Four Years In, Putin’s Ukraine Conquest Is Still Stalled – But He’s Still Got Trump On His Side
HuffPost
Trump cut off aid and Ukraine was hit with four times as many missiles and drones in his first year back in office compared to Biden’s final year.
WASHINGTON – Four years after launching an invasion to seize neighboring Ukraine in a matter of days, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin can no longer replenish the tens of thousands of soldiers he is losing per month, has watched his ground offensive grind to a halt and has escalated a war-crime campaign to instead kill civilians. None of it has convinced President Donald Trump to drop his tacit approval of the invasion.
Rather than resume defensive weapons shipments to Ukraine that had existed under predecessor Joe Biden or further pressure Putin economically to end the biggest and deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II, Trump is instead still leaning on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to give up the territory that Putin wants.
“Ukraine better come to the table fast, is all I’m telling you,” Trump told reporters Monday night on the flight back from his South Florida country club, Mar-a-Lago. It was a repeat of the warning he gave Zelenskyy Friday as he left for his three-day golf weekend: “Well, Zelenskyy is going to have to get moving. Russia wants to make a deal, and Zelenskyy is going to have to get moving, otherwise he’s going to miss a great opportunity. He has to move.”
In reality, Zelenskyy has repeatedly accepted U.S. calls for a ceasefire while negotiators work out a final peace agreement, while Putin has rejected that concept as he continues to kill and maim Ukrainian civilians with missiles and drones.
Those attacks and deaths have surged dramatically in the year since Trump took office last January. In Biden’s final year in the White House, there were 13,897 missiles and drones launched at Ukraine by Russia, or 38 on an average day, according to figures compiled by the Institute for the Study of War. In Trump’s first year back in office, there were 57,333 missiles and drones, or 157 per day – a 300% increase. The escalation coincided with the cutoff of new U.S. military aid to Ukraine under Trump.
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