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Editor’s note: this analysis comes from a Canadian traditionalist and forms part of our Ukraine Crisis series. Our Conversion of Russia series is aimed at the traditional stance of the Holy See toward Russian Christendom in light of Fatima. In both cases we publish Catholics views from all sides, with an emphasis on solidarity for our Ukrainian and Russian Catholic brethren, under the patronage of the Theotokos of Fatima in her Russian icon.
Concerning the stance of the new Pope on this conflict, it should be noted that in 2022 Bishop Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine as ‘a true invasion, imperialist in nature, where Russia seeks to conquer territory for reasons of power.’ Pope Leo met Ukrainian president Zelensky very soon after his election to the papacy, and called for a just peace in Ukraine and the return of the thousands of Ukrainian children kidnapped by the Russians.
The American president Donald Trump began his second presidency with measures that encouraged faithful Catholics, and that have led many of them to see him as an ally, or even as a champion of their cause. His Catholic vice president J. D. Vance has worked to cement this perception. It would be nice if this perception were correct, but it is not. Catholics need to understand that Trump is not on their side, and that they must oppose him on some non-negotiable issues.
Trump’s beneficial initiatives ought to be acknowledged at the outset. Some of them, such as attacking corruption and fraud in the U.S. government, are of interest to Americans rather than the world as a whole. Others, such as his defunding USAID, his withdrawal from the World Health Organisation, and his withdrawal from the Paris Accords on climate change, are a boon for the world in general. Although they are largely negative – ceasing to act destructively rather than taking positive steps – these beneficial actions, if persevered in, will do great good.
However, there are two areas where Trump is hostile to Catholic causes; his position on life issues, and his position on Ukraine. Despite this hostility, Catholic supporters of Trump have portrayed him as favourable to Catholicism. In the case of life issues, they have simply ignored his stance. In the case of Ukraine, they have accepted and broadcast a whole set of lies about the Ukrainian conflict that originate in Russian propaganda. The massive volume of these lies requires a long refutation, since the facts that contradict them are not always easily accessible. This lengthy refutation is however worthwhile, and not only to set the record straight on Ukraine; it provides a helpful understanding of the way that the military, economic and political condition of the world that Catholics live in is likely to develop.
It is not being argued here that Catholics should become total political opponents of Trump. They might think that his good initiatives outweigh his bad ones, although this cannot be reasonably maintained given his anti-life positions. More realistically, they might think that he is a lesser evil than the political alternatives and should be supported on that basis. That may be the case, and is not being denied here. What is being argued is that Catholics are doing the wrong thing by lionizing Trump and either not opposing him or actively supporting him on life issues and Ukraine. On these issues, they should be pressuring him as vigorously as possible to get him to change course. As the discussion below will show, this is not only the right thing to do; it is the best way to protect against the political victory of left-wing forces that are the enemies of both Trump and Catholics.
I. Trump on life issues
Trump’s record on life and family issues does not take long to describe. He rejects Catholic teaching and the natural moral law.
Trump has stated that ‘Everyone knows I would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it.’ His vice president, J.D. Vance, follows him on this, stating: ‘I have said, repeatedly on the record, that I think that girl should be able to get an abortion if she and her family so choose to do so.’ Trump promised to preserve access to abortion pills for Americans.
Trump has stated that he is ‘fine’ with gay marriage. The Republican party under Trump abandoned its previous commitment to marriage as the union of one man and one woman. In vitro fertilization (IVF) has the evil distinction of combining two kinds of sin that according to Catholic teaching cry to heaven for vengeance; sexually perverse activity, and murder of the innocent. Trump has proclaimed: ‘I am the father of IVF … We really are the party for IVF … We want fertilization that is all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them.’ He has promised government funding for IVF, and has signed an executive order promising to expand access to IVF and make it more affordable. Trump’s anti-life positions are to be expected in a person with his corrupt sexual history. Despite these positions, both Trump and Vance were given centre stage at the Washington March for Life in January 2025.
J. D. Vance’s religious position should be commented on in a discussion of Trump and Catholics. Ninety years ago, when the Catholic Church was a living and coherent force in America, there were definite limits to the ambition of Catholic politicians. Catholics were a coherent political force who would support their own. However, the price for this support was political backing of Catholic causes, such as opposition to Communism, Prohibition, abortion, and birth control. Catholic politicians had to deliver on these Catholic causes to get the Catholic vote. These causes were unpopular with many non-Catholics, and Catholics were a minority in the U.S. So Catholic politicians could win limited success on the basis of the Catholic vote, but the highest posts were closed to them by the requirement of conformity to Catholic teaching in order to get that vote. The successes won by Catholics in both politics and the wider culture were nonetheless real. The Legion of Decency made Hollywood refrain from making morally degrading movies. Catholics in the Democratic Party successfully promoted government policies in favour of wage levels sufficient to raise a family on.
Everyone knows that the situation is now different. Neither lay Catholics nor the Catholic hierarchy are committed as a body to Catholic teaching, and the Catholic hierarchy is largely unbelieving, extremely corrupt, and consequently vulnerable to pressure. The Catholic hierarchy can no longer deliver the Catholic vote on condition that politicians support Catholic causes, and it does not even want these causes to prevail politically. Politicians can present themselves as Catholics, appeal to the Catholic vote, and not pay the price of political commitment to Catholic causes. This has long been apparent to Democratic politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden. Vance, a convert to Catholicism, has sought political advancement since his time in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served as a public relations officer rather than carrying a rifle. Vance has just noted the success of the likes of Pelosi and Biden and copied it. He has indeed taken their hypocritical strategy to new extremes, since neither Pelosi nor Biden ever had the nerve to appear at a March for Life while campaigning for pro-abortion policies. American Catholics have mostly swallowed his strategy. There are no calls for him to be denied communion for his support for abortion, although these calls were made in the case of Pelosi and Biden.
It is hard to exaggerate how damaging this is for the Catholic cause. The Catholic modernist left has not ceased to exist. It has a solid institutional base in educational institutions and dioceses in the U.S. If orthodox Catholics support Trump despite his anti-life positions, they are completely disarmed in their struggle with this modernist left and its support for nominally Catholic pro-abortion and pro-LGBT etc. politicians. They cannot say that Joe Biden should not have been supported by Catholics because of his positions on life issues, or that Gavin Newsom, a Catholic by baptism and education who claims to still belong to the Church, should not be supported because of his extreme anti-life positions. Newsom is going to run for president. Catholics who oppose him for his pro-LGBT and pro-abortion policies are going to be completely discredited by support for Trump.
II. Trump on Ukraine
Trump has favoured Russia in her invasion of Ukraine in important ways. He has refused to sell air defence to Ukraine. He is pressuring Ukraine to accept an unjust and unfavourable peace deal, and to cede territory that Russia has illegally occupied. If he succeeds, the Ukrainian state will be destroyed as an independent entity, and Ukraine will be under the thumb of Russia. This is an anti-Catholic and immoral policy, on these grounds:
A. Russia is an anti-Catholic state that has forcibly suppressed the Catholic Church in all the parts of Ukraine that have been occupied in the current war. There is a large Catholic population in Ukraine that will be persecuted and destroyed in the event of a Russian victory.
B. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is immoral in its nature and its methods.
C. Trump’s policy towards Russia is a betrayal of the U.S. and is leading to a wider war.
There is a massive attempt to deny and bury these facts through a concerted Russian propaganda effort, which unfortunately has had success with many Catholics. It is therefore necessary to address these points at some length. This is worthwhile, because the details are important and the world situation in which Catholics live cannot be properly understood without them. Catholics live in the world of politics, economics and war as well as in the world of religious concerns, and these all make a single whole.
A. Russian religious policy and persecution of Catholics in Ukraine
Some historical background is needed as a context for Russian policy towards Catholics in Ukraine. Ever since the reign of Peter the Great (1682-1725), the Russian Orthodox Church has been completely subject to the Russian state, and has in fact been a department of the Russian state. Russian Orthodox leaders have endorsed this situation, and linked it to the Russian Orthodox idea of Moscow as the ‘Third Rome’ – Rome itself under St. Peter being the first Rome, Constantinople under the Byzantine Emperors being the second Rome after the alleged defection of the pope from the true faith, and Moscow and the Russian Emperors being the third and last Rome at the head of Christendom after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks and the end of the Byzantine Empire. Tsar Ivan the Terrible (reigned 1533-1584), the first Prince of Moscow to claim the title of Emperor (‘Tsar’ = ‘Caesar’), endorsed this view and used it to justify the imperial title he adopted.
After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks eradicated the Russian Orthodox Church. Stalin revived it in 1941 to bolster his regime in the face of the German invasion, and the current Russian Orthodox Church really dates back to Stalin’s re-founding of it. After 1941 the heads of the Russian Orthodox Church were subject to the Communist state and actively cooperated with the KGB. The current Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill, was a KGB officer during the Communist era and has always been a slavish follower of Putin.
Russian Orthodoxy has always been hostile to the Catholic Church. Roman Catholics were restricted and Ukrainian Catholics were suppressed by the Tsars. Under Communism, Ukrainian Catholics were forcibly incorporated into the Orthodox Church. All but one of the Ukrainian Catholic bishops alive in 1945 later died in prison, after terrible sufferings. Thousands of Ukrainian Catholic priests were martyred, often in gruesome ways such as being boiled alive in cauldrons used for prison cooking. This persecution was motivated both by the allegiance of the Ukrainian Catholics to Rome and by the status of the Ukrainian Catholic Church as a stronghold of Ukrainian culture and national identity. The Ukrainian Catholic Church only emerged from the underground after the fall of Communism.
The Communist regime justified its persecution by the claim that Ukrainian Catholics were Nazi sympathisers, a propaganda line that continues to be repeated today by Putin’s Russia. In fact the Ukrainian Catholics were at the forefront of the Ukrainian armed struggle against the German occupiers, and the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church from 1910 to 1944, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, was outstanding in his resistance to Nazi atrocities. Metropolitan Sheptytsky wrote to Himmler and Pope Pius XII denouncing the Holocaust, issued a pastoral letter condemning the murder of Jews, ordered his clergy to shelter Jews, and personally hid Jews in his residence. His brother, the monk Klymentiy Sheptytsky, assisted him in this task, and has been declared ‘Righteous among the Nations’ for his protection of Jews by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial centre in Israel.
Russia discriminates against Catholic and other religious activity in the Russian federation proper under the terms of its 2016 ‘Yarovaya’ law. Roman Catholics are forbidden to engage in activities that attempt to convert non-Catholics to Catholicism. Ukrainian Catholics are completely suppressed.
Russia has banned the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the Ukrainian territories that it has occupied, has confiscated its property, and has arrested and tortured Ukrainian Catholic priests. The Russian periodical Novaya Gazeta Europa reports:
Since Russia annexed four Ukrainian regions, the number of religious communities there has more than halved: only 902 of 1967 remain. The rest have been destroyed by shelling, banned or prevented from continuing their work. … Temples and houses of worship are often destroyed in the fighting. According to the project “Religion on Fire: 3 Years of War in Figures,” 643 religious sites were completely destroyed or damaged during the full-scale aggression in Ukraine. Half of them (326 buildings) are in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions. … In capturing cities and towns, the Russian army often practically wipes them off the face of the earth, and most residents are forced to leave their homes. Church parishes are also disappearing in destroyed towns: there is neither church nor congregation left. For example, the town of Popasnaya (Luhansk region) was almost completely destroyed. By April 2023, only about 200 people remained in the town, out of the 20,000 who lived there before the war. Not surprisingly, of the seven religious communities in the town, not a single one survived. . .. The temples that escaped destruction are either seized by the ROC [Russian Orthodox Church] or used by the occupation authorities for their own needs. For example, in Mariupol, the ROC has appropriated the temple of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and is going to remodel the unique structure to bring it “in line with the canons of the ROC”. The temple of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in Novoazovsk district now houses a morgue, and the Protestant church in Melitopol is being used as a concert hall for Russian servicemen. We found the Roman Catholic Church’s St. Joseph Church on the DNR’s list of ownerless property – apparently it is too difficult and unprofitable to bring the Catholic church into compliance with ROC canons [source].
