By Rebeccah Heinrichs
Monday, January 12, 2026
It has been about six weeks since U.S. Special Envoy to
the Middle East Steve Witkoff championed the pro-Russia 28-point plan to end
Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The document was a scandal. It was
a scandal in how far it went to represent Russian claims, how it embraced
Russian nonsense about the cause of the war, and in its inclusion of provisions
that have nothing to do with Russia’s war against Ukraine and would help Russia
at the expense of American interests (i.e., extending the New START Treaty).
Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev seemed to mock those who rightly found the
approach hard to stomach by posting a video of him wake surfing in
Miami, all while Russians were targeting civilian Ukrainians who were trying to
survive the winter cold after the Russians bombed the power grid.
But after the last few weeks of successful diplomacy
among the Europeans, and a whirlwind of Trump-ordered daring and successful
American military operations, led by the capture of Nicolás Maduro in
Venezuela, something has shifted. According to Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been traveling with the
president, President Trump has now greenlit punishing secondary sanctions on
Russia. This is excellent news and portends the possibility of — finally — a
far more effective U.S. approach toward Russia. This should be the year the
United States turns the screws on the Russian economy and embraces a plan to
bolster Ukraine’s military strength and operational latitude to maximize its
military effectiveness against Russia and to adapt the NATO Alliance to restore
strategic stability with Russia.
Contrary to the false information that the president’s
briefer has seemingly been providing him, Russia is not ten feet tall, nor does
Vladimir Putin “want peace,” nor is Putin earnestly working toward a positive
relationship with the United States. Russia is not dominating on the
battlefield in Ukraine, it is not guaranteed that Russia will succeed in
swallowing up highly prized Ukrainian territory, and standing up to Russia will
not inevitably launch a world war. Believing those myths may cause one to conclude
that it is necessary to pressure Ukraine to make concessions, and so busting
them may lead to correction and a strategy that actually works.
Mere weeks before the U.S. raid against Maduro, Russia
delivered more air defenses to Venezuela. Russia has been providing significant
military equipment to Venezuela for years. None of the air defenses downed a
single American aircraft during the raid. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth
subsequently boasted that it “seems those Russian air defenses didn’t quite work
so well, did they?” Russia’s declared support for Venezuela, and its
denunciations of the U.S. naval blockade and anti–drug boat campaign, did not
dissuade the United States from attacking Russia’s partner.
Days later, the United States was gaining on a rusty
tanker it had been pursuing, called the Bella 1. The U.S. sanctioned it in 2024
for operating within a “shadow fleet” of tankers transporting illicit Iranian
oil. To get the United States to stand down, a Russian flag was ham-fistedly
painted on the tanker, and Russia even sent escorts for the ship. U.S. forces still boarded and seized it. Ever since Russia
launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, officials in the Biden
administration and experts outside the government feared that by confronting
Russia directly, uncontrolled escalation was likely to ensue. Thus, the United
States notably did not enforce sanctions against the Russian shadow fleet, and
only recently did Europeans start to do so. The United States now joins several
other European allies in boarding Russian-operated shadow fleet tankers trying
to evade sanctions, prop up the Iran regime, and support its war machine. The
Russian government accused the United States of piracy.
One Russian official supported Russian military
retaliation.
And, after assuring President Trump that he was operating
in good faith (the obvious ongoing evidence of the war of aggression he
launched and historical record notwithstanding), Putin lied to Trump by telling him that
Ukraine had launched a drone swarm to target Putin’s residence. Trump initially
expressed publicly that he thought Putin was telling the truth before learning
from U.S. intelligence that Putin had clearly lied to derail U.S. collaboration
with Ukraine and European allies.
To their credit, Europeans got busy working with the U.S.
delegation to ensure there was a peace plan in the offing that was much more
likely to bring peace than the one favored by the Russians. Ukrainians required
credible security guarantees, as any serious nation who was an ongoing victim
of Russian aggression would, and the Europeans and the U.S. team provided them.
As of the time of this writing, the Russians have rejected the plan. Moscow aimed
most of their ire at the credible security guarantees for Ukraine, describing
the document as “continuing the militarization, escalation and further conflict
aggravation.” It’s language that would work on an alliance paralyzed by fear of
escalation, but after three years of those claims, and on the heels of
world-class U.S. military competency, it just might not have its intended
effect of intimidating Ukraine’s Western backers this time.
Meanwhile, Russia’s war of choice grinds on, and for
little territorial gain at staggering human loss. The exact figures are unclear
but high and as many as hundreds of thousands of Russian men — sons, brothers,
husbands — have been killed or wounded for “Ukrainian territory slightly larger than the
state of Rhode Island.” As Graeme Wood of The Atlantic quipped, “At that rate, Russia will control all of Ukraine
in about 118 years.”
However, the wrong lesson to take away is that Russia is
inherently weak, and that Ukraine can handle the Bear on its own. The right
lesson is that Ukraine’s allies are comparatively far stronger. With the
backing of American intelligence and weapons and European weapons and
logistics, Ukraine has the resolve, the ability, and the discipline to hold off
further Russian advances. Already, this tragic war has made Ukraine possess the
largest defense force in Europe and has enabled the United States and the rest
of NATO to learn how to adapt and fight Russia.
Despite the narrative that supporting Ukraine is a drain
on the American defense industrial base, shipping weapons to Ukraine has prompted an
increase in production capacity and workforce growth,
and selling Europeans weapons for Ukraine will continue to boost America’s
standing as the Arsenal of Freedom. Trump’s announcement that the United States
will significantly increase its defense budget from $1 trillion to $1.5
trillion will pave the way for a serious military buildup that parallels Ronald
Reagan’s during the Cold War. With this bump, the United States will increase investments
on defense to roughly 5 percent of GDP, which means after insisting the rest of
NATO spend 5 percent on defense, the leader of NATO is now leveling up. Unlike
the Cold War, the United States must deter not just one imperialist nuclear
peer, but two: China and Russia, in addition to the other countries in the axis
of aggressors (North Korea, Iran, and their useful cartel regimes in Latin
America).
Trump remains unpredictable, and he is surrounded by
advisers who have been doggedly committed to an Obama-like Russia reset to
normalize business deals with Russia, so a return to failed policies of
accommodation is not entirely out of the realm of possibility. But successfully
capturing one of Russia’s avowed allies could be a turning point, and gaining
confidence in America’s own military might and competency may just give Trump
the confidence to stand up to Putin and to turn the tide to a more effective
and honorable posture towards Russia. Let us hope.
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