Republicans and Democrats, together, should regard this week’s developments as the last straw.
Republicans and Democrats, together, should regard this week’s developments as the last straw.
T here’s serious competition, but the Soviet Union could claim the title of modern history’s most monstrous regime. It killed tens of millions and enslaved hundreds of millions more. In the post–World War II era, it emerged as the mortal enemy of the United States in the Twilight Struggle that lasted four decades — during which nuclear war was barely averted in 1962 and the Kremlin sponsored proxy wars against our nation and our allies, killing thousands of Americans. As President Ronald Reagan declaimed, the Soviets were “the evil empire.” His Cold War solution was simple — “We win, they lose” — because peaceful coexistence with an enemy committed to our destruction was too precarious a prospect.
Vladimir Putin, the former KGB agent, is a born and bred devotee of the Soviet system. He solidified his despotic status by orchestrating a series of bombings inside Russia as a pretext to crushing Chechnya. We’re now well into his third decade as Russia’s murderous dictator. He openly regards the 1991 fall of the USSR — America’s foe in modernity’s greatest triumph for liberty — as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [twentieth] century.” Putin’s war of aggression and hoped-for conquest against Ukraine, like his war of aggression and conquest in Georgia (swaths of which he has occupied for nearly two decades), is part of his quest to reconstitute America’s Soviet enemy.
And President Donald Trump is giving him aid and comfort.
Congress has become a laggard even when it is in session. Now, it’s the political season, so it is inconceivable that midterm campaigns will be suspended to do the nation’s vital national security work. Yet in a properly functioning republic, there would be immediate hearings about this week’s shocking escalation of the Trump–Putin alliance.
Since the start of Trump’s second term, it has been excruciating to watch America’s president blame the victim, our ally Ukraine, for Putin’s war of aggression. Reagan and Poland this is not. As Ukraine fights for its survival against Moscow’s would-be hegemon, today’s president of the United States hectors it to surrender territory that Putin has been unable to take on the battlefield after four years of barbarism.
Notwithstanding the slew of war crimes through which Russia’s dictator persists in bombing civilian infrastructure, calculating that the prospect of Ukrainians freezing in the harsh winter will bludgeon President Volodymyr Zelensky into conceding defeat, Ukraine has staunchly resisted, despite glaring deficits in manpower and resources. Its astonishing military ingenuity has shredded Putin’s forces, leaving a staggering 1.5 million Russian casualties, including half a million killed in action. Kyiv’s innovative drone warfare has stopped Putin cold on the front lines, nullified Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and now markedly degraded its vaunted energy production platforms.
Russia is a pillar of an anti-American axis led by China and joined by Iran and North Korea — the trio providing Putin with the economic backstop, materiel, and manpower he desperately needs. In 2022, Putin and China’s Xi Jinping issued a joint statement of cooperation that bluntly challenged the United States and NATO. The Russian regime is actively abetting Iran’s military operations against the United States, providing intelligence for targeted attacks on U.S. personnel, as well as drone weaponry (which Iran initially designed but Russia can produce at scale). That is to say: While Trump embraces Putin, Putin aids and abets the “Death to America” regime.
Moreover, the Kremlin is actively provoking our NATO allies with what the Institute for the Study of War describes as a “coordinated series of kinetic campaigns,” including drone incursions. And just a month ago, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against named members of Putin’s intelligence services for conspiring to finance terrorism and carry out murders in our country.
Americans should thus be gratified by the Ukrainian war effort. Most who are paying attention probably are. Trump claims to want peace, but his fine print consistently spells out Russia’s terms. Regardless of the president’s personal interest, the vital American interest stems from Russia’s being America’s enemy, quite apart from being Ukraine’s enemy. Mindful of all our defense obligations, we should vigorously support Ukraine’s war effort for as long as Ukraine is willing to fight. For what is a relative bargain — about $127 billion in direct aid over four years (Trump’s claim that the U.S. has provided $350 billion is absurd) — Ukraine is hollowing out the armed forces and diminishing the war machine of our incorrigible geopolitical adversary.
Instead, President Trump has sided with the totalitarian aggressor over the allied European democracy upon which it preys.
This week, in lunatic public statements (see, e.g., here and here), the president again blamed Ukraine for the war and gratuitously insulted Zelensky (in stark contrast to Trump’s unconcealed admiration for Putin). Trump’s emissaries revived their pressure on Ukraine to settle the conflict by surrendering Ukrainian territory, and threatened that the administration would withhold crucial intelligence that Ukraine needs for its self-defense against Russian aerial attacks unless Ukraine halted its attacks on Russian oil refineries.