The [Roman] Catholic Church has been almost completely destroyed: of the 15 parishes of the Roman Catholic Church, only one remains, of the 49 parishes of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church – none. The parishes of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (PCU), established in 2018, independent from Moscow, have also been completely destroyed. … in most cases, the pressure is outside the legal framework: there is no official justification, but communities cannot continue their activities. For example, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is banned only in one of the regions occupied by Russia – in Zaporizhzhya region, but in fact their activities have been completely eliminated in all occupied regions. … Religious cleansing is carried out through violence and repression: priests are killed and kidnapped, arrested and deported. As a result, churches are forced to completely suspend their activities in the occupied territories or go underground – for the safety of priests and parishioners. … The pressure has not only affected denominations “hostile” to the Russian Orthodox Church. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the only church in Ukraine recognized as canonical by the Moscow Patriarchate, has been completely put under control. All its parishes have been annexed – incorporated into the ROC. And the priests are demanded to be loyal, to renounce their Ukrainian identity and to participate in propaganda activities [source].
Russia has also banned the Catholic organizations Caritas International and the Knights of Columbus, claiming that the Knights of Columbus is ‘associated with the intelligence services of the United States and the Vatican.’ Patriarch Kirill, who is effectively a spokesman for the Russian government on religious matters, has acclaimed the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a holy war, and declared that it will result in the eradication of Ukrainian Catholics and Ukrainian Orthodox who are not affiliated to the Russian Patriarchy: ‘there will be no trace left of the schismatics because they are fulfilling the devil’s evil bidding of eroding Orthodoxy on Kyivan land.’
Russia has embarked on a systematic repression of all non-Russian Orthodox Christian believers in the occupied parts of Ukraine. Evangelical Protestants linked with America are savagely repressed (see also here and here). This is a significant fact for those Americans who look favourably upon Russia for allegedly supporting traditional Christian values, and consider that Russia is willing to make a friendly alliance with the U.S. The Institute for the Study of War reports:
Available open-source reporting indicates that the most common victims of Russian religious persecution after Ukrainian Orthodox are Protestants, particularly evangelical Baptists. Protestants of all denominations were the victims of 34 percent of the reported persecution events that ISW observed. Baptists made up 13 percent of victims – the largest single group after Ukrainian Orthodox. ISW observed reports of persecutions of Baptists near the occupied cities of Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, Mariupol, and Melitopol. Russian forces’ persecution of Protestants is most intense in southern Ukraine. Protestants were the victims of 35 percent and 48 percent of the reported persecution events in occupied Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts respectively. Protestants suffered two-thirds of the reported repression events in occupied Mariupol City. … Russian troops commandeered a Kherson-based Ukrainian evangelical Baptist educational institute from March – November 2022 and established a garrison and crematorium there to cremate killed Russian soldiers [source] [source] [source].
The institute’s rector stated that Russian soldiers repeatedly harassed the Baptists, calling them “American spies,” “sectarians,” and “enemies of the Russian Orthodox people.” One Russian officer reportedly told workers at the institute, “Evangelical believers like you should be completely destroyed…a simple shooting will be too easy for you. You need to be buried alive” … [source].
It is notable that the Russians consider any religious group connected to the U.S. to be enemies, because they consider the Americans to be enemies. This stance is part of the anti-American ideology that is held by the leaders of the Russian state, an ideology described in more detail below. Most American Protestant Trump supporters ignore this persecution of their co-religionists – Pastor Mark Burns, a supporter of Trump, is an honourable exception – but the few who protest about it are ignored by the Trump administration.
In the meeting of the 26th World Russian People’s Council held on November 28th 2024, entitled ‘The Russian World: External and Internal Challenges’, Patriarch Kirill described the religious objectives of Russia in Ukraine, describing the Russian invasion as
… a stage in the national liberation struggle of the Russian people against the criminal regime in Kyiv and in the West, which backs it, and has been taking place in the territories of Southwest Russia since 2014. During this operation, the Russian people, with weapons in hand, defend their life, freedom, statehood, cultural, religious, national and cultural identity, as well as the right to live on their own land, within the borders of a single Russian state.
From a spiritual moral point of view, a special military operation is a Holy War, in which Russia and its people, defending the unified spiritual space of Holy Russia, fulfill the mission, protecting the world from the onslaught of globalization and the victory of the West, associated with Satanism. After the conclusion of the special operation, the entire territory of modern Ukraine will fall within Russia’s sphere of exclusive influence.
At this conference, which was attended by the occultist ideologue Alexander Dugin, it was specified that the ‘Russian world’ to be reintegrated into Russia includes both Belarus and Ukraine. Russia now largely controls Belarus, with the Belarusian President Lukashenko acting as a Russian subordinate and implementing Russian policies. The Catholic Church is being severely persecuted there. Catholic priests have been expelled from the country, and Fr. Henrykh Akalatovich has been sentenced to 11 years in unusually harsh prison conditions on fabricated charges of treason. [source] [source] [source] [source].
Supporters of Russia often claim that Putin and Russia support traditional, Christian values, whereas Ukraine favours the LGBT etc. agenda. This is a fabrication. Gay marriage does not exist in either Russia or Ukraine, and attitudes to homosexuality are similar in both countries. Agitation for the LGBT etc. agenda in Ukraine has been driven by U.S. pressure and funding, not by Ukrainian policy and sentiment – something that pro-Trump American Catholics are oddly unapologetic about. The key factor in sustaining traditional Christian values is religious observance. Rates of religious observance are much higher in Ukraine than in Russia – and much of the religious practice in Russia is Muslim rather than Christian, which is not the case in Ukraine [source] [source] [source].
In 2017, Russia passed a law decriminalizing domestic violence, which is now only a crime if it results in the hospitalization of the victim. Bizarrely, around the same time Russia also decriminalized street assault, which is now simply a misdemeanor punishable by a fine. This is not support for Christian values, but for barbarism. Yelena Mizulina, the legislator who proposed this law on domestic assault, also proposed a law banning gay propaganda in 2013. This is not the sort of opponent of LGBT etc. ideology that Catholics should praise or support.
The Russian army in Ukraine practices rape and sexual terrorism on the Ukrainian population on a massive scale, following the methods of the Red Army. Putin’s practices of murdering his opponents, robbing the Russian people of billions for the personal gain of himself and his cronies, consistently breaking his agreements, and using the rape, torture, kidnapping, and murder of civilians as tools of policy are not consistent with Christianity, although his Catholic supporters and defenders are not much bothered by this discrepancy.
Insofar as they are known, Putin’s own religious commitments are to some combination of Orthodoxy and shamanism, a practice which his friend and former defence minister Sergei Shoigu engages in. Shoigu is from Tuva, a centre of shamanism, and has brought Putin to this area a number of times for shamanistic events. The details of Putin’s consultations of shamans are hard to verify, but his enthusiasm for shamanistic practices is widely reported enough to be treated as fact [source] [source]. One hopes that rumours about Putin consulting shamans over the use of nuclear weapons is disinformation, but that hope might be too optimistic.
Ukraine has been accused of repressing Christianity and violating religious freedom as a result of the measures it has taken against the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The political and ideological position of the Russian Orthodox Church in relation to Ukraine is described above; it should be recalled that the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church are selected for their agreement with this ideology and are trained in it. The Ukrainian Orthodox in Ukraine are confusingly divided into the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC). The former is under the Patriarch of Constantinople and unaffected by Ukrainian governmental measures. The latter still recognizes the Patriarch of Moscow as its head, while being separate from the Russian Orthodox Church. Under the Tsars and the Soviet Union, it was simply the local branch of the Russian Orthodox Church; it came into being in 1990 in place of the Ukrainian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, while retaining its affiliation and canonical submission to the Patriarch of Moscow. It has denied any loyalty to Moscow but has refused to make any official act of separation from Muscovite authority. Its priests and bishops were selected and trained for loyalty to Moscow. Some UOC clerics in Ukraine have engaged in espionage for Russia, and twenty-six of them have been convicted of treason against Ukraine [source] [source]. The Ukrainian state has addressed this problem with the law ‘On the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Field of Activities of Religious Organizations’ passed on August 20th 2024. The law forbids religious organisations that:
- Are in a state that is recognized as having carried out or is carrying out armed aggression against Ukraine and/or temporarily occupied part of the territory of Ukraine;
- Directly or indirectly (including through public speeches of managers or other management bodies) support armed aggression against Ukraine. Foreign religious organizations located in a state recognized as having carried out or carrying out armed aggression against Ukraine and/or temporarily occupying part of the territory of Ukraine include foreign religious organizations (including religious administrations, associations, centers), whose head or center of management is located outside Ukraine in the relevant aggressor state.
These are reasonable security measures for a country that is defending itself against a brutal aggressor. These measures cannot be used to suppress the UOC as a whole, since its parishes are legally independent organizations. They can only be enforced by lengthy legal processes and have yet to produce many results. The Ukrainian Catholic Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk and most other Ukrainian religious leaders have defended the law on these grounds; not surprisingly, since a Russian victory would mean the elimination of all Christian bodies in Ukraine except for the UOC [source] [source] [source].
B. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is immoral in its goal and its methods.
Russian goals in Ukraine
The immorality of the invasion of Ukraine is evident from events that are known to the whole world. The Ukrainian President Zelensky was elected in 2019 on a programme of peace negotiations with Russia, defeating the former president Poroshenko who took a stronger line against the Russians and ran on the slogan ‘Army, [Ukrainian] language, faith’. Zelensky, a native Russian-speaker, was praised as pro-Russian by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the (truly) far-right nationalist Russian politician [source] [source]. In response, Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 when the Ukrainians were at peace with them and expressed willingness to negotiate any issues contested between the two countries. The stated goal of this invasion is to end Ukrainian independence and eliminate Ukrainian nationhood and culture, which the Russians claim do not exist. This is a textbook example of an unjust war, and the Ukrainian self-defence is a textbook example of a just war.
A number of Russian propaganda lines have been taken up in the West to try to obscure this reality. One such line is that Russia was ‘provoked’ into the attack on Ukraine by expansion of NATO on its western borders and the possibility of Ukraine’s joining NATO. The claim that there was a chance of Ukraine being admitted into NATO in 2022 is a straightforward fiction. Ukraine was officially neutral and non-aligned until the Russian attack in 2014, in which the Russians annexed the Crimea and the eastern Ukrainian regions of the Donbass. After that time the country actively sought to join NATO. Membership in the NATO alliance is a complicated process requiring the execution of a Membership Action Plan that takes years to complete. At the time of the Russian invasion, Ukraine had not even been admitted to such an action plan. A country can join NATO only if all the existing NATO countries agree on the entry of a new member. Germany had rejected Ukrainian membership in NATO in 2008 and continued to oppose it at the time of the Russian invasion, along with Hungary, a country whose president Viktor Orban is an ally of Putin’s. In 2022 there was no possibility of Ukraine joining NATO for many years, if at all.
It is not as if Russia has some sort of right to prevent or to object to sovereign, independent countries joining NATO in any case. The assumption behind treating Russian objections to the accession of countries to NATO as legitimate is that the alliance posed some sort of threat to Russia, and hence its extension towards Russia was a hostile act. But this is nonsense. The alliance is a defensive association that only commits its members to resisting aggression, and does not enable offensive military action. The NATO alliance at the time of the Russian invasion did not have the military strength in Europe to pose any kind of threat to Russia, even if Russia did not have nuclear weapons. This is accepted by Trump himself in his vociferous complaints about how Europeans are freeloading on the U.S. by not having an effective military.
The actual reason why Russia strongly objected to the Baltic States joining NATO, and vociferously opposes future Ukrainian membership in NATO, is not a legitimate objection to NATO expansion. The day before the Russian invasion, Putin stated that Ukraine was not a real state and was part of Russian territory. He had publicly said the same thing in an essay in 2020, and in a statement to U.S. President George H. W. Bush as long ago as 2008 [source] [source] [source].
