These are the men and women who betrayed Ukraine
Last Saturday, Anatoliy Chumniy watched his six-year old granddaughter be pulled from the rubble. She was one of the victims of Russian bombing in Zaporizhzhia, a southern Ukrainian city which is a regular bombardment target. She was laid down on the ground over a white bag. “Her birthday would have been at the end of the month,” he said.
Russian strikes against Zaporizhzhia last Saturday killed 20 people, including three children. It was the third mass-casualty attack on Ukraine that week. Nearly 80 people had been killed in strikes on the preceding Wednesday and Thursday. We barely bother to mention these events anymore. They are like the weather, a constant background hum, barely distinguishable. But every week, Ukrainians are murdered by Russia. Every week, Ukrainians give their lives to defend their country. Every week, Ukraine fights against imperialism and dictatorship.
And yet there was something different this week. For the first time, the United States of America entered the battlefield on Russia’s side. That is not hyperbole. It is simply the objective and uncontested assessment of events.
The US’ latest movement towards Russia is the result of Donald Trump’s need for cheap fuel in the wake of his war with Iran. As the price of fuel spirals upwards and the US midterms draw nearer, the US president has become increasingly desperate to ease prices or at least find someone other than himself to blame. So last Friday, he announced that he would sign a deal accepting Russian diesel: 300,000 tonnes in an initial release, followed by 500,000 tonnes in November and another million after that. “Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers, and Truckers, is my Greatest Priority,” Trump wrote, as incontinent with the capslock key as he is with his morality.
Obviously this is insane. Russia helped the Iranians during the war. It provided them with intelligence about locations and American troop, ship and aircraft movement. These may have been used to guide Iranian drone strikes, such as the one which killed six US service members.
Trump is many things, but most importantly he is the stupidest person who has ever run a major nation state. No other leader could be so easily maneuvered into a position where they help fund the enemy.
The fuel decision was the first bit of good news Russia had had in months. Until now, the Ukrainian strategy had been working. Strikes against energy infrastructure had been inconveniencing Russians, causing internal tension and sapping activity. The lack of viable options for progress was pulverising Russian morale. The economic pressure continued to build. Then, with one stroke, Trump undid all that good work.
In terms of actually reducing fuel prices in the US, the Trump deal was useless. It’ll do little to limit price rises before the midterms. But if it goes through all stages, it would provide a financial lifeline to Russia, injecting billions of dollars into an economy on its knees from years of sanctions.
The truth is, Trump didn’t even betray Ukraine for cheap fuel. He did it so he could create a narrative blaming someone else for expensive fuel.
In the days after the deal, Trump issued a series of vitriolic attacks on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president,” he told reporters at the White House. “He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers, with diesel fuel because Russia supplies a large portion of the diesel fuel throughout the world.” Later, he expressed exasperation that Ukraine refused to frame its military strategy around his electoral convenience. “I said to him: ‘Do what you want. Don’t hit refineries. There’s plenty of targets. Don’t hit refineries.’ And he went out and he hit. He better damn well stop. I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal because he could have made many deals, but for some reason he never does.”
The deal that Trump refers to is the offer from Putin to temporarily cease the fighting in exchange for Ukraine relinquishing its claim to eastern territories which he has failed to capture on the battlefield. It would hand to Putin by diplomacy what he could not secure by force. It would be an affront to the memory of those who died fighting. It would involve the dismantling of an independent Ukraine. And most pertinently of all, it would create a beach-head for a future invasion. Only a fool or a cunt would think this was a deal worth doing.
The threats from Washington ratcheted up throughout the week. Trump administration officials warned that the US would halt intelligence sharing and block the European purchase of US weapons.
Then Trump announced an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine stated that no-one had bothered to communicate with it about this ceasefire. I don’t suppose anyone bothers to get het up about this anymore, but it is an abject expression of disrespect. The US is acting as the arbiter of Ukrainian decision-making, in much the same way that Britain and France acted towards Czechoslovakia during the Munich agreement.
Nevertheless, in a desperate bid not to rock the boat, Ukraine agreed to abide by the ceasefire. It was rewarded with devastating Russian air and drone strikes against its energy plants, leaving 600,000 people without power. On Tuesday, Zelensky said there had been no usual US warning before a Russian ballistic strike against a power plant in the capital. By Thursday, he cancelled the ceasefire. “We’re done,” he told the FT.
The US seems to have resolved to knock Zelensky down a peg or two. It was at this point that events became more ominous than they had before.
Ukrainian access to Starshield was restricted. This is the satellite system used by Ukraine for battlefield communication and drone operation. In the latter case, Starlink receptors are placed in drones as part of an onboard guidance system. Ukrainian fighters found that it no-longer worked when moving at speeds greater than 100 miles per hour.
Starshield is developed by Elon Musk’s Space X, but managed by the US government. Neither of them are great fans of Zelensky. A complex game of buck-passing now took place. Reuters reported that the order to limit the satellite system came from inside the White House and was communicated to the Defense Department. Musk insisted that “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS”. Two senior US officials told CNN the decision did not come from Trump.
