The Trump-Putin Alliance
The Trump administration policy has allied with Russia against Ukraine in its actions and negotiation posture. Since the Trump administration came into office, military aid to Ukraine has been cut by 99%. It cut all humanitarian aid to Ukraine shortly after taking office for education, healthcare, shelter, heat and power, war-displaced persons, HIV drugs, mental health services for war-distressed children, families, and veterans, and other services. In December, the US restored a token $2 billion of the former $63 billion USAID budget for humanitarian aid programs that is now being spent through UN programs trying to aid Ukraine and other war-torn countries like Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Also immediately upon taking office, the Trump administration closed US Justice Department programs to monitor and enforce sanctions against Russian frozen assets, influence operations in the US, and other sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Trump defunded US programs to document Russian war crimes, including cooperation with the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine and the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which had identified and documented some 35,000 Ukrainian children forcibly abducted by Russia.
After repeatedly voting for UN General Assembly resolutions since Russia’s full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022 that affirmed Ukraine’s sovereignty and demanded that Russia halt its military operations and withdraw back to Russia, in February 2025, the US reversed course under the Trump administration on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine. The US, and its satellites including Israel, voted with Russia against a similar resolution condemning Russia’s invasion and demanding that Russian troops withdraw.
While Trump still allows Europeans to buy weapons they can send on to Ukraine, US shipment delays have left crucial Ukrainian air defense missile launchers without missiles to fire against incoming Russian missiles in recent weeks.
Trump’s alliance with Putin is rooted in their far-right ideological affinity for a world of imperial spheres of influence, authoritarian rule, and racist, misogynistic, and homophobic “traditional values.” Grifters on both sides have been bargaining to partition Ukraine between them like a piece of real estate. The Russian side has been led by Kirill Dmitriev, a Stanford and Harvard trained veteran of McKinsey and Goldman Sachs who runs Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and 15 years ago scammed purchasers of apartments in a building development in Kyiv out of their investments. On the US side are Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump, all long engaged in money laundering the real estate investments of Russian oligarchs and other Russia business ties.
Russia is now pitching Trump’s team on a $14 trillion business deal that is contingent on the US forcing Ukraine to accept Russia’s negotiation demands. It would involve lifting Western sanctions on Russia, joint arctic oil and gas exploitation, Russia returning to the dollar-based payments system, preferential US access to the Russian market, compensation for US corporate assets lost in Russia during the war, US aid for Russian aircraft modernization, joint mining of lithium, copper, nickel, and platinum, and cooperation on nuclear power plants to power AI data centers. All of this scheming is being conducted behind the backs of the Ukrainians.
https://www.ukrainesolidaritynetwork.us/ukraine-still-stands/
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