Russia has clearly stated the intention of re-establishing political control over the Baltic States and Ukraine. NATO membership on the part of these countries will prevent that. That is why Putin objects to it. That is why the election in 2019 of a president favourable to peace with Russia, Zelensky, was not a deterrent to invasion in Putin’s eyes. His object was not to make a peace deal with Ukraine, but to end its independence. Zelensky’s wish to negotiate was a reason for invading in Putin’s mind, because it meant that Ukrainian resistance was likely to be less firm.
This is an argument for Ukrainian membership in NATO, not against it. As a matter of justice, NATO membership will prevent future unprovoked Russian attacks on Ukraine and future Russian attempts to annex the country and brutally suppress Ukrainian national identity. As a matter of self-interest, by preventing further Russian attacks on Ukraine it will prevent future destructive and destabilizing warfare resulting from Putin’s neoimperial ambitions. This is the true point that Ukrainians have been making in all their proposals for joining NATO.
Another defence of Russian policy towards Ukraine is the claim that the U.S. mounted an undemocratic coup against a pro-Russian democratic government in 2014. The truth or falsity of the claim is not relevant to events in 2022, after power in Ukraine had democratically changed hands a number of times and a president favourable to accommodation with Russia had been elected with a clear democratic mandate in 2019. Despite its irrelevance, it is repeated ad nauseam by pro-Russian publicists like Tucker Carlson, and hence should be briefly addressed. In 2013, the Ukrainian parliament voted for an agreement for political and economic association with the European Union, against the will of the Russians. Viktor Yanukovich, the pro-Russian Ukrainian president, had campaigned in 2010 on the promise of closer economic ties with the EU, but refused to sign the agreement after it was ratified by the parliament. A series of massive protests followed by Ukrainians who understandably thought that conditions in Europe were superior to those in Russia, and wanted the agreement to go ahead. The protesters also complained about Yanukovich’s colossal corruption and about police brutality. During a protest on Independence Square (Maidan) in Kiev in February 2014, 103 protesters and 13 police were killed. Yanukovych fled the capital after many of his supporters in the parliament defected to the opposition. The parliament declared him deposed, and new elections were held in May. These elections were monitored by thousands of international observers from many countries, and there was no doubt that the winner – Poroshenko – gained a legitimate majority of the votes.
There was some American involvement in support of the Maidan protestors. There was also Russian and American involvement on Yanukovich’s side, with the American Republican political operator Paul Manafort working for Yanukovich and his allies. But the country-wide protests against Yanukovich, involving hundreds of thousands of people and over a hundred dead demonstrators, were not and could not have been orchestrated by the U.S. The movement was based on the political aspirations of at least half the country. Its results were found acceptable by the Ukrainian population as a whole, and were not radically anti-Russian in character. Far-right nationalist parties lost almost all their seats in the subsequent elections, and efforts by Ukrainian nationalists to remove Russian as an official language of the Ukrainian state were vetoed.
Russian claims that the 2014 movement was anti-Russian are ironic. After occupying the Russian-speaking area of the Donbass in eastern Ukraine in 2014 in response to the overthrow of Yanukovych, the Russians subjected these areas to the rule of criminal warlords rather as they had done to Chechnya. After the war started, they conscripted as much of the male population of the Donbass as possible and used them as cannon fodder, to avoid the political fallout from the loss of men from Russia. The war has been fought in the Russian-speaking eastern areas of Ukraine, where the Russians have levelled the cities and driven the civilian population into exile. These Russian crimes have physically destroyed Russian-speaking Ukraine, which the Ukrainians themselves never sought to do. The Russians are attempting to recreate it by moving people from Russia to the occupied regions of Ukraine, but it is absurd to present this conquest and occupation as liberation of Russian-speaking Ukraine.
Trump’s assertion that Zelensky is a dictator should be briefly addressed. Zelensky was elected president in 2019 with 73% of the vote. He was elected for a five year term expiring in May 2024. Ukraine is now of necessity under martial law, and Ukrainian law prohibits the holding of elections during martial law, so he was not legally able to stand for re-election at the end of his term and legally retains his post as president. The fact that large parts of the country are under Russian occupation also prevents a fair election being held, as the people in the occupied territories are unable to vote. Postponement of elections in wartime is a normal practice in democracies. The British parliament elected in 1935 was not dissolved until 1945 because of the outbreak of war in 1939, although in normal circumstances a parliamentary election must be held in Britain after five years.
The claim that Ukraine does not have freedom of the press is easily refuted by examining Ukrainian media. Some media outlets owned by Russia-supporting oligarchs have been closed by the Ukrainian government, but the Ukrainian media freely criticizes Zelensky and the military conduct of the war. The number of media outlets in Russia that are critical of Putin, on the other hand, is zero.
The Russians justify their attack on Ukraine by claiming that Ukraine tolerates and encourages neo-Nazis, and is in fact a neo-Nazi state. This contradicts the claim that Ukraine is pro-LGBT etc., since a neo-Nazi state and society would not favour gay and trans ideology. It is nonetheless part of the Russian propaganda line. Both positions have been advanced by Patriarch Kirill in his diatribes against Ukraine. The two accusations could be reconciled by claiming that Ukraine is run by neo-Nazi homosexuals who are all in the closet, but this logical adjustment has not yet been made by supporters of the Russians; no doubt Tucker Carlson will eventually devote a show to it.
All of Ukraine was occupied by the Germans in World War II, unlike Russia proper, where only the fringes of the country suffered from German occupation. German rule of Ukraine under the direction of Eric Koch was particularly savage. Koch said ‘If I meet a Ukrainian worthy of being seated at my table, I must have him shot. … We are a master race, which must remember that the lowliest German worker is racially and biologically a thousand times more valuable than the population here.’ 17% of Ukrainians were killed by the German occupiers. Half a million Ukrainians served in the Red Army fighting the Germans, sustaining huge casualties. These sufferings are remembered and commemorated in Ukraine, and they make any significant Ukrainian neo-Nazi movement impossible.
A main basis for the accusation that Ukraine is a neo-Nazi state is the celebration in Ukraine of Stepan Bandera and his Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Bandera and OUN are presented as a fascist movement allied to the Nazis. There is a great deal of misinformation current on this subject, fabricated by the Soviet Union in the past and by Russian propagandists in the present; the Wikipedia article on OUN’s armed struggle with the Soviet Union, for instance, states that OUN worked closely with fascists in Japan – as if partisans in the forests of the Carpathian mountains in the 1940s had means of contacting the Japanese Empire. This massive amount of disinformation and a dearth of reliable evidence makes it difficult to come to conclusive judgments on events that took place during a catastrophic war in an inaccessible part of Europe. Readers will not want to undertake a long investigation of the historical disputes over Bandera. It suffices to make two points that can be known with reasonable certainty.
The first is that Bandera and his movement were not Nazis and cannot be used as an inspiration for a neo-Nazi ideology. Bandera was at the head of the more radical wing of Ukrainian nationalists, OUN(B). The older and less militant nationalist wing, OUN(M), led by Andrei Melnyk, favoured co-operation with the Germans. OUN(B) however declared an independent Ukrainian state in Lviv on June 30th 1941, eight days after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. As a result they were immediately banned by the Germans, and Bandera was arrested, ending up in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he spent the rest of the war. Two of his siblings perished in Auschwitz. OUN(B) and its military wing, the UPA, carried on a violent struggle with the Germans, the Soviets, and the Poles in the war, and committed a number of atrocities. OUN(B) was always run with the ruthless discipline required for an underground partisan movement, but in 1943 it agreed on a statement of its political positions that embraced democracy and rejected Nazi racial doctrines [source] [source]. As a banned underground movement it of course did not cooperate with the Germans in the Holocaust. Many of its members joined the German-recruited Ukrainian militia in order to receive weapons and training, and in this capacity they took part in German killings of Jews up to 1943, when they withdrew from the militia and turned their weapons against the Germans. The armed struggle of the UPA against the Soviets continued after the Second World War, only ceasing in the 1950s. The UPA fought with great determination; the Russian emphasis on ‘Banderists’ reflects the fact that the UPA are remembered as a formidable opponent. The U.S. provided clandestine military assistance to the UPA during this period.
Neither the history nor the ideology of OUN(B) can form a basis for neo-Nazism. The organisation carried on an armed struggle against the Nazis; an actual Nazi movement would have cooperated with them and fought with them, as did collaborationist movements in the rest of Europe. Its official ideological position rejected Nazi thought. It was simply what its name describes, a movement of Ukrainian nationalists – certainly of a violent and brutal stamp; the movements that seek to establish a new nation are of necessity violent in nature, as can be seen in American, Latin American, and European history. The few remaining members of OUN(B) are extremely old. The only influence that OUN(B) can now have on Ukraine is through the example of its official political position, which was anti-Nazi. It is worth remembering that during the time when OUN(B) was fighting the Germans, the U.S. had an official and legally enforced policy of racial discrimination over much of its territory, which subjected African-Americans to severe disadvantages, humiliation, and violence; a kind of policy that was officially rejected by OUN(B). Numerous pogroms, called ‘lynchings’ or ‘race riots’ in the U.S., occurred in America during that time.
Every country with a white population contains some white racists. The genuinely racist parties in Ukraine are a negligible force. In the 2019 presidential election, the (truly) far-right candidate got 1.62% of the vote. The Ukrainian Azov military unit is sometimes cited as a neo-Nazi organization. This unit did originally develop in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine and had associations with Russian neo-Nazi groups there. However it broke its links with these groups and their ideology, and was cleared by the U.S. in 2016 as free of neo-Nazism and hence as able to receive American military assistance. The unit is now integrated into the Ukrainian army, but when it was a private outfit it was funded by Ihor Kolomoisky, a Jewish oligarch. It has enlisted Jews in its ranks, and several Jews fought in its heroic defence of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol. A delegation from the Azov regiment visited Israel to dispel the accusation of neo-Nazism, and was received by members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament [source] [source].
The Russian attack on Ukraine as a neo-Nazi state is a classic example of accusing your enemy of a crime you yourself are guilty of. Russia, unlike Ukraine, has official neo-Nazi units in its military. The ‘Rusich’ battalion is one such. Its commander, Alexei Milchakov, has boasted of his Nazi beliefs and the atrocities he has committed against Ukrainians [source] [source] [source]. He proposes exterminating the male population of Ukraine older than 5 and the female population older then 10, leaving the remainder to be brought up as Russians. The Russian Wagner mercenary group was led by neo-Nazis like Dmitri Utkin, until it ceased to exist due to falling out with Putin – its name ‘Wagner’ was a compliment to the Third Reich. Alexander Dugin, the influential Russian writer and publicist, is a devotee of Nazi occultism. There is a substantial pro-Nazi element in Russian culture [source] [source]. The American pro-Russian propagandist Tucker Carlson has supported pro-Nazi propaganda by publicising the views of the Nazi apologist Daryl Cooper. Carlson presented as credible Cooper’s denial of the fact that the Germans deliberately starved millions of Russian prisoners of war to death, and his assertion that the Holocaust was not intended to happen. The Carlson case is important, as indicating that pro-Nazi propaganda forms part of Russian ideology and propaganda strategy.
There is no mystery about why Russia should promote neo-Nazi ideas and people. In addition to a genuine sympathy for these ideas, Russian plans for Ukraine include the elimination of recalcitrant Ukrainians who refuse to accept Russian identity [source] [source] [source].
The Russian war effort involves a deliberate sacrifice of non-white minority peoples in Russia such as the Buryats, Tyvans, Kalmyks, Chukchis and Nenets. These ethnic minorities are enlisted and killed in the war at disproportionately high rates, rates so high that their survival as peoples is threatened in some cases. This military policy has the purpose of decimating non-Russian populations in the Russian Federation that might pose political problems for the Russians. These Nazi methods require Nazi ideology to support them.
