Impromptus

Hinge Point

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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. president Donald Trump at the White House on February 28, 2025 (Brian Snyder / Reuters)
Notes on America, Ukraine, and the world

Monday, February 24, was the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the General Assembly of the United Nations, the United States voted with Russia, North Korea, Belarus, Nicaragua, and other dictatorships against a Ukrainian-sponsored resolution. On the Security Council, the U.S. offered its own resolution, gaining the support of Russia and China, among others.

I wrote an article about all this titled “Infamy.” In my opinion, last Monday was an infamous day for the United States.

Last Friday was another one — the day that President Trump and Vice President Vance performed their act on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Bret Stephens wrote a column about it, titled “A Day of American Infamy.” He concluded by saying, “It’s up to the rest of us to reclaim America’s honor from the gangsters who besmirched it in the White House.”

• I think that all of us, whatever our views, can agree on one thing: Trump and Vance, on one hand, and Zelensky, on the other, are completely different people. Completely different in outlook, values, and character.


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• Trump & Co. have made Zelensky a hate figure. They have worked on it for years. I believe this is a shameful moment for America, a stain upon our country.

Zelensky showed tremendous courage in February 2022, and has shown it in the three brutal years since. He is leading a country under siege, trying to repel an invasion by a monstrous neighbor. Why do other men pour scorn on Zelensky? It may well be, to borrow Shakespeare language, that they “hold their manhoods cheap.”

Everyone has his own idea of a man, I suppose. To a lot of people, Andrew Tate is a man. (If you don’t know who he is, lucky you. But if you care to get acquainted, try this column by Nick Catoggio.) Others of us say, “Look to Zelensky.”

How would Trump, Vance, and the rest have done in his shoes?

• Many Republicans are offended, or pretend to be offended, by President Zelensky’s attire. They think he should wear a suit and tie. I will give you a memory. When I was a kid, I noticed something about myself: The smoke of people I liked, I didn’t mind. (A lot of people smoked cigarettes in those days.) The smoke of people I didn’t like, I did mind.

People who scoff and sneer at Zelensky’s attire — they don’t like him anyway. If they did like him, they would think his attire was cool, defiant of norms.

Putin wears a suit and tie. So what? Is he more civilized than Volodymyr Zelensky? No, he presides over savagery and barbarism.

• It is very, very important to Trump and other Republicans, in politics and the media, to put forward the lie that Zelensky is an ingrate, never thanking the United States for the aid it has provided (over the objections of those same Republicans, of course). The White House has put out the following:

Obviously, Zelensky has thanked the United States (not to mention Ukraine’s other allies) many, many times. According to this report, he has thanked the United States and our leaders 33 times.

But remember this, too: We Americans, until now, have supported Ukraine because we think that such support is in our own interest. It is not charity. The Ukrainians are on the front lines of a broader struggle, and if they can check Putin and his expansion, so much the better for us.

• Once, I have seen Donald Trump deferential and meek. That was in July 2018, when he held a joint press conference with Putin in Helsinki. The contrast with his treatment of Zelensky is glaring.

Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018. What he says rings true to me:

• The headline of a news report: “State Department terminates U.S. support of Ukraine energy grid restoration.” Every day brings further dishonor upon the United States.

• Of course, Putin and his men are thrilled:

• Has the U.S. switched sides? Done no less than switch sides?

• To borrow Bill Buckley language: Who can gainsay it?

• Steve Rosenberg, the BBC’s Russia editor, highlighted something in a Russian newspaper: “Putin and Trump are close in ideology and values. Putin is his natural ally.” There are people in Russia who believe this (manifestly). And people in America who believe the same — both approvingly and disapprovingly.

In April 2023, between the two Trump administrations, Paul Ingrassia wrote, “Without Trump, Putin is the most powerful leader in the international arena standing up for traditional Christianity and Western values — and it’s not even close.” Ingrassia is now President Trump’s liaison to the Justice Department.

We all have our own ideas of what “traditional Christianity” is, and “Western values,” too.

• More news, from Washington: “Hegseth Orders Pentagon to Stop Offensive Cyberoperations Against Russia.” I would like to know: How is this move, along with a bundle of others, not Christmas morning for the Kremlin?

• Now to Tulsi Gabbard:

There is a lot to discuss here. But focus on “Zelensky has been trying to drag the United States into a nuclear war with Russia/WW3 for years now.” This is a bizarre lie. And she is not some random X-user. She is not a Fox News personality (though I believe she used to be, like others in the Trump administration). She is our director of national intelligence. Every single Republican senator voted to confirm her — save Mitch McConnell.

If anyone is messing around with World War III, said French president Emmanuel Macron, it’s Putin. “He brought 10,000 North Korean soldiers to Europe. He begged for Iranian drones, aiding their nuclear program in return — to wage war in Europe.”

