invaded in 2022, Ukraine declared martial law, as any
country under threat of annexation by a hostile military force would do. Under the Ukrainian constitution, elections cannot be held
under martial law, and in fact can’t be held until six months after martial
law is concluded. As noted last night, put aside all the constitutional
issues for a moment: Russian military forces bombed a crowd of Ukrainians gathered
for a funeral. What do you think would happen if Ukrainians were to gather
at polling places for national elections during an ongoing war? How do you
count the votes after a Russian missile has blown up the polling place? You
cannot have free and fair elections when one-fifth of the country is occupied
by hostile forces and they’re raining down bombs and missiles on civilians
every chance they get.
One of the Trump administration’s first decisions was to
eliminate all USAID grants and contracts that involved “democracy
promotion” as well as the National Endowment for Democracy. If U.S. efforts to
promote democracy abroad are so unimportant and wasteful, why is Trump so
hell-bent on having Ukraine hold an election during wartime?
Trump doesn’t care about elections anywhere else, so why
is it so important to him for Ukraine to hold an election as quickly as
possible? Trump seems eager to see Zelensky voted out of office. (If an
election were held today, Zelensky might win, or he might not. He’s been
compared to Winston Churchill a lot, but plenty of people forget that in July 1945 the voters of the
United Kingdom voted Churchill out of office.) (Another parallel: The U.K. suspended elections during the war.
“Every October for five consecutive years, the wartime British government led
by Winston Churchill obtained legislative consent to postpone scheduled
elections and extend the life of the sitting British parliament.” Wartime
leaders tend to wear out their welcome once peacetime arrives.)
Why is Trump, who can find good things to say about Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un, and never lashes out at them
for being dictators, so full of piss and vinegar over Zelensky? Our Jeff Blehar thinks it’s personal.
So far in his second term, Trump is way, way tougher on
Zelensky than he is on most declared foes of the United States of America. When
Trump sweet-talks some brutal dictator, he always insists it’s necessary for
good relations. Speaking of Kim Jong-un, Trump said on the campaign trail last
year, “It’s a good thing to get along, not a bad thing.”
Why compels Trump to be nicest and most eager to please
with the foreign leaders who hate us and seek to undermine us, and so
irrationally, reflexively hostile and combative with pro-Western democratic
allies?
Checking In with the Chechens
The Russian government is capable of killing just about
everyone I talk to around here, but some of my interview subjects are
particularly high on the Russians’ list of people they’d like to see not around
anymore. Last March, I interviewed Ilya Ponomarev, the head of the
Russian Legion fighting on behalf of Ukraine; in August, he was wounded by drone debris when it crashed into
his house. (I probably shouldn’t mention this too much — people won’t want
to talk to me anymore.)
The Russians have actually issued an arrest warrant for Akhmed Halidovich
Zakayev, the prime minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, the Chechen
government-in-exile.
Zakayev and the Chechen government-in-exile work in an
embassy in a seemingly mundane apartment building somewhere in Ukraine, behind
heavy locked doors.
These are the Chechens who won the First Chechen War,
fought from 1994 to 1996; Zakayev, once an actor who specialized in
performances of Shakespeare, led a tank column in the battle to retake Grozny.
The Russians won the Second Chechen War, fought in 1999–2000, and installed
Ramzan Kadyrov, a pro-Putin brute, as leader.
“Despite all the Russian information efforts, in reality
Ukraine, after almost three years of war, has become stronger, and Russia is a
little weaker,” Zakayev tells me. (He speaks a mix of Russian and English and
uses a translator, but I noticed he would often chuckle at a question or
comment and then have it translated for him, even though he clearly understood
it.)
“Even if the United States stops helping Ukraine, if the
European countries support them, Ukraine has a strong position to win this
war,” Zakayev continues. “What do I mean by victory? It is to gain a just
peace. Yes, it’s true that Ukraine may not regain all the parts of Ukraine,
maybe not liberate all the parts, but they can succeed.”
“Russia will lose this war, in that Russia has not gained
the aims or tasks that they put forward [for] themselves,” says Zakayev. “They
didn’t reach them. They wanted the whole country, and to destroy this country.
Ukraine is still an independent country; they will keep their sovereignty. It
means Putin’s loss.
Zakayev believes that Putin’s hold on power is driven by
the nationalism-minded Russian public’s perception of his strength and
seemingly endless ability to emerge victorious. A defeat in Ukraine would
shatter that all-powerful image. “They never will forgive Putin this loss.
Russian national chauvinism will be the driving force for the Russians. Putin
will look like a loser.” He isn’t optimistic that any successor to Putin would
represent a significant change in the Russian government’s worldview. “Russia is
an empire. If Russia stays an empire, it doesn’t matter who rules it. The
policies will continue, and this will be a threat to all civilizations.”
Zakayev says the number of Chechens fighting on behalf of
Ukraine is secret; a
December 2022 article put the number at “perhaps 2,000 in all.”
“We [the Chechens] will continue fighting in Ukraine
until there is victory,” he continues. “After the victory, it will open a way
for us to go home and de-occupy our country. And this time, we will not be
fighting alone. We will have allies.”
For those who would scoff at the long path to those
goals, Zakayev points to the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania,
which lost their independence for the entirety of the Cold War. An intact
Ukraine and a liberated Chechnya may seem like long-shot objectives at this
point, but in the past, a free and independent Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
probably seemed like long shots too.
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