There is also a glaringly obvious way in which Russia resembles Nazi Germany; it is a ruthless dictatorship where enemies of the regime are tortured and killed, there is a cult of personality of the ruler, free speech does not exist, and the populace is subjected to relentless brainwashing. Putin’s acknowledged intellectual mentor, the philosopher Ivan Ilyin, proposed an eccentric form of fascism. The ideologies of Ilyin, Dugin, and others, further described below, have been given official encouragement in Russia. These ideologies identify the Russians as the supreme race with the right and destiny to rule over all other races, as Hitler identified the Germans as the supreme race. In these ideologies the Russians are destined to conquer Western Europe, as in Nazism the Germans were destined to conquer the East. Ukraine, on the other hand, is a democracy. Its elections have been certified as free by international observers, but the most important indication of real Ukrainian democracy is the fact that Ukraine has elections in which the incumbent ruler loses and is replaced by someone else. This occurred in 2010, 2014, and 2019. This is in fact one of the main reasons why Putin seeks the destruction of Ukraine as an independent country; the example it sets of democracy and of the leader being voted out is a threat to himself and his regime.
The similarities between Putin’s regime and Nazi Germany are a natural historical development. The Nazi Party and Nazi state were an imitation of the Soviet Union, adjusted to remove features inspired by Communist ideology that were unsuccessful or unappealing. Hitler adopted from the USSR a ruling party, an ideology imposed by brainwashing and propaganda, a totalitarian state with no rule of law, a cult of personality for the leader, and even a police and security organization clad in black leather – an aesthetic taken from the Cheka. He rejected the elimination of private property, which had shown itself to be inefficient, and substituted the race and nation for the working class as the supreme entity, and the Jews for the capitalists as the enemy to be destroyed; these substitutions gave Nazism a greater appeal to the Germans than Communism, as the result of the Nazi-Communist struggle in Germany showed. The Soviet Union partially followed him from the 1940s onward, placing Russian nationalism and anti-Semitism at the centre of its ideology. (On this ideological movement see Abraham Cooper, Portraits of Infamy: a study of Soviet antisemitic caricatures and their roots in Nazi ideology, Los Angeles, 1986). Post-Communist Russia has continued on the same road by restoring private property, but keeping its owners subject to the ruler through terror, just as Hitler did.
Putin’s background should also be taken into account. He is a former KGB officer, and has promoted other former KGB and security men – the siloviki – to the highest positions in the state. The KGB and its predecessors and successors were never primarily intelligence-collecting agencies. Their main function was always maintenance of state power through violence and propaganda. Putin and his men are not soldiers, but technicians of oppression and cruelty, who take a pragmatic approach to the ideology justifying their oppression – an ideology whose message was subject to regular changes in the past anyway. Nazism, with its straightforward power worship and undemanding intellectual content, is the sort of ideology that naturally makes sense to them, and a regime such as Putin’s that is dominated by men of this kind will inevitably adopt an ideology that is akin to it.
The neo-Nazification of Russian society is being pursued thoroughly. Russian school textbooks have been rewritten to conform to Putin’s violent nationalist ideology. Putin controls a powerful ideologized security and military organization, Rosguardia, that reports directly to himself and is independent of the armed forces and the Internal Ministry; a copy of the SS. He has established the ‘All-Russian Military Patriotic Social Movement Yunarmiya’, an organization for military training and nationalist indoctrination of Russian youth along the lines of the Hitler Youth. Putin directly controls the ‘Movement of the First’, an organization for indoctrination of children six years and older that is modelled on the Soviet Young Pioneers, Russian children are now given military instruction and indoctrination starting in primary school, and are constantly taught about the heroism and patriotism of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. These measures are developing an indoctrinated younger generation that will fight determinedly in the wars that Putin plans for Europe.
Russian methods in Ukraine
The ideological stance of Russia is expressed by Russian emulation of Nazi war crimes. Russia deliberately targets the civilian population of Ukraine as such, independently of military advantage. This is simply a repetition of the strategy used by Russia against the Caucasian republic of Chechnya. The Chechens attempted to declare independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. A Russian attack on Chechnya was defeated in 1994, and in 1996 the Russians agreed to the Khasavyurt Accord, according to which all disputes between Russia and Chechnya would be solved by mutual agreement rather than force. In 1999 the Russians attacked again, totally destroying the Chechen capital of Grozny by artillery and air bombardment. The civilian population of the city was massacred. Wholesale torture, rape, massacre, and plunder of civilians was practised by the Russian army. The republic was then placed under the control of Chechen turncoats who sided with the Russians. The Chechen ruler, Ramzan Kadyrov, is a close associate of Putin’s and provides Chechen forces to serve as blocking units and punishment squads for the Russian army. Kadyrov is a gangster who personally tortures victims, and had his doctor buried alive when he was dissatisfied with the medical treatment he received. He rules Chechnya by torture and fear and has looted the republic [source] [source] [source] [source] [source] [source] [source].
The strategy used in Chechnya is being implemented in Ukraine. All Ukrainian cities on the front are completely levelled and destroyed, with their civilian inhabitants being mostly killed or expelled. In the Ukrainian city of Kherson, Russian drone operators deliberately target civilians. The drone operators boastfully put footage of their killings on the internet, so there is no doubt about this practice. The victims are people waiting at bus stops, doing their shopping, children playing in playgrounds or attending school, ambulances, and civilian automobiles [source] [source]. Further away from the front, about 90% of Russian drones and missiles target schools, hospitals, shopping malls, apartment buildings, and other civilian targets [source] [source] [source].
One goal of this targeting of civilians is probably to weaken the Ukrainian will to resist. This is unlikely to be the principal goal, however, because the Russians are probably aware that this targeting of civilians strengthens the Ukrainian conviction that they cannot afford to lose, and thus increases their will to fight to the end. Its main purpose is to prepare Ukrainians for Russian occupation; it is to make them realize that they will be killed without mercy by Russians after a Russian victory, and thus to eliminate any resistance after conquest. It is also intended to produce terror and consequent paralysis of the will in the conquered Ukrainian population, which will greatly facilitate the planned genocide of that population.
This proposed genocide has been publicly announced on many occasions by Putin and other Russians. It applies to all Ukrainians who will not accept Russian authority and Russian identity. Such Ukrainians are to be killed or expelled from the country. Russian calls for ‘de-Nazification’ of Ukraine, which continue to be made by their highest representatives, are simply a code word for this elimination of Ukrainians. This interpretation of ‘de-Nazification’ was set out by Timofei Sergeitsev in April 2022 in an article published by RIA Novosti, the Russian state news agency – which, of course, only prints materials that agree with Russian government policy. Sergeitsev asserted that Ukraine is impossible as a nation-state, and that attempts to build one naturally lead to Nazism; that the Ukrainian leadership must be liquidated; that ‘the social “swamp” that actively and passively supported it through action and inaction must endure the hardships of war and internalize the experience as a historical lesson and atonement for their guilt’; that all ‘Russia-haters’ who survive will be expelled from Ukraine; that the armed formations of Ukraine and the military, informational, and educational infrastructure that ensures their activity will be liquidated; that there will be mass investigations to identify all those who support the Ukrainian government, and that those identified will be put to forced labour; and that permanent ‘de-Nazification’ bodies will be established for 25 years [source] [source]. Dmitri Medvedev, former President of Russia (as Putin’s tool) and Vice-Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, has stated similar views, asserting that ‘Ukraine has mentally become a second Third Reich and will suffer the same fate’.
In the Ukrainian territories occupied by the Russians after their 2022 invasion, this process of destruction of the Ukrainian nation has already begun through the mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children, who are taken to Russia, given to Russian step-parents, and educated to be Russians. Russia claims to have taken 700,000 Ukrainian children in this way [source] [source]. This is probably an overestimate – the U.S. estimated that the Russians had forcibly deported 260,000 Ukrainian children, in a report that Trump had removed from the U.S. State Department website – but the very fact that this action is seen as a topic for boastful exaggeration by the Russians shows their intention of annihilating the Ukrainian people.
Should the Ukrainians stop fighting?
This Russian genocidal intent indicates the falsehood of the claim that Ukraine should stop fighting in order to avoid further bloodshed. The Ukrainian deaths that would result from a Russian victory would be in the millions or the tens of millions, leaving aside the evil of the permanent destruction of the Ukrainian nation; all Ukrainian military and civilian deaths in the war to date and for the foreseeable future are a very small fraction of the Ukrainian deaths that the Russians will bring about if they win.
The claim that the Ukrainians should stop fighting to save lives is usually accompanied by the argument that the Ukrainians should stop fighting because they cannot win. This argument is careful not to ask what a Ukrainian victory would consist in, and assess how such a victory could be achieved. It is also careful not to ask if a Russian victory is possible. These questions should be asked.
A Russian victory would consist in the achievement of the Russian political objective of conquering most of Ukraine and destroying the Ukrainian military and political class. This objective is not attainable. Russia went on the offensive in 2024, attempting to make significant territorial gains and defeat the Ukrainian armed forces. In 2024, the Russians lost 3,689 tanks, 8,956 armoured vehicles, 13,050 artillery units, 407 air defence systems, and 21,345 vehicles [source] [source]. Most of these losses cannot be replaced by Russian production or purchase abroad. As a result, Russia is pulling more and more old weaponry from its stocks, and resorting to ill-planned and ill-supported infantry attacks that lead to huge casualties. British intelligence estimates that Russia suffered 430,000 killed and wounded in 2024, compared to 252,940 casualties in 2023.
Russian offensives in 2024 expanded Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine by about 4,000 square kilometres, and did not include any important centres. The total area of Ukraine is 603,628 square kilometres, so a century would not suffice for the conquest of Ukraine at this rate.
A Ukrainian victory can be defined as the defeat and expulsion of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine and the recovery of the Ukrainian territory lost to Russia since 1991. This could be achieved by Ukrainian offensive action, if the Ukrainians were furnished with sufficient weapons by the U.S. The Ukrainian military states that 1,000 tanks and 500 fighter planes would be enough. The U.S. has over 5,000 Abrams tanks in storage in the desert in the U.S. The 500 planes could be obtained from the U.S. and other sources; they do not need to be the newest models, as Russian air defence is less formidable than was originally thought. It would be much cheaper in the long run, even simply for the nations assisting Ukraine, to furnish these weapons to the Ukrainians now and bring an end to the war. The idea of furnishing these weapons to the Ukrainians has been rejected as likely to cause a general war with Russia. We can assume that Russia would only go to war with the U.S. if essential Russian interests and even Russian existence were threatened. But this scale of armament would not enable to Ukrainians to mount a serious attack on the vast area of Russia. And in fact the Ukrainians, by their drone attacks on oil refineries all over Russia, are already threatening an essential Russian interest without a general war having ensued. The best way to avoid such a general war is for the Russians to be made to leave Ukraine and give up on conquering it.
The alternative path to Ukrainian victory is the gradual exhaustion of the Russian military and state. The Russians cannot indefinitely sustain their material losses and keep a force in being in Ukraine. It is assumed that Russia will always be able to pay or coerce soldiers to enlist and be killed in Ukraine, but this may not be the case. It is significant that Putin in three years of war has not declared a general military mobilization in Russia and used conscription to man the Russian army in Ukraine. He must consider this to be politically dangerous or impossible. But the supply of prisoners and other desperate recruits to the Russian army cannot be kept up forever. The fact that Russian soldiers have kept fighting for three years despite appalling treatment by their officers, monstrous losses, and complete indifference to their lives by the military command is amazing. Wounded Russian soldiers have actually been sent by their commanders to attack and die hobbling on crutches, a new development in military callousness and horror [source] [source].
Russians may continue to do this, but it is more likely that the Russian army will eventually collapse as it did in 1917, or at least gravely decline in cohesion and fighting ability.
