Is Trump's Plan To End The War In Ukraine To Pull The Plug On Aid To That Country & Ending Sanctions

Let's Be Real— Trump Hates Ukraine, Loves Putin

Ukrainians know the countdown on their lifeline is close. Trump is hostile to their national aspirations— avoiding Russia’s existential bear hug. He’s likely to start by easing sanctions on Russia and throttling back on all forms of aid— especially military aid— to Kyiv. There won’t be any more of this once Trump is back in the Oval Office. And messages like this from former Ukraine parliament member Yegor Firsov, arguing for increased aid to his country, will fall of deaf ears. “[T]he war’s cessation cannot be unilateral,” he wrote this morning. “That would be a defeat, not peace. And in this particular case, Moscow, Beijing and Tehran would all regard a defeat for Ukraine as a defeat for the entire West, for NATO and, most of all, for the U.S. .. [E]ven the cessation of U.S. funding wouldn’t mean an actual end to the war. Rather, it would simply mean Ukraine paying the price of even more victims and losing more territory, while Russia grows stronger and advances closer to NATO borders.”

He wrote that “whatever our expectations from the Trump administration may be, both the U.S. and especially Europe should be interested in strengthening the resources of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Otherwise, negotiations will turn from a constructive conversation into a platform for Russian President Vladimir Putin to issue ultimatums. Ukraine had never prepared for war, naively believing in international security institutions. Hence, it is unfortunately unable to protect international order and peace in Europe with its own resources. It is Western weapons and funds that provide the basis of our continued defense… I, for one, believe Putin is counting on the fact that the West’s support for Ukraine will waver and the front will crumble, leaving our country without protection. He’s counting on Ukraine running out of ammunition for the Patriot air defense systems; on there not being enough shells for artillery, leaving the infantry exposed to break under pressure from the “liberators”; and on the F16 fighter jets not arriving in sufficient numbers, allowing Russia to maintain its dominance of the skies.”

Drones have already significantly changed the course of the war. If everything functions smoothly, and reconnaissance drones transmit data to strike crews, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can strike anything. We’ve been able to drive away heavy enemy equipment 5 to 10 kilometers from the line of contact thanks to high accuracy— so fearful are the Russians, we hardly ever see columns of tanks being deployed on the battlefield as we did a year ago.

[M]ore than anything, however, we need more drones.

Technical evolution means that tens of thousands of drones could be in the air simultaneously along the entire front line. They could operate day and night, in cold and heat. They could monitor any enemy movement, including individual infantryman. Indeed, this is already happening, but the small number of drones doesn’t allow this technology to have its fullest impact on the front.

If we had hundreds of times more drones, however, then maneuver warfare would turn into positional warfare. The front would stabilize; any offensive actions would become impossible. And that is when both sides would have an objective interest in the negotiations, regardless of Trump’s or even Putin’s position.

Therefore, if we really want to stop this war, we can only do it by giving Ukraine a technological and quantitative drone advantage.

…Thankfully, some countries, such as the U.S. and the U.K., have already announced aid specifically earmarked for drones. And for those of us in the trenches, this news gives us more hope for peace than any of the reports regarding Trump’s “peacefulness.”

…[I]f there’s a pause in the war, Russia will use it to accumulate such means and continue its aggression. Thus, the main guarantee of peace cannot be Trump’s “good will” but rather strengthening Ukraine to such an extent the enemy simply wouldn’t dare attack again.

Before dawn this morning, Patricia Cohen reported that Señor T “has stated ‘I want to use sanctions as little as possible.’ And he has made clear that there will be a shift in American policy toward Ukraine, having promised to end the war in a single day. Experts believe that sanctions and continued military aid are almost certain to be bargaining chips in any negotiations.”

Sanctions haven’t caused the Kremlin to collapse— that was never going to happen— but they have hampered Russia’s ability to wage war effectively. “Russia’s economy,” she wrote, “has felt the squeeze. Spiraling inflation has prompted the country’s central bank to raise benchmark interest rates to 21 percent. Despite enormous expenditures by the government to finance the war, overall economic growth is slowing. Many products and parts are either unavailable, more expensive or replaced by substandard substitutes. When Trump sits down to negotiate with Putin, sanctions will be ‘an extraordinarily valuable chip,’ said Elina Ribakova, vice president for foreign policy at the Kyiv School of Economics and a nonresident scholar at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank… Yet even the most valuable bargaining chips that may derive from sanctions may not be enough to persuade Putin to agree to a settlement that is also acceptable to Ukraine and its neighboring European allies. Some political and military analysts argue that the fall of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Russia’s ally, may cause Putin to take an even tougher stance in Ukraine. In the end, the only valuation of sanctions as a bargaining chip that really counts is Putin’s.”