In a sense, it didn’t matter. Neither the US government nor a tech billionaire should be able to dictate the fortunes of a European war. This was another sign, if one was needed, that Europe urgently needs to develop its own alternatives.
The Starshield decision provided a significant military advantage to Russia on the battlefield. It was a moment of profound change. Until now, US efforts to help Putin have involved indirect assistance: Publicly attacking Zelenskyy, treating Putin as an equal, opening up fuel imports. But this was a different matter. The US was now effectively entering the conflict in order to assist Russia and obstruct Ukraine. It had become an active participant on the Russian side.
We have to get something into our heads. Trump wants Putin to win. If we can’t understand that now we never will. I am not saying that Trump is an active ally for the Russian president or that they have entered into a conspiracy. A lot of the time the Russian leader clearly irritates him. They do not usually play well together. And anyway, most of the time Trump really just wants the war in Ukraine to go away because it does not interest him.
But his stated foreign policy, published as a formal national security strategy at the start of the year, is of spheres of interest, with strongmen carving the world up between them. The US gets the western hemisphere. Russia gets eastern Europe.
Putin is also an ideological ally. Again, this is not analysis, it is simply a statement of demonstrable fact. Trump and Putin are both populists. They communicate a narrative of the people versus the elites. They are authoritarians. They work to crush free speech. They despise minorities. Their worldview is basically identical, with a conservative view on gender overlaid onto a geopolitical outlook - tough guys and submissive women in the domestic sphere projected onto strong-men rulers and wimp subservient states on the global sphere. They are fundamentally on the same side.
Sometimes populists don’t get on. Sometimes they have other pressures on them, or they personally don’t hit it off, or they have competing interests. This is why Italy’s Giorgia Meloni has ended up falling out with Trump and adopting a pro-Ukraine position. But generally speaking, people who view the world in the same way will get on. Putin matches Trump’s outlook, whereas Zelensky contradicts it. Zelensky believes in Europe, in Nato, in the principle of a rules-based order, in mutual solidarity, in the sovereignty and dignity of states.
Some things in politics are simple. There is really no need for great tortured analysis about why Trump behaves the way he does. Zelensky’s values are inimical to his. Putin’s are identical. That is why his actions operate constantly to obstruct Zelensky and assist Putin.
We see precisely the same approach from Europe’s populist leaders.
Speaking to the Economist this week, AfD joint leader Alice Weidel was asked if her preferred policy was to cease all German and European financial and military support to Ukraine. “We already spent over €100 billion,” she replied. “No other countries spent that much, and we are highly indebted. Yeah, I have the interests of my country first. It’s Germany first and this war is not in our interest. And it’s very dangerous for our national security. In order to have a peace in the Ukraine, we need to take not only Ukraine security interests into account, but also Russia security interest into account. This has been the major mistake, like the 20 years before, to not acknowledging the security concerns of Russia [sic].”
Let’s just break that down. She does not explicitly state that she supports Russia but her policy is designed to make sure Russia wins. Like Trump, who has prevented any new US financial support for Ukraine, she wants to close down all funding, leaving the country helpless against the Russian onslaught. If all funding to Ukraine ceases, it will be forced to surrender, at which point its people will be murdered by Russia and the country eliminated as an independent state.
She states that this is in Germany’s interest. But it cannot be in any continental country’s interest for Russia to win the war, expand its frontiers, and advance its imperial dreams closer to Central and Western Europe.
Putin’s position is clear and repeatedly stated. In 2016, he said that “Russia’s frontier ends nowhere”. In 2025 he said that “wherever the boot of a Russian soldier steps, that is ours”. He is an old fashioned colonial expansionist. He will advance unless he is stopped. Ukraine offers Europeans a good deal, the best deal they could ever hope for. They will lay down their lives to stop him. All they need from us is money to do so and a promise of a better future. Far from representing German interests, Weidel betrays them, as eagerly as she betrays the patriots of Ukraine.
She then states, laughably, that we need to take “Russia security interest into account”. Russia had no threat to its security. It was perfectly safe within its borders. No-one was threatening to invade it. The only country which killed Russians is Russia itself, by feeding its men into the war machine.
Far-right French leader Marine Le Pen has a similar message. She has pledged to stop bilateral aid for Ukraine beyond some operational assistance. Speaking to the FT this week, she suggested she would obstruct any future EU attempts to financially support Ukraine. “The honest thing to do with Mr Zelensky is to tell him, to warn him in fact that, listen, we can’t do more, we can’t manage more,” she said. “We’ve already done €90 billion of loans, that’s €18 billion for France. €18 billion is really a lot.” Poor you. Must be very hard searching around in your pocket for change while Ukrainians bleed to death.
The position of European populist leaders is identical to that of the White House. This is a stupider position for a European to hold than it is for an American, because they are in the direct line of attack, but ideologically it has the same explanatory cause. They see the world as Putin sees it. They are of his church. And therefore their policy positions advance his agenda.