The only way for Russia to avoid military exhaustion is to obtain a ceasefire and the lifting of sanctions on the Russian economy. This would permit them to rebuild their military stocks, retrain their army, and restore the strength needed for a long campaign to conquer Ukraine. Trump is of course trying to obtain this for them. At the time of writing of this article, Russia has refused to accept a ceasefire deal that does not involve Ukrainian disarmament, ‘denazification’ of Ukraine, and Ukrainian neutrality. This follows the constant Russian line since the outset of the war in 2022. These conditions cannot be accepted by the Ukrainians, since demilitarization together with neutrality would constitute military surrender by Ukraine, and ‘denazification’ means removal of the democratically elected Ukrainian authorities and their replacement by political leaders subservient to Moscow.’Instead, they are gathering their forces for another great offensive in the summer of 2025, rather like Nivelle and Haig in 1917. An amateur observer working on publicly available information can only make a tentative guess at the ultimate result. The arms that the Europeans are furnishing to the Ukrainians will make it impossible for the Russians to gain a decisive victory in this offensive. After all, the Ukrainians were largely deprived of U.S. military support for six months under Biden, and they survived the Russian attacks during that period. European military assistance is now on a greater scale than at that time. Waging war is also now largely a matter of drones, and the Ukrainians now produce their own drones in massive quantities. What is hard to assess is whether or not the Ukrainians will be too exhausted to mount a serious counter-attack after the Russian offensive, to take advantage of the weakened state of the Russian army. If they are not, it is possible that they could retake a significant amount of territory and make the Russian situation in Ukraine difficult to sustain.
When calling for the Ukrainians to be supported against the Russians, the support in question should be specified. The proposed strategy of imposing sanctions that will collapse the Russian war economy is short-sighted. The Russian war economy can only collapse through the application of sanctions that will collapse the Russian economy and state itself. This is because the war effort is placed above everything else by the Russian economy and state. Because of the nature of the Russian leadership and its priorities, sanctions that produced mass famine in Russia and the death of millions would not in themselves lead to a reduction of the Russian war effort. While this leadership retains power, the war effort will only cease when the Russian economy and state cease to exist. But a total collapse of the Russian economy and state is not a goal that should be pursued. Certainly Russia is a dictatorial and oppressive empire. But there are no reasons to believe that Russia would be replaced by anything better in the event of a Russian collapse. A multitude of local warlords along the lines of the Chechen ruler Kadyrov would probably fill the vacuum of part of a vanished Russia, with China greatly expanding her own dictatorial and oppressive empire on the ruins of the Russian one. The best strategy is not to destroy Russia, but simply to destroy the Russian army in Ukraine. All this requires is giving the Ukrainians the weapons needed to conquer the Zaporizhia oblast, destroy the bridge to the Crimea, and take back the Crimea. That would show the Russians that they were beaten, and that the allies of Ukraine had the will and means to ensure that they could not conquer Ukraine. It would take say 1200 tanks, 400 planes, and some hundreds of missiles. The cost of these weapons would be less than that of continuing to support Ukraine militarily over a long period. The weapons would largely be consumed in gaining their objective, so furnishing them would not leave the Ukrainians in a position to threaten essential Russian interests after expelling the Russians from their country.
C. Trump’s disastrous policy
To understand why Trump’s policy towards Ukraine is immoral and disastrous, we have to consider Russia’s enmity towards the United States; the interests and obligations of America in supporting Ukraine; and the results of Trump’s policy for America and the world.
Russia’s enmity towards the United States
Before describing America’s obligation to assist Ukraine in the war, one should mention America’s obligation to America. Putin and his regime are enemies of the United States. He has signed a strategic partnership treaty with the Iranian regime, a determined enemy of the U.S. Putin has openly proclaimed his objective of destroying American dominance in the world. He laid out this goal at length in his speech of Oct. 5th 2023 to the Valdai Club:
The United States and its satellites have taken a steady course towards hegemony in military affairs, politics, the economy, culture and even morals and values. Since the very beginning, it has been clear to us that attempts to establish a monopoly were doomed to fail. … Everyone realises that in an international system where arbitrariness reigns, where all decision-making is up to those who think they are exceptional, sinless and right, any country can be attacked simply because it is disliked by a hegemon, who has lost any sense of proportion – and I would add, any sense of reality. Unfortunately, we have to admit that our counterparties in the West have lost their sense of reality and have crossed every line. … The main thing is to free international relations from the bloc approach and the legacy of the colonial era and the Cold War. … Russia was, is and will be one of the foundations of this new world system, ready for constructive interaction with everyone who strives for peace and prosperity, but ready for tough opposition against those who profess the principles of dictatorship and violence.
Putin’s own plan for contributing to this outcome is to effectively dissolve NATO and eliminate American power and influence in Europe. This continues the foreign policy objectives of the USSR, of which Putin was a faithful servitor.
Putin has an ideological basis for this ambition to destroy American influence, which draws on the thought of Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s intellectual mentor. Ilyin held that the Russian people preserved an innocence and goodness that has been lost by the rest of the human race. In consequence, they were continually attacked by exterior forces of evil. The history of Russian wars is a history of righteous self-defence by Russians. There is no such thing as Ukrainians – the notion of a Ukrainian people is a lie fabricated by the enemies of Russia. Ilyin supported Christian fascism, although he had a peculiar pantheistic conception of Christianity. He described fascism is ‘a redemptive excess of patriotic arbitrariness’, and described it as the rule of one man who holds total untrammelled power. He considered individualism and individuality itself to be corrupt and evil, and held that fascism was good because it suppressed and denounced individuality. Democracy was evil because it allowed citizens to think of themselves as individuals. The main ideas that Putin shares with Ilyin are a belief in the decadence and weakness of the West, rejection of the reality of Ukraine as a state, the vocation of Russia to dominate Europe, and the merits of dictatorial rule.
This ideologically motivated goal is held by ruling circles in Russia, not just by Putin himself. Sergey Karaganov, Honorary Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, expresses it clearly:
Peace can only be achieved by removing Western Europe as a destabilizing force and addressing humanity’s broader challenges alongside the global majority. True peace will only come when Western Europe’s backbone is broken once more, as it was after Russia’s victories over Napoleon and Hitler [source].
… by containing and deterring the West and establishing relations with brotherly China, we are becoming an axis of peace that can keep all from slipping into a global catastrophe. But it will take some effort to sober up our opponents in the West. We have begun a fight that should save the world. And maybe it is Russia’s mission to free the world from the ‘Western yoke’ [source].
Mikhail Yuriev’s popular novel The Third Empire: Russia as It Ought to Be describes a future in which Russia defeats and subjugates Europe and America, and the former American presidents are paraded in chains through Red Square in the victory celebration [source] [source].
The ‘Project Russia’ series of books was distributed to all the executive offices in the Kremlin in 2005, and is on the the register of publications recommended by the Office of the President of Russia for reading by government officials and public figures. The series is a bestseller in Russia. It denounces democracy and the rule of law as evil and a sham. Western countries are decadent enemies of Russia, and tragically brought down the Soviet Union through subversion. Their inevitable collapse, involving the demise of NATO and the European Union and the overthrow of American influence in Asia by China, must be promoted by Russian efforts, after which the dictatorial ‘Prince-Monk’ ruler of Russia – identified with Putin – will dominate the world [source] [source].
Alexander Dugin is another example of this influential ideological current. His 1997 book Foundations of Geopolitics was used as a textbook by the Russian General Staff. It identifies America as the main adversary of Russia, and lays out a strategy for destroying American power and making the U.S. subordinate to Russia. The strategy involves using propaganda and covert action to fuel ethnic, religious and racial divisions in Europe and North America. The current pro-Russian populist forces in Europe are acting more or less exactly according to Dugin’s plan. Left-wing forces such as the Greens are also funded by the Russians to undermine Europe.
Dugin asserts that Ukraine is a non-nation that must be annexed to Russia, and has publicly called for the genocide of Ukrainians who refuse to accept that they are Russians, asserting that ‘today’s Ukrainians are a race of degenerates that crawled up from the sewer. Genocide is in order’.
One point of this sketch of the thought of Ilyin and other Russian nationalists is to get across how foreign, extreme, repellent, and deranged quite mainstream and influential Russian thinkers can be. These characteristics of Russian thought are caused or at least greatly exacerbated by moral and societal damage and unprocessed trauma from the horrific seventy years of Communist rule. Most non-Russians are not equipped to understand Putin and his actions because they are ignorant of Russian culture and history, and cannot believe that Putin is as extreme as he in fact is.
The elimination of American dominance in the world will not lead to a happy association of equal states and societies living in peace and harmony. It will be replaced by the domination of other countries; China is aiming for this domination, and Putin has accepted the role of a junior partner to the Chinese in exchange for help in the destruction of American influence in Europe. Loss of power will mean loss of economic and political advantage for the U.S. The more American power is lost, the more the adversaries of the U.S. will be willing and able to further accelerate this loss of power and to take more from the U.S. for themselves. Conquest of Ukraine is the essential first step in this plan. This conquest will greatly increase Russian power, destroy European trust in America and the European alliance with America, and set the stage for further Russian expansion in Europe. Conclusive failure in Ukraine and expulsion of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory will mean that Putin’s plan for undermining American power will be frustrated. It is thus an urgent priority for the U.S. to bring about this failure. The stakes are the preservation of American security, prosperity, and independence.
America’s obligation to Ukraine
The first point to make about America’s obligation to Ukraine is an obvious one; when the Russians invaded Ukraine, the U.S. said it would support the Ukrainians. There is no need to draw a distinction between the moral and the practical demands incurred by this commitment. If the U.S. reneges on it, no country will trust American commitments in the future, and the U.S. will not be able to get reliable support in any conflict with its adversaries.
There are further grounds for the U.S. obligation to Ukraine.
In an agreement signed in Budapest in 1994, the U.S. assured Ukrainian security in exchange for the Ukrainians destroying the large stock of nuclear weapons that they had inherited from the Soviet Union. At that time, the Ukrainians had the third largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. If the Ukrainians had kept their nuclear weapons, they would have been safe from attack by Russia. The U.S. claims that this agreement was a political rather than a legal one, and that it did not commit the U.S. to military support of Ukraine in the event of a Russian attack. The fact remains that the U.S. gained a great benefit from the agreement in the form of the elimination of a nuclear-armed power and the guarantee that the Ukrainian nuclear weapons could not be obtained by third parties; that the Ukrainians jeopardized their existence by giving up these weapons; and that the Ukrainians would never have given up the weapons if they had known that the Americans would not offer military assistance in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. This creates both a moral and a practical imperative for the U.S. to give military support to Ukraine. The moral imperative is obvious; if you receive a great benefit as a result of a country’s making itself vulnerable in your interests, you are obliged to not let that country be sacrificed as a result. The practical imperative is that if the U.S. does not stop the Russians from destroying and subjugating Ukraine, no-one is going to trust American commitments in the future, and in particular no-one is going to refrain from developing nuclear weapons because of American opposition. This will inevitably lead to extensive nuclear proliferation, which will itself inevitably lead to nuclear war that will damage the whole world, regardless of where the actual nuclear exchanges tale place.
