The world has stood by for four terrible years as Russian forces battered, bombed, raped, tortured, looted and murdered their way across much of Ukraine. February 24th, 2022, will live in infamy, but so too will the US betrayal of a young democracy that wanted to break free of Russian domination.
The United States president, Donald Trump, promised at least 53 times during his election campaign to “end that war in 24 hours – one day”. Once in office, Trump and his acolytes made it clear the war would end not on just terms but on Russia’s terms.
Russian air strikes on Ukrainian civilians doubled between Trump’s inauguration and last summer. In this cruellest of winters, Russia has attacked every main power plant in the hope of forcing Ukrainians to capitulate, leave or be frozen to death, a strategy Ukrainians refer to as urbicide.
It is not too late to “close the sky”. Europeans could save Ukrainian lives by using fighter jets to intercept drones and missiles fired at cities. They need not shoot down Russian pilots.
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“I always saw the US as a beacon of democracy,” a language professor in Lviv laments. “It’s hard to believe that the situation has changed so totally. The world organisations too; the UN and Nato do not have power like before.”
[ Russia strikes Ukrainian energy gird with missiles and drones as war nears four-year mark ]
The humiliation of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy by Trump and vice-president JD Vance in the Oval Office one year ago this week was obscene. Trump has not stopped blaming the victim. In April, he said of Zelenskiy: “You don’t start a war against someone 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.” Trump said Zelenskiy’s “inflammatory statements” were prolonging the war. Last week, Trump warned that “Ukraine better come to the table fast”.
Since the Trump-Putin summit last August, the US president has badgered Zelenskiy to give up the 5,000sq km of Donetsk which Ukraine still holds, as demanded by Vladimir Putin. Despite their exhaustion, the terror of bombardment and resulting shortages of heat, water and electricity, 52 per cent of Ukrainians still categorically reject giving up the territory, a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed.
The number who say they are willing to endure the war for as long as necessary has risen from 62 per cent last year to 65 per cent. “Everyone has adapted to the new reality,” a humanitarian worker in Kyiv says. “Missile and drone explosions have become a way of life. It’s become hard to imagine anything else.”
The fate of Donetsk remains the main sticking point. Demands by Putin – and Trump – that Ukraine hold presidential elections, and arguments over whether Donbas should become a demilitarised or free trade zone, are a side show. The idea of a just peace, of war crimes trials and reparations, has fallen by the wayside.
Trump appears hypnotised by the mirage of fabulous wealth to be made in Russia. Kremlin negotiator Kirill Dmitriev last week vaunted a “portfolio of potential US-Russian projects” worth $14 trillion (€11.9 trillion) – 5.6 times Russian’s GDP. The Trump and Witkoff families have raked in billions from Gulf sheikhdoms and apparently want to continue their feeding frenzy in Moscow.
Russia’s “special military operation” has now lasted longer than the Soviets’ 1941-1945 war against Nazi Germany and has cost Russia the highest casualties suffered by any major power since the second World War. The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington estimates Russian military dead and wounded to number 1.2 million, of whom 325,000 were killed. The same study estimates Ukrainian military casualties at 600,000, of whom 140,000 killed.
Four years ago today, the fall of Kyiv appeared imminent. Ukraine turned back the invaders in 35 days and went on to liberate half the territory initially seized by Russia by the end of 2022. Ukraine sank one third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. In Operation Spiderweb last June, Ukraine destroyed $10 billion worth of Russian military aircraft with just $100,000 worth of drones.
“The Ukrainians fight well, doing what no one expected that they could do: hold back Russia,” Professor Timothy Snyder writes on Substack. “And the tragic result is that we can take them for granted, treat their astounding historical achievement as simply the status quo.”
Some of the 800,000 men and women in the Ukrainian armed forces have been fighting Russia since 2014. Driven by the need to compensate for shortfalls in western arms supplies, Ukraine’s defence industry has grown exponentially.
In Nato war games in Estonia last April, a small team of Ukrainian soldiers “defeated” a much larger contingent of Nato troops. Ukrainian soldiers have been brought to Germany to coach the Bundeswehr in drone warfare. Denmark is allowing Ukraine to manufacture weapons on its territory.
Europe needs Ukraine, yet the European Union offers only vague promises of “membership lite” without voting rights. Four years after the full-scale invasion, Europe still buys 12 per cent of its gas from Russia. European countries have paid more to Russia for hydrocarbons than they have provided to Ukraine in direct financial aid.
The EU was unable to agree to spend some of the €200 billion it holds in Russian assets to defend Ukraine. A substitute €90 billion loan has been blocked by Hungary, adding the spectre of financial collapse to the threats faced by Ukraine.
“Centuries of enslavement, famines, mass executions, repression, being deprived of our language and culture, deportations, torture and humiliation have hardened us and nourished our thirst for survival,” Said Ismagilov, the former mufti of Ukrainian Muslims, now a soldier in the Ukrainian army, wrote on the Ukrainian website Obozrevatel. “Ukrainians no longer believe in security guarantees, that it will work out, that anyone will defend them. Ukrainians believe only in the weapons they hold in their hands.”