At least in their case it is clear what they want. But special mention should be reserved for the utter cowardice of those European officials who helped serve Russia’s agenda this week by virtue of weakness rather than ideological zeal. Zelensky turned up one day early for today’s EU summit in Brussels, knowing that many countries’ commitment to Ukraine was slipping. For the first time since Russia’s invasion in 2022, Ukraine was not the top item on the summit agenda. The EU’s budget was. One EU diplomat told Politico that European leaders were uneasy with how Zelensky had handled his relations with Trump this week. It was “not helpful” to hit out at the US president.
What else do they expect him to do? He was forced to watch as the US embargo against Russian fuel was shattered. He was forced to watch as a ceasefire was announced over his head. He was forced to watch as Russia attacked his own energy infrastructure regardless. And he was forced to watch as the Americans intentionally assisted Russia on the battlefield. And yet the response of this EU diplomat is apparently to berate Zelensky for not being even more subservient. Well perhaps he is entitled to retain his dignity and the dignity of his country, in a manner which this official, speaking on condition of anonymity, would not be capable of doing.
Europe has been left handling the Ukrainian crisis alone since the US gave up its world leadership role under Trump. It can barely afford to do so, buffeted as it is by financial and political crises.
Germany has taken the leadership position. It has done so in the most German way imaginable - slowly, with a minimum of fuss, and without any great soaring rhetoric about national responsibility. It has contributed twice as much as Britain or France. It has donated 19 air defence systems. Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who is seemingly despised by the electorate, has shown total commitment to Ukraine and the liberation of Europe, unlike the collaborator-populists who triumph over him at elections and yet would sell their country to a Russian despot.
But we need to be clear-eyed and honest about the dangers here. Both Weidel and Le Pen are ahead in the polls. There is nothing to stop these people from leading their countries. In fact, that currently remains probably the most likely outcome. And even without that kind of disaster, European patience and attention is drifting. Putin’s faith that European decadence will help save him still seems perfectly believable.
Britain’s response this week has been commendable. As ever, the prime minister and foreign secretary will not directly criticise Trump. I think they should, for moral and self-interested reasons, but this is not the time for that argument. Within the constraints set by British foreign policy, the country has conducted itself well.
Whenever Zelensky is on the ropes, the UK acts with big symbolic gestures of solidarity. After the disastrous White House meeting in February 2025, Keir Starmer made sure he came straight to Downing Street and embraced him. This week, Zelensky stood alongside King Charles, then went to Downing Street where he was flanked by an honour guard.
We need to recognise two things. The first is that Britain may soon be the only large country left offering meaningful financial support to Ukraine. The US is gone. Germany and France are currently teetering on the edge. But in the UK, there is cross-party unanimity. Only Nigel Farage - another populist, and therefore, like his ideological siblings, a Quisling - would subjugate this country to Putin.
The scale of the money needed is beyond anything the UK can provide, particularly in its current straitened circumstances. This is why clear thought is required now about this eventuality, both here and more importantly in Europe.
The second point is that the EU needs Britain. I have written very many times, in very many ways, about how Britain needs Europe. I write less frequently about why Europe needs the UK. But it is Britain whose national story helps explain its emotional commitment to Ukraine. It is Britain which has deeply internalised the idea that gangster imperialists must be challenged, not appeased. It is Britain which has taken Ukraine to heart, in a way that is simply not replicated in the electorates of other European countries. And it is Britain which has a fighting chance of helping Ukraine survive - or in the worst case hold out until another election in the US, in France, or in Germany, when things might improve and funding comes online again.
The events of this week have shown again, in stark terms, why Britain and Europe must come together. Watching UK commentators get hung up on talk of free movement or the single currency is pathetic. Whenever someone does so, as Ed Balls does here, it is a clear demonstration that they do not have the stature to understand the historic moment they live in. Tiny men with tiny minds engaged in tiny calculations about a world they will never truly understand.
It is a disaster to find ourselves here, just before winter, after months in which Ukrainian bravery and ingenuity had managed to put Russia on the backfoot. It is happening for one reason and one reason only: because populists support Putin.
These are the cowards and the fascist enablers who work to undermine the safety of their own country and assist that of the aggressor. These are the collaborators who would eradicate European freedom to make way for the Russia boot.
Despite their best intentions, Russia can still be defeated on the battlefield. And just as importantly, it can also be defeated at the ballot box. Godwilling, that is what will happen next month in the US midterms and next year in France.
Glory to Ukraine.
Odds and sods
You can listen to this newsletter as a podcast at the top of the page or on Spotify. You can follow me on BlueSky, Instagram or TikTok.
My column in the i paper this week was on the new White House press secretary Katie Zacharia and in particular her first briefing with journalists, which was, in turns, pitiful, mortifying, cynical and inadvertently hilarious. You can read it here. Our Origin Story Revisited is on Russel Brand, who went on trial this week. You can listen to it here.
This week I’ve been catching up on Colin From Accounts, Season 3. I am going to be distraught when it’s over. It has been such a delight - funny and sharp and gentle but never sentimental. It really is a masterpiece of romantic comedy, all the way up there with the very best.
Right, that’s your lot mate, fuck off and I’ll see you next week.
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