There is an important event in the Ukrainian past that creates a moral obligation for the U.S. to support the survival and freedom of Ukraine. From 1932 to 1933 the Soviet regime knowingly created a famine in Ukraine. This event is known in Ukraine as the ‘Holodomor’, which simply means ‘killing by famine’ in Ukrainian. The famine resulted from policies of collectivization of agriculture and forced confiscation of grain from the peasant population that began in 1930. These policies were applied elsewhere in the Soviet Union, and created similar results, but in 1932 and 1933 they were aimed at Ukraine in particular. Timothy Snyder records seven policies that were applied solely or mainly in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 and that were deliberately designed to cause famine: the requirement to return grain advances earned by meeting grain requisition targets, the requirement to surrender all livestock to the state, the creation of a blacklist of collective farms required to immediately provide fifteen times the normal monthly quota of grain and forbidden to receive food, an official statement to Communist party officials in Ukraine that famine in Ukraine was intended to crush Ukrainian nationalism, requiring the Ukrainian Communist leadership to fulfil grain requisition targets when famine was well underway, closing the borders of Ukraine so peasants could not flee and closing Ukrainian cities to peasants so they could not beg, and seizing the seed grain needed for the 1933 harvest in Ukraine even after the state’s grain requisition targets had been met.[1] The result was the death of four to seven million Ukrainians. The famine was reported by British journalists Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge, but it was denied by Walter Duranty, the Soviet correspondent of the New York Times, who called Jones’s reporting a ‘scare story’ and claimed that there was no actual starvation in the Soviet Union. Duranty was given a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting, and his articles were used to justify the diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union by the U.S, under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The grain confiscated by the Soviet government was sold on the international markets in order to pay for the industrialisation of the Soviet Union. This industrialisation was mainly the work of Americans. The facilities for industrialization in Russia had all been destroyed in the Revolution, and the only way to build factories was to buy them from abroad; which the Russians did, from the U.S. The parts for these factories were manufactured in the U.S. and assembled in the Soviet Union under the direction of American foremen and engineers. Colonel Hugh Lincoln Cooper, of the US Army Corps of Engineers, built the Dnieper dam later blown up by the Russians after their invasion of Ukraine. Detroit-based Albert Kahn Associates designed the Stalingrad tractor plant, later a scene of famous battles, fabricated the parts for it in America, and supervised its construction. Historian Kamil Galeev observes;
In 1930 Kahn was commissioned to design and supervise almost all Soviet industrial construction under the first & second Five Year Plans: more than 550 plants & facilities all over the USSR, all Soviet tank, car & tractor industry, etc., for 2 billion US$. … In 1930 Stalin had to pay to Caterpillar Inc. for equipment and wrote to Molotov: “We need to increase grain exports from 1-1,5 to 3-4 million poods a day minimum. Otherwise we are risking to lose new metallurgy and machinery plants. We need to ferociously [бешено] enforce export”. That was the main reason for the Holodomor. To build his military power Stalin relied on technological import. To pay for this import, he took all the food and sold it abroad. Millions starved as a result. Entire districts dying out, mass cannibalism and so on were the price of imports [source] [source] [source].
America thus made a profit on money that was extracted by the mass murder of Ukrainians in one of the great crimes of human history. This creates a historical debt to Ukraine on America’s part.
Does it not also create a historical debt to Russia, since Russian peasants were also starved to death to pay for American equipment? It does. But this debt does not warrant supporting the Russian attack on Ukraine. This attack is not being undertaken for the benefit of the Russian people, but for the power and ambitions of Putin and his oppressive and exploitative regime.
Military failure in Ukraine is the best hope for the Russian people at the moment. Historically the Russian people only get better treatment from their rulers when these rulers experience military failure. This was true with defeat in the Crimean war in 1856, which led to the liberation of serfs and the introduction of jury trials and local assemblies; with defeat of Russia by Japan in 1905, which led to the granting of limited constitutional government; and with the military defeats of the summer of 1941, which led Stalin to revive the Orthodox Church. Russia is almost twice the size of the U.S., and has no need of Ukrainian territory or of the political integration of Ukraine into Russia. Political union between Russia and Ukraine was possible in the past because both of them belonged to a multinational political unit; an empire ruled by an Orthodox dynasty, and then a totalitarian state with an internationalist Communist ideology. But modern Russia is based on Russian nationalism, and as such can only incorporate Ukraine through a ghastly genodical program to eradicate Ukrainian nationality – which is indeed the plan, but which could bring only shame and a desolate ruined territory to Russia. What Russia needs instead of Putin is a moderately honest and law-abiding government that will enable Russians to use their substantial talents to develop their rich country. Putin uses the time-honoured method of ruling by robbing and oppressing his people, and diverting the resulting pain and resentment of his subjects by channelling them against an external enemy. That is the main reason for the Ukrainian war and its European extension. If this channel is blocked by military defeat in Ukraine, there is a chance of this form of rule collapsing, to the benefit of the Russian people.
Trump’s actions on Ukraine
Trump is acting in Russian interests in Ukraine. He is attempting to force the Ukrainians into a ceasefire agreement with Russia with no security guarantees. This is what Russia needs to retrieve her military position. The Russians plan to use this ceasefire to rearm, something that will be economically possible for them when the U.S. lifts sanctions on Russia; to continue the propaganda, sabotage and subversion war they are waging against Ukraine and Europe; and to attack and finish off Ukraine when they are militarily ready. In order to achieve this goal of a ceasefire on terms favourable to Russia, Trump is actively endorsing and spreading Russian disinformation about Ukraine and the war.
Some Trump defenders claim that Trump’s proposed rare earths deal with Ukraine will give the Ukrainians a form of security guarantee. The idea is that the Russians will be deterred from attacking Ukraine because doing so would threaten American economic interests. This is not credible. There were significant American assets in the Donbass in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Cargill, for example, was heavily invested there. This did nothing to prevent the Russian attack on the Donbass in 2014, after which all American assets were confiscated without compensation. In 2017 Trump signed an agreement with the Afghan president Ashraf Ghani to permit the U.S. to develop rare earth minerals in Afghanistan. This did nothing to prevent the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, which Trump called a ‘wonderful and positive thing to do’, while criticising the manner in which it was done. Given the history of Donbass and Afghanistan, American companies will not invest a penny in Ukraine unless there are solid security guarantees in place from the U.S. Security guarantees can lead to economic investment, not vice versa. Trump’s rare earths proposal is just a repeat of his ploy in Afghanistan, and commits the U.S. to nothing.
The results of Trump’s policy for America
Trump’s policy on Ukraine means abandoning the American alliance with Europe, an alliance that was formed by Americans after the Second World War to advance American interests.
The reason for this is that Putin is an enemy of Europe. His campaign against Ukraine is not intended only to subject Ukraine to Russia. It is a step in a broader plan to reconstitute the Russian dominance over Eastern Europe that was achieved by Stalin after the Second World War, and to extend it to Western Europe if possible. We can know that this is his plan from the following facts:
- Putin’s state controlled media has been announcing and constantly repeating that this is the plan for the past three years. This is to prepare the Russian population for this project [source] [source] [source] [source] [source] [source] [source] [source] [source].
- Russia is increasing the size of her army to 1.5 million active-service soldiers, and 2.38 million total members. This is a permanent expansion, not an expansion for the sake of the war in Ukraine. This huge programme of military expansion is geared to carrying out this project and has no other rationale. The cost of these rearmament plans cannot be met by Russia as she is currently constituted; territorial expansion is required to make them sustainable.
- Russian covert forces, particularly GRU Unit 29155, have been attacking targets of military interest in Europe. These attacks include cyberattacks on infrastructure and hospitals, railway derailments, attacks on satellite communications, cutting undersea internet cables, sabotage of planes, arson, and assassination [source] [source] [source] [source] [source] [source]. The Russians tried but failed to kill Armin Papperger, head of the main German armaments firm Rheinmetall. This is a preparation for war and is in fact an act of war.
Putin has a double motivation for this war project. The first is that he sincerely wants to recreate Russian dominance of Eastern Europe and extend it as far as possible to Western Europe, following the ideological and political principles outlined above.
Putin’s second motivation for war is that he wants to stay in power and to stay alive – the latter requiring the former. In the past he has always resorted to starting wars when faced with domestic political opposition. His need for war is more pressing now as a result of the terrible cost of the Ukrainian war to Russia. This cost includes death and disablement, economic damage, and the creation of huge numbers of brutalized military veterans who have been accustomed to exercising savage violence on civilians. Their brutalization is caused not only by the stresses of combat, but also by the bestial cruelty and total indifference to their lives and well-being that they experience in the Russian army [source] [source] [source] [source]. If war ceases, these veterans will return to civilian life and devastate society. The veterans have to be kept in the military and eventually meet death in future wars, rather than be discharged from the army. If war comes to an end, Putin will have to answer for all of the war damage that has occurred to date, and he will be expected to carry out the impossible task of remedying it. That will mean his fall from power. He cannot now afford to return to a state of peace. A ceasefire that is used for rearmament and that keeps the economy and society on a war footing is the most he can afford.
This understanding of Putin’s intention to attack Europe is the public evaluation of Bruno Kahl, the head of the BND (German intelligence service): ‘An early end to the war in Ukraine would enable the Russians to direct their energy where they actually want it, namely against Europe.’ Such a public statement by the head of German intelligence gives the official view of the German government. The French President Emmanuel Macron and the countries of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia have publicly stated that Putin intends to put this plan into operation. Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, and the Baltic States have committed themselves to rearmament programs designed to enable them to fight the Russians. Germany has now undertaken the same rearmament project. Poland is increasing its army from 200,000 to 500,000, and has announced that it intends to acquire nuclear weapons and require all adult males to undergo military training. Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland are withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty banning anti-personnel mines; in fact, every NATO state bordering Russia has withdrawn from this treaty and is mining their borders. Lithuania has withdrawn from the treaty banning cluster munitions, and the Poles have stated that they will not follow this ban. Germany is planning to spend hundreds of billions of euros on rearmament.
The motivation for European rearmament should be understood. During the Cold War, Europe was content to be protected by American military power. This was not because it was impossible for European countries to defend themselves; by the 1960’s, Europe was economically capable of building military strength that would have sufficed to resist Soviet attack. It was because building such a military would have required putting European economies on a permanent war footing through all the decades of the Cold War, just as the Soviet Union was on a war footing economically through all its existence.
The current situation is different. Russia is a weaker power than the Soviet Union was, giving the Europeans the opportunity of gaining a military lead over Russia. More importantly, the Cold War lasted over decades of peace, but war with Russia is already underway. It is not a question of the expense of maintaining military parity with the Soviet Union for decades without actually fighting; it is a question of the expense of losing a war that has started, versus the expense of winning this war.
Putin’s plans and the European reaction to them show that the claim that enabling the Ukrainians to expel the Russians will lead to a third world war is mistaken. In fact, what will lead to a massive war on a world scale will be a ceasefire in Ukraine and the lifting of sanctions on Russia – exactly what Trump is working to bring about. This will give Putin the time and resources to implement a plan for a broader war in two to four years from now. Putin’s disappearance would probably not make a difference to this plan, since every Russian political figure who has a chance of succeeding him is in agreement with his expansionist aims, and would have the same kind of motivations to pursue war.
Trump’s support for Russia over Ukraine is thus an attack on Europe. It means the end of the military alliance between the U.S. and Europe. This is generally recognized in Europe, and it has been confirmed by Trump’s statements. Trump has stated that he will not defend NATO allies who do not pay their way, without stating how much payment he will consider to be enough to merit American defence. Trump’s complaints about European countries not spending enough on defence are legitimate. But a flat statement that he will not defend some NATO countries if they are attacked is a repudiation of Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which states that an armed attack against one member state, in the geographical areas defined by Article 6 of the treaty, to be an armed attack against them all. (The article has only been invoked once, by the United States, in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11Th 2001; NATO countries sent troops to the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, losing 1,029 killed as opposed to 2,461 American deaths in combat.) Trump’s abandonment of NATO has been underlined by insults launched at NATO countries by his lieutenants Vance, Marco Rubio, and Elon Musk. Such concerted and repeated insults do not happen by accident. It is significant that Rubio and Musk insulted Poland, one of the NATO countries that has more than met U.S. defence spending demands.
There is speculation that Trump’s policy is motivated by the goal of getting Russian support against China. This is probably correct. But even if this policy could be implemented, since it requires losing Europe as an ally it would be a bad bargain. Europe is enormously more wealthy, industrially and scientifically advanced, and populous than Russia. In key industrial sectors like steel, motor vehicle, and machine tool production, it is ahead of the United States. Russia is a poor, miserable and fathomlessly corrupt country with a falling population of 144 million, and modest scientific and industrial capacities. Gaining Russia as an ally at the cost of losing Europe would be a catastrophic loss for the United States. Europe is the only potential ally with the strength to provide real support in an American struggle with China.
But of course this policy of recruiting Russia as an ally against China could never be carried out, because it requires Russia and Putin to be trustworthy and reliable partners. Putin is notoriously one of the most treacherous and dishonest leaders in the world. He has broken almost every treaty he has signed. He is an enemy of America and is committed to China. The idea that he could be enlisted and trusted as an ally is lunacy.