Simultaneously, as I detailed earlier this week, the president proclaimed his reprehensible diesel deal with Putin — stunning Kyiv by announcing that, with no concessions from Putin on Ukraine, the Trump administration will waive sanctions against Russia (in likely violation of federal law) in exchange for a relatively trivial amount of Russian diesel fuel that would have negligible impact on sky-high diesel prices (which have surged due to Trump’s decision to start a war with Iran, not, as he claims, Ukraine’s decision to keep fighting for its survival). And even this negligible price impact hinges on Russia’s capacity to deliver, which is doubtful, to put it mildly. (Putin’s invasion and Ukraine’s responsive attacks have so diminished Russian export capacity that it had to import diesel from South Korea during the summer.)
Subsequently, in a display of cynicism impressive even by Trump standards, the president tried to induce Ukrainian capitulation by decreeing that the parties had agreed to an “energy ceasefire” when they had not.
Not only was this agreement non-existent; it was patently rigged against Ukraine. For three days Zelensky heeded Trump’s warning to cease attacks on Russian refineries, but Russia continued pounding Ukraine’s electrical grid and other energy infrastructure. When Zelensky cried foul, the Trump administration countered that the “energy ceasefire” only applied to oil refineries. As Trump officials knew, Ukraine has no operational oil refineries, Russia having bombed the last one four years ago; by contrast, Russia has dozens of refineries. That is, the “energy ceasefire” was insidiously designed to prevent Ukraine from conducting the kind of strikes that most deter Russian aggression, yet enable Putin’s continued obliteration of the energy infrastructure Ukrainians need to survive the imminent cold season.
Now, we have what Congress — Republicans and Democrats, together — should regard as the last straw.
Starlink is the satellite communications system provided by SpaceX, which is owned by Trump’s pal Elon Musk, an unrestrained Zelensky detractor. SpaceX also makes Starshield, a military application of the Starlink technology.
SpaceX provides Starshield to the U.S. Defense Department. The Pentagon, in turn, provides Starshield to Ukraine, on a contract that runs into 2027. (Most reporting indicates that the U.S. pays for Starshield; citing an unidentified source in Kyiv, the journalist Alex Raufoglu reports that our NATO ally Germany pays.) Starshield has enhanced surveillance and communication capabilities that have been essential to Ukraine’s capacity to fend off, or at least minimize the carnage from, Russian aerial attacks.
This week, Ukraine was horrified to learn, without warning, that Starshield had been restricted. Right at the moment Trump was warning Zelensky not to attack Russian refineries, the Starshield settings were somehow altered, such that the system could not track objects traveling at speeds greater than about 100 miles per hour — woefully inadequate to detect Russian aerial assaults.
Coincidentally, while the system was compromised, Putin’s forces conducted some of the most intensive aerial attacks against Ukrainian territory since the war began, firing 39 ballistic missiles and 128 Shahed drones, mainly at the greater Kyiv and Kharkiv areas. At least nine civilians were killed, and many others wounded. Zelensky says 26 power facilities and four oil and gas facilities were damaged. More than 600,000 people lost power, for the most part, in the capital.
According to Musk, the restrictions on Starshield had to be caused by the Defense Department “and ultimately POTUS.” The government, not SpaceX, owns and controls the system. Initially (i.e., after the devastating Russian attacks), Trump officials denied that the White House had anything to do with the restrictions. As of this writing (on Thursday evening), neither the president, nor his staff, nor the Pentagon has responded to Musk’s statement. Reuters, however, has reported that the order to impose the restrictions came from inside the White House. (The report, behind the paywall, relies on two U.S. government officials and one official from a Western government, none of whom is identified.)
Immediately, Congress should hold hearings, demanding testimony under oath from Defense Department and other administration officials about the chain of events that led to restrictions that facilitated Russia’s suspiciously timed attack. Even if we suspend disbelief, ignore the Reuters report, and assume this was some sort of technological glitch, it would be critical to know that: After all, it would mean vital American interests around the world are vulnerable.
If we instead allow common sense to enter the equation, too many dark signs point in the direction of an American administration — at the very moment it was seeking Ukraine’s capitulation and threatening to leave it defenseless by denying intelligence — taking conscious action that left Ukraine exposed to an intense attack, which Russia just happens to have conducted right at the perfect time.
This is dark. It demands answers. Now.