Donald Trump has just claimed that the United States had done “a lot” for Ukraine, but that Ukraine has done “nothing” for the United States.
This is unjust in the highest degree. And not just untrue in the normal sense — it is a big lie, designed to bring about horror and chaos.
At the moment, the United States has agreed to purchase Russian diesel, which breaks its own laws as well as international sanctions agreements, and in effect places America on the Russian side of the war. It is also denying Ukraine access to Starlink services (which have been paid for), thereby making it much harder for Ukraine to defend its people against Russian attacks. The United States provides almost no military aid to Ukraine, and it has been the policy of the Trump administration to deny such aid. Europeans purchase American arms and deliver them to Ukraine, but even these contractual agreements are not being met by the American side. The most important weapons in question are Patriot interceptors, which Ukrainians need to defend themselves from Russian ballistic missiles.
In other words, the Trump administration has acted to make Ukrainians more vulnerable to Russian attacks. In case there was any doubt about the general drift of this: The president of the United States has now repeatedly called for the president of Ukraine to leave office. And so the question is not how much the United States is doing for Ukraine. The question is why the United States is working to help the Russian aggressor right now.
But that might not even be the greatest injustice in Trump’s statement that “You know what, we’ve given a lot to Ukraine. They’ve given nothing to us.” Ukrainians have fought the largest war since 1945 for almost five years now. The war is longer than the First World War and longer than the American engagement in the Second World War. They suffer military and civilian casualties every day. Proportional to population, they have suffered losses on a scale Americans have never experienced, with the exception of the Civil War. They live through the equivalent of a 9/11 in Russian terror attacks every few weeks.
And yet Ukrainians are defending themselves, and very effectively. In so doing they are also giving a great deal to us. Because they have been doing so for so long and so well, it is — sadly — all to easy to take for granted Ukrainian contributions to American and world security. So I will just enumerate a few of them here.
Ukraine is defending the basic principle of international law, which is that states are sovereign and that one state should not seize territory from another by way of aggression.
Ukraine is fulfilling the entire NATO mission, which is to defend Europe from Russian aggression. It is doing the job that NATO assigns to its thirty-two members, which include the United States and Canada. Ukraine is doing this job itself.
Ukraine is making a world war less likely. Russia has already brought to life the most worrying security concern on the scale of Europe, which is a Russian invasion of a European country. On the scale of the world, the greatest risk is Chinese aggression in Taiwan. By defending itself, Ukraine has demonstrated the difficulties in offensive operations, and made such a war more likely.
Ukraine is making a nuclear war less likely. Russia is a nuclear power. Ukraine is not. If Russia is allowed to defeat Ukraine, other middle powers will likely draw the conclusion that they need to build nuclear weapons in order to defend themselves. By holding back Russia, Ukraine is also holding back nuclear proliferation.
Ukraine is defending us all from oligarchy, from the rule of the very wealthy. Putin’s idea that Ukraine is not a real country is the example of an oligarchical fantasy, the kind of centibillionaire nonsense that can take lives and destroy the planet. By resisting Russian aggression, Ukraine is showing that democracy can defend itself.
Ukraine is providing an example of freedom. In Ukraine, even during conditions of war, civil society functions, and people speak their minds. Under Russian occupation, an entirely different mode of life prevails: women are raped; children are deported to Russia to be assimilated; local activists are murdered; young men are forced into the Russian army to die; total uniformity is imposed.
And so what Trump says is wrong in the very broadest of senses. Ukraine is doing work for our security and for our liberty. Ukrainians have held off the worse and bought the rest of us time.
And Trump’s claim is also wrong in the narrow sense. Ukraine has been providing battlefield intelligence to the United States from the beginning of the war. It has shared its experience of modern warfare with American institutions. It even sent — in these most trying of times inside Ukraine — hundreds of its own experienced air defense troops to the Near East to help protect Americans and their allies from Iranian drones. Imagine what those Ukrainian crews, separated from their embattled country to defend Americans, are thinking right now, as their contributions are denied, and as their own families are put in greater danger by US policy.
Trump’s statement is not only unjust. It is not only a lie. It is a big lie, whose purpose is not to describe the world but to change it, to blame the victim and assist the aggressor, to betray the ally and destroy the alliances, to create a world in which everyone must feel unsafe except the wealthy and powerful, a world in which all that matters are the personal feelings and personal dealings of a handful of oligarchs and dictators.\
Timothy Snyder