History demonstrates that the only way to get Russians to cooperate with you is to show them that you are stronger than they are and that they have no other choice. Sir William Hayter, a former British Ambassador to the Soviet Union, described how to reach agreement with them:
Negotiation with the Russians does occur, from time to time, but it requires no particular skill. The Russians are not to be persuaded by eloquence or convinced by reasoned arguments. They rely on what Stalin used to call the proper basis of international policy, the calculation of forces. So no case, however skillfully deployed, however clearly demonstrated as irrefutable, will move them from doing what they have previously decided to do; the only way of changing their purpose is to demonstrate that they have no advantageous alternative, that what they want to do is not possible. Negotiations with the Russians are therefore very mechanical; and they are probably better conducted on paper than by word of mouth.
The balance of forces between China and Russia should be considered. China is an enormously powerful country, at least as powerful as the U.S. in many ways, and it has a long border with Russia. Chinese economic cooperation is vital for Russia, whereas American economic ties with Russia are not that large and do not have much scope for growth. Putin and China’s Xi declared a ‘no limits’ friendship on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Putin relies on Chinese material and support for his war in Ukraine and his wider policy in Europe, which is his main priority in both foreign and domestic affairs. If Trump had decided to thoroughly beat the Russians in Ukraine and get them at his mercy, he could have had some hopes of making a good deal with them, because he would have shown them that he is stronger and more determined than they are. His plan is however to give them what they want in Ukraine and Europe, and thereby to remove any motivation they could have to come to an agreement with him.
So the result of Trump’s Ukrainian policy will be to foster a general war in Europe and to lose the Europeans as allies. There are several consequences of this latter result that should be considered.
European countries are planning rearmament in response to the Russian threat. European rearmament, since it is motivated by America’s support of the Russian enemy, must lead to the abandonment of purchase of American arms by the Europeans. Modern arms depend not just on the provision of necessary spare parts, but also on software updates for the arms; this is the case with the American F-35 and its ALIS and ODIN software systems. The use of these arms is thus controlled by the producing country. That country can determine whether or not the arms they sell will be effective, and make them ineffective if they want to. Europeans cannot accept these limitations, since the Americans have already shown that they will limit the use of their arms against the Russians in Ukraine. Europe has the scientific and industrial capacity to produce arms that are as good as American ones, and in fact already produces good models of many powerful weapons and weapon systems. Moreover, it is not in European economic interests to spend the vast sums now earmarked for rearmament on arms produced outside of Europe. These economic interests have been counteracted in the past by the advantages that Europe derived from the American alliance, advantages that made it worth their while to spend their money on American arms rather than European ones. With the end of this alliance, these advantages no longer exist. There is no motivation for Europeans to buy American arms, and a strong motivation to not buy them. This is already being reflected in a fall of the stock prices for American armament firms, and huge rises in the stock prices of European arms manufacturers. Trump’s Ukrainian policy means that Europe will be largely lost as a market for American arms. This will drive up the costs of arms production for the Americans, and mean that they will have to keep their economy on a semi-war footing in order to maintain their military power.
The status of the American dollar as the world reserve currency should also be considered. This status means that the Americans have been able to run enormous deficits for the past twenty years by borrowing from abroad. These deficits have in turn been the foundation of American prosperity. Now that America has sided with Europe’s enemy Russia, it is in both European and Chinese interests to end the status of the American dollar as the world reserve currency. When this happens, it will have dire economic results for the U.S.
Trump has the laudable goal of re-industrializing the U.S. But re-industrialization requires manufacturing tools, and modern manufacturing and industrial processes are carried out by CNC (computerized numerical control) machine tools. Production of these tools is overwhelmingly dominated by China, Japan and Europe, so American industry can only be built up by purchasing machines from abroad. Development of a sufficient American machine tool industry will take a decade or more, and requires American re-industrialization to have already occurred so as to provide a domestic customer base; so American re-industrialization has to be based on the purchase of foreign machinery. China is not an option for the U.S. as a source of machinery for obvious reasons. American re-industrialization needs to happen as part of a strategic alliance with a trustworthy source of machine tools; and this source can only be Europe. But American refusal to oppose Putin in Ukraine makes a strategic alliance with Europe impossible.
There are obvious ideological and political results for the U.S. of backing an attempt by a dictatorship to conquer and subjugate a democratic state. The U.S. does not just happen to be a democracy. The original justification for the existence of the U.S. as a state is the democratic character of its political system. The betrayal of democracy involved in supporting Russia against Ukraine is thus deeply destabilizing for the American political system. Support of democracy is also the main justification offered for American political influence in the world. There has been enough truth in this justification to give it weight; America did after all fight the Second World War against dictatorships, and persisted in the Cold War struggle to oppose Communist totalitarianism. Democratic states now exist in Europe and elsewhere because of these American efforts. Democracy is not a perfect political system or the only acceptable political system, but it is superior to the alternatives currently on offer, which are undemocratic plutocratic oligarchies, dictatorships, and totalitarian states. It gives peoples at least some leverage on their rulers and some protection against wanton abuse of power. Abandonment of commitment to democracy is a grievous blow to American world influence. It means that all that America can offer to other countries to obtain their support are purely military or economic threats or promises. The Chinese will be able to outbid them in a contest of this kind, because they are ready to expend resources with no concern for the welfare of their own population. It is impossible to beat China simply by being smarter and more hardworking than the Chinese. Americans are not even willing to engage in a contest of this sort, let alone capable of winning it. The only way to defeat the Chinese challenge is by possessing and promoting a form of government that conforms to justice and the rule of law, and that consequently provides the optimum environment for citizens to develop and exercise their talents – an environment conferring advantages that the dystopic totalitarianism of China cannot rival. The ideological advantage of supporting democracy and opposing lawless conquest is indeed the only real edge that the Americans had over the Chinese. It served not only as an attraction for countries and peoples outside of China, but as a strong weapon against the Chinese government, whose ruthless oppression of its own people is its greatest weakness as well as the main foundation of its power. Trump has thrown this weapon away.
The case of Taiwan is important here. Taiwan is historically part of China. It is an economic powerhouse that produces most of the world’s advanced semiconductor chips. China has expressed the intention of annexing Taiwan, if need be by force. Successful annexation of Taiwan would hugely boost Chinese prestige and economic power, and would make it impossible for the U.S. to succeed in its competition with the Chinese. What reason can be given for Taiwan remaining independent of China? How can the U.S. justify asking the Taiwanese (and the Americans) to bear the risks and sufferings of war to stop the acquisition of Taiwan by the People’s Republic of China? The only good reason for Taiwan remaining independent of mainland China is that it is a democracy that gives rights and freedoms to its citizens, while mainland China is a totalitarian dictatorship. American abandonment of commitment to democracy removes the political and ideological justification that the Americans need to keep Taiwan out of the hands of mainland China, and makes preservation of Taiwanese independence unlikely. The sordid betrayal of Ukraine by the Americans also of course makes the Taiwanese rightly mistrustful of American promises and an American alliance, and encourages them to make the best deal with mainland China that they can.
The war in Ukraine is itself an argument in favour of democracy. The initial Russian attack on Kiev failed because Ukrainian troops and civilians acted largely on their own initiative to blow bridges and mount an effective defence. This would be impossible in Russia. The Ukrainian army continues to fight more effectively than the Russian army and inflict many more losses than it suffers. The greater effectiveness of the Ukrainian military and state in comparison to Russia results precisely from the fact that Ukraine is a democracy, where criticism and open discussion is permitted, and the citizens are personally committed to their country and to the struggle for its life. The U.S. should use this and American support for Ukraine as part of the case in favour of democracy, and hence against the Chinese.
This line of argument will be dismissed by some Trump supporters as repeating the neoconservative position on ‘building democracy’ that led America to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a foolish objection. Attempting to impose democracy in a country where it has never existed is not the same as defending democracy in countries where it already exists.
Trump’s elimination of several American government information services is an important part of his rejection of democracy as a political objective. He has eliminated funding for the media services Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Televisión Martí, a Spanish-language radio and television operation aimed at Cuba. These media outfits were all created in the Cold War to get around Communist censorship and suppression of information, promote political freedom, and present the American point of view to other countries in a favourable manner. The reason given for shutting these outfits down is that they promote far-left political positions. This reason is exaggerated, and could in any case be addressed by changes in policy and personnel. The real reason for closing them is to please dictatorial and oppressive regimes with which Trump has to deal, and to show that he has no objection to their political methods and no intention of interfering with their oppressive behaviour. These media organisations developed a devoted following during the Cold War, and were a crucial factor in America’s victory in that war. Closing them is a priceless gift to oppressive regimes around the world, most of whom are American’s enemies, and offers no benefits to America. It is a serious blow to American power.
Why is Trump leading his country to disaster in this way? Allegations that he is a full-fledged Russian agent, run by the Russian intelligence service, are not backed up by any credible evidence. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seems to have got it right when he said that Trump is ‘living in a Russian disinformation space’. There are indications that this disinformation space is actively directed by Russian influence on the circles around Trump. It is hard to give any other explanation for Trump’s Ukrainian policy, which is perfectly fitted to promote Russian goals and is damaging for U.S. interests.
There is a strange resemblance between Trump’s relationship to Putin and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s relationship to Joseph Stalin. Roosevelt’s adoration of Stalin has been well described by Robert Nisbet (see Robert Nisbet, Roosevelt and Stalin: The Failed Courtship, Washington, D.C., 1988). Roosevelt famously said of Stalin that ‘I think if I give him everything I possibly can, and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of peace and democracy’ (Nisbet, p. 6.). Roosevelt admired Stalin without reservation, sought to please him at every opportunity, and never placed the slightest obstacle in the way of Stalin’s conquest and oppression of Eastern Europe. He ensured that Stalin would receive everything he asked for in military and economic assistance with no strings attached, and refused to take steps to prevent Russian espionage, thus enabling the Soviet Union to obtain the plans for the atomic bomb. Trump’s attitude to Putin is substantially the same as Roosevelt’s attitude to Stalin.
There are common features that help to explain this resemblance. Trump, like Roosevelt, is a bullying power-hungry leader with a charismatic connection to the American people; although Roosevelt, unlike Trump, was a gentleman. Their character flaws made both men indifferent to, or even attracted by, the cruelty and evil of the Russian leader they were dealing with. There is a significant difference between Stalin and Putin in this respect, however. All Stalin’s crimes were systematically denied by a vast campaign of lies. Putin, on the contrary, deliberately makes his crimes known in order to maintain his power. He openly tortures, poisons, imprisons, and murders his opponents to create fear, using a gangster’s methods. There was a moral corruption involved in believing the lies about Stalin, but it is of a different kind from the corruption involved in admiring Putin. There is a baseness and cur-like quality to Trump’s admiration of Putin that was not present in the patrician Roosevelt’s enthusiasm for Stalin.
Another resemblance lies in the fact that Roosevelt’s environment was permeated by pro-Communist and pro-Stalinist ideology and personnel. Some of this personnel, generally at a middle level, were working for Soviet intelligence; Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White are examples. More important than the actual spies were the convinced ideological sympathizers with Stalin and Communism, like Roosevelt’s Vice President Henry Wallace and his closest advisor Harry Hopkins.
Similarly, Trump’s circles are permeated with supporters and admirers of Putin. Many of these channels for Russian influence are described in the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This intelligence committee was dominated by Republicans, and indeed had as an acting head Marco Rubio, now Trump’s Secretary of State. While rejecting discredited sources like the Steele Dossier, which was produced by a British intelligence officer in order to discredit Trump, it found many individuals in Trump’s circles who had dealings with the Russians and influenced him in their favour.