That sounds like a Western leader, very different from Trump, Vance, Gabbard, et al.

Trump and his team even decline to say that Russia invaded Ukraine. Indeed, our president has said that Ukraine started the war. Up is down, and black is white.

• Listen to our secretary of state:

The obsequiousness. The stupidity. Did Marco Rubio actually write this? It is under his name, in any case.

He used to be realistic about the world. To watch him explain why Putin cannot be trusted to keep a ceasefire, go here. To watch him explain that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees — and why Ukraine is important to the world at large — go here.

One more thing:

Mr. Rubio is now in on the con.

• A witticism from Ramesh Ponnuru — a witticism making a serious, and painful, point:

(As you remember, people were afraid to be the first to stop applauding for Stalin — because if you stopped, this marked your disloyalty.)

• An important Trump aide weighed in with this:

Approving of the incumbent president does not equal “standing with America.” This was true a month and a half ago, when Joe Biden was in the White House, and it is true today.

• Here is a Republican mover and shaker, assigning blame for the carnage in Ukraine:

(You may have noted: Medvedev has called Zelensky “the insolent pig.” Kirk goes with “an ungrateful petulant child.”)

• Elon Musk is probably the No. 2 Republican in the country, after Trump. Here is one of his statements:

The Ukrainians are in a terrible position. Putin’s Russia is trying to pulverize them into submission. The president of the United States is against them. (So, by extension, is his administration, and his party.) The richest man in the world, who owns “the global public square” (X, formerly Twitter), is against them. The Ukrainians have a lot to contend with, to put it mildly.

• One of the most nauseating things about Trump, Vance, and the rest is that, at rhetorically convenient junctures, they claim to care more about Ukraine and Ukrainians than the Ukrainians do.

• General Hodges, who was in charge of the U.S. Army in Europe, speaks for many Americans, I think:

• The Wall Street Journal published an excellent editorial, in my opinion. I am not sure, however, about one sentence: “Mr. Trump does not want to be the President who abandoned Ukraine to Vladimir Putin with all the bloodshed and damage to U.S. interests that would result.”

• In the Journal, Yaroslav Trofimov and Jane Lytvynenko have published an instructive article: “Zelensky, Who Stood Up to Putin, Now Refuses to Bow to Trump.”

• Does Ukraine still have allies? Yes.

(Evidently, King Charles and other British leaders have no gripes about the Ukrainian’s clothes.)

• The Polish prime minister:

• The Australian prime minister:

• Some years ago, I asked Charles Krauthammer, “Will Israel survive?” He said the survival of Israel depended on two things: the will of the people to survive and the support of the United States. I have believed the same is true of Ukraine.

Maybe — just maybe — Ukraine can survive without the support of the United States. But what if the U.S. is not only unsupportive or neutral or indifferent but hostile? Can the Ukrainians survive that?

• Another question: Can NATO exist without America? Could NATO survive U.S. withdrawal? This question may well be tested, soon. “I don’t want to be overly dramatic,” said James Stavridis, “but we could be looking at the last days of NATO.” Admiral Stavridis was the supreme allied commander from 2009 to 2013.

Elon Musk has called for the U.S. to quit NATO.

• Looking at the below, I thought of a phrase that Donald Rumsfeld used, controversially: “New Europe.”

• Petr Pavel is the president of the Czech Republic and a retired army general. He served as the chairman of NATO’s military committee. Two days ago, he wrote,

• Natan Sharansky has written a piece with the following heading: “A President’s Words Saved Me in the Gulag.” That president was Reagan. He contrasts Reagan with Trump, who, of course, has blamed Ukraine for starting the war against it. Lots of Russians are in prison for daring to criticize the Kremlin’s assault on Ukraine. What message do the American president’s words send to them?

I recommend Sharansky’s piece, here.

• At the beginning of my column today, I cited an article that I published last Tuesday (this one). Here is a portion of it:

A question, now pressing upon us: Who will lead the West? If America leaves a vacuum, who will fill it? (“The West” is not a geographical term, as you know, but a political and philosophical one.) Who will lead the Free World? Who will stand for “Western values,” as we said in the old days?

One such value is: Might does not make right. Big powers have no right to erase smaller powers. International borders should not be redrawn by force.

A single country could not take the place of America. But a cluster of countries — a cluster of liberal democracies, confident in their values and armed to the teeth — could make a significant contribution.

On Friday, Kaja Kallas issued a statement. Until recently, she was the prime minister of Estonia, and now she is essentially the EU foreign minister. That statement:

The world is changing before our eyes — changing dramatically. In 2017, Vladimir Putin visited Viktor Orbán in Budapest. Orbán said, “We all sense — it’s in the air — that the world is in the process of a substantial realignment.” It could be that that realignment has arrived. Advocates of freedom and the rule of law will have to be more determined than ever.

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