There are reports that Putin has had his intelligence services concentrate on influencing the New York Republican millionaires who have influence with Trump. For example, Steve Witkoff, a New York real estate developer and long-standing friend and business associate of Trump’s, is serving as Trump’s special envoy to Putin, is one likely channel for this influence. Witkoff has shown himself accommodating with America’s enemies. In 2013, Witkoff bought the Park Lane Hotel in New York hotel for $654 million. The hotel turned out to be a bad investment, and Witkoff tried and failed to sell it in 2017. In 2023, the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar bought the hotel for $623 million, relieving Witkoff of a significant financial worry. Qatar is the main funder of Islamic terrorism and extremist Islamic militancy in the world, and as such is responsible for the deaths of many tens of thousands of Christians murdered by the Muslim terrorist organisations it creates. Its news agency Al Jazeera promotes these causes and works to harm the U.S. Witkoff, named by Trump as his envoy to the Middle East, said of the Qataris: ‘They’re good, decent people. … you have to trust the Qataris. … God bless them’, and worked to prevent the destruction of the Qatari-sponsored terrorist group Hamas in his capacity as envoy, ludicrously denying that Hamas is ‘ideologically intractable’. In his negotiations with the Russians over Ukraine, Witkoff is dealing with Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a state-owned sovereign wealth fund. The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee’s report described Dmitriev as having been tasked by Putin with contacting and favourably influencing Trump. (Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence United States Senate on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, vol. 5, pp. 718-735.) Dmitriev initially worked through George Nader, a political fixer and informal adviser to Trump later jailed for pedophilia. The Russian periodical Meduza reports:
Dmitriev … has extensive connections in the Middle East. RDIF’s partners include the sovereign wealth funds of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. These funds’ governing bodies and boards of directors include heads of state, government officials, and their relatives — many of whom are in regular contact with Dmitriev. … Dmitriev has maintained a connection with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former Middle East adviser, since Trump’s first term. … it was through Kushner that Witkoff first connected with Dmitriev …
Kushner has received hundreds of millions of dollars from Qatar for his business interests, partly through the medium of Brookfield Asset Management, the firm run by the sinister globalist Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney. Witkoff was an associate of Anatoly Golubchik, a Russian mafioso who was jailed for running an illicit gambling and extortion ring out of Trump Towers in New York. (This is not made up, Witkoff recommended Golubchik for a New York City condominium and Golubchik was later jailed for racketeering. The episode provided the inspiration for the film Molly’s Game.) One sees how the individuals in this web of financial dealings have access to and influence over Trump, and one understands why Witkoff consistently repeats Russian propaganda lines that are demonstrably false, and supports Russian interests over American ones 100% of the time [source] [source] [source].
Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, is of course well aware of the history of the relationship between Roosevelt and Stalin, and is consciously and successfully working to recreate it between himself and Trump. He has been helped by Trump’s long-standing connections with and interests in Russia and Russian business figures. Trump first visited Russia as long ago as 1987, and brought the 2013 Miss Universe contest to Moscow. Accusations about Trump’s being compromised by the Russians have not been substantiated and have the ring of disinformation. They also miss the main point, which is the favourable attitude that Trump has developed to the Russians as a result of long cultivation by them – a cultivation that has more psychological sophistication than simple bribery or blackmail, in keeping with the professional competence of Russian politicians and intelligence officers. Its object is not coercion of Trump, but formation of a psychological state in his mind that is favourable to Russia, a state that does not permit the entry of any doubts or contrary evidence. This was the objective of Communist propaganda and mind control, in which Putin was trained.
In fact, Putin has succeeded with Trump better than Stalin did with Roosevelt. Trump’s behaviour with Putin is rather like that of an old man grovelling before a courtesan with whom he is besotted, and who is fleecing him of every penny that he has. To complete this analogy, Putin has taken to publicly humiliating Trump by such actions as making Trump’s special envoy wait for eight hours before seeing him, and publicly putting a phone call from Trump on hold to continue a conversation with Russian oligarchs.
The resemblance between Trump and Roosevelt is important for American-European relations because the peoples and leaders of Eastern Europe remember with justified bitterness Roosevelt’s cooperation with Stalin, and correctly see Trump’s support of Russia against Ukraine as repeating Roosevelt’s policies. They want to avoid a return to a Russian domination that is facilitated by the U.S.
There is a fundamental delusion underlying Trump’s foreign policy. It is the delusion that the U.S. can repudiate its alliances and withdraw its security blanket, but retain the influence that it possessed as a result of these alliances and security blanket. This was a delusion that was never entertained by America at the height of its power. After World War II, the U.S. had a nuclear monopoly and was responsible for more than 40% of world industrial production. President Harry Truman and his Secretary of State Dean Acheson did not try to use this power unilaterally to promote American interests independently of the rest of the world. Instead, they crafted alliances with Europe and set up international institutions to cement the leading role of the U.S. on the world stage. These alliances preserved the leading role of America until Trump destroyed them. The circumstances that led to their birth cannot be replicated, and it will not be possible for America to recreate them or the power that they gave to the U.S.
The same delusion underlies Trump’s bitter complaints about Europeans spending less money on defence than the U.S. To some extent these complaints are fair, and the Europeans should have spent more on their militaries – although there are no expressions of satisfaction from the U.S. now that Europe is rearming. But the idea that it is unfair and undesirable for the U.S. to spend more money on defence than its allies is out of touch with reality. If you spend more money on defence than other countries, you will be more militarily powerful than they are. There is no other way to get military superiority. And if you are more militarily powerful than other countries, then you can expect them to be subservient to you and to respect and promote your interests. If you are militarily on a par with them, however, you have to deal with them as equals. Spending more than other countries on the military is necessary to be a dominant power. That is why the U.S. has for decades spent more money on the military than its allies or its enemies. This money was not a frivolous waste or a swindle of the U.S. by its allies. It came with a reward, which was political dominance, and it was purposely spent as the necessary price for that dominance. Trump plans to cut U.S. military spending by 8% and reduce troop numbers by up to 90,000 men. This will significantly reduce U.S. influence in the world.
Despite his damaging friendship with Stalin, Roosevelt did at least leave the U.S. the dominant power in the world. Trump will have no credit entries to compare with this. When the ruinous consequences of his foreign policy become too obvious to be denied, it will be difficult or impossible for the Republicans to retain power in the U.S. The Democrats, who retain their power bases in the universities and in key states and sections of American society, will return to power thirsting for vengeance. American Catholics will then reap the bitter harvest of their corrupt support for Trump and their betrayal of their fellow-Catholics in Ukraine.
What are the implications of this situation for the Europeans? Hitherto the leaders of Europe have been engaged in wars on their own peoples, importing huge numbers of immigrants who hate European culture and religion, attack the indigenous population, and live on state support without making a contribution to the country they have immigrated to. The governments of France, Germany and Britain are directly committed to this strategy, and the European Union’s structures force it upon other countries in Europe. The object of this strategy is to divide and rule; to demoralise, terrify, and impoverish the native European populations, who might otherwise object to the rule of the undemocratic plutocracy that runs Europe for its own benefit to the detriment of the majority.
As a result of Trump’s favouring of Russia, the political leaders of Europe have, as we have seen, finally – after three years of war – set in motion serious measures of rearmament to counter the Russian threat. This could have positive results for Europe. In order to motivate your people to fight in war, you have to respect their interests and promote their well-being. The advent of welfare states in Europe and North America was a necessary consequence of total war in World War II. The state had to show unprecedented concern for its citizens if they were to willingly engage in total war. A real preparation for war in Europe would require at the least a reversal of the hostile migratory and economic policies that have been inflicted on the European population.
It is however doubtful if the current European leadership is willing or able to do this. Their ideological commitments, personal and class interests, and sheer ignorance, incompetence, and mediocrity are probably insuperable obstacles to such a change of course. The logical move would be for their populist and nationalist opponents to seize this opportunity, and present their policies – correctly – as the only way of motivating and mobilizing European populations to resist Russian aggression.
Unfortunately, there are not many signs of this happening. Many of these populist movements and politicians are anti-Ukrainian and pro-Putin. Their supporters, swayed by extensive Russian propaganda and subversion, agree with them on this. The shining exception here is Giorgia Meloni in Italy, the lone politician to oppose migratory invasion, LGBT etc. ideology, rule by the European Union, and Russian aggression all together. Other nationalists fail to see that someone like Viktor Orbán of Hungary, head of an extremely corrupt political party and a shameless tool of Vladimir Putin, is going to discredit and sink their cause rather than bring it victory.
The character of Putin’s rejection of left-wing ideology should be understood. He rejects LGBT etc, ideology, mass immigration, and toleration of extremist Islam for his own country because he considers that these things would undermine Russia. When he sees these phenomena in Europe, however, he does not feel altruistic sorrow at their prevalence there; he concludes that Europe is decadent and is unable to resist a serious long-term assault. All sources concur in saying that he is confident that European decadence means that Russia will eventually win in a struggle with Europe. These left-wing trends are what gives Putin the confidence to undertake his planned general war to dominate the European continent.
Some European nationalists may think that Putin is a lesser evil than globalism and European integration, but this is a delusion. The horrific violence, misery and corruption that are at the heart of the state that Putin has constructed are just as fatal to national existence in the long run as globalism and secularism, and are a lot more unpleasant for the average person to endure. It is unreasonable to accept the idea that some kind of tolerable deal can be made with Putin that will permit peaceful coexistence with Europeans, now that war is underway.
That is where the war in Ukraine is crucial. In order for Europe to retain independence from Russia without U.S. military support, Ukraine must remain a militarily powerful state independent of Russia. If Russia takes Ukraine, the Russians will be much stronger, and the Europeans will lose their strongest military element. Without Ukraine, Europe does not work, and with Ukraine Europe does work.
In the ideal situation, the U.S. would adopt a two-pronged policy; retrieving Europe by giving the Ukrainians the weapons needed to defeat the Russian army in Ukraine, and using the leverage resulting from this victory to induce European countries to reverse their self-destructive policies of mass immigration, suppression of free speech and democracy, and economy-crushing carbon reduction measures. This would both cement the American alliance with Europe and strengthen the Europeans as allies against China. One of the most serious indictments of Trump is that he has failed to seize this opportunity, and has instead sabotaged his own country and world peace by courting and doing the will of Putin, an obvious enemy and villain. Catholics should be pressuring Trump to implement this two-pronged policy. By doing so they would both take the morally right course and advance the interests of their country.
As things are now, J.D. Vance’s truthful criticisms of Europe for suppressing democracy and free speech will have no impact because of the hypocrisy of American abandonment of the Ukrainian democracy in favour of the Russian dictatorship. Vance’s strictures are rightly understood in Europe as a cover for U.S. desertion of the European alliance, not as a statement of principle.
American Catholic uncritical enthusiasm for Trump is a reflection of problems in the Church herself. Catholics have been trained to uncritically follow, laud and acclaim corrupt Church leaders. To bring this about, an information sphere is created for Catholics that presents these leaders as wise and good, and blocks out as far as possible any facts that indicate otherwise. Anyone who tries to broadcast these facts and get them addressed is targeted and punished, or just ignored and isolated – which is punishment enough for most people. Manliness and honour in Catholics, already neglected and discouraged in the modern Church, are virtually eradicated as a result. The outstanding example of successful use of this technique is Pope Paul VI, who encountered essentially no serious opposition or criticism despite devastating the Catholic Church to an extent unparalleled in history. The same system operated in favour of Francis, a cleric who worked to undermine important, divinely revealed moral and doctrinal truths, and protected and promoted criminal sexual abusers. There is no public recognition of this fact by bishops or by the generality of Catholics, and he was praised and prayed for as if he were a humble and good pastor. In America, Cardinals Cupich, Dolan, McElroy, and Tobin all have the bad qualities Francis had, and were in fact named by him to their posts for that reason. Save for a minuscule number of brave and honest people, they are all treated respectfully and obediently as good pastors.
It is true that many of the Catholic supporters of Trump were disenchanted with or opposed to Francis. But this opposition was directed at Francis personally, and does not extend to the mental attitudes and training that he benefitted from. The indoctrination of American Catholics in uncritical power-worship makes it easy for Trump and his team to sacrifice Catholics in Ukraine, promote IVF, support gay marriage, and denounce federal laws against abortion, while garnering enthusiastic Catholic support. In politics as in ecclesiastical affairs, Catholics need to recover the capacity to think and learn for themselves, to apply objective standards of truth, and to stand up for what is right against opposition and propaganda; not to simply choose the narrative on offer that has been crafted to appeal to them the most. The people who do this crafting are not their friends.
[1] See Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York, 2010), pp. 42-46.
