Can Trump grasp full scale of challenges he faces?

Last week’s massive attack on Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions was the largest in several months and once again proved that the U.S. president failed to reach any agreements with his Russian counterpart during the Alaska meeting.

Already on Saturday, the former Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, prominent politician, and activist Andrii Parubiy was killed. I am writing this text just a few meters from the crime scene and can vividly imagine the shock that gripped the people of Lviv when they learned of this new act of terror. We understand clearly: both the missile attacks on Kyiv and Lviv and the assassination of a respected politician from the patriotic camp are deliberate acts of intimidation, a signal from Putin that the Ukrainian people supposedly have no choice other than a shameful capitulation.

But we have already seen and heard all of this, and have grown accustomed to this brutal language with which Putin addresses us. What truly distinguishes last week’s wave of terror from previous ones is the lack of a serious reaction from the U.S. president to the killings of Ukrainian civilians. After his sixth phone call with Putin, Trump publicly expressed frustration that the Russian leader only makes promises and speeches while continuing to kill people. At that time, Trump stated that pressure on Putin needed to be increased. And although no real pressure followed those words, only discussions about the prospects for a peace process, this time we did not even hear such ritual explanations. Moreover, the White House tried to justify the killings of Ukrainian civilians by pointing to Ukraine’s strikes on a Russian oil refining complex.

"And this is precisely the essence of the flawed logic we encounter every day. It is an attempt to equate the victim with the aggressor, an attempt to ignore the obvious: strikes on oil refineries target the resources of the Russian army, which kills civilians daily. In contrast, attacks on residential neighborhoods are deliberate killings of civilians themselves."

If Ukraine seeks to protect them, it is obliged to destroy Russian oil refineries. That is logical. But the U.S. administration operates under a different logic. Because condemning Putin for the killings would mean admitting that the Alaska summit was not a “success” but a complete fiasco. Neither Donald Trump nor his team likes to speak about their own failures.

Ultimately, what we need are not talks or assessments, of which there have already been plenty over these long months of war. What we need are real actions. The question is only when we will see them. Will the U.S. president realize that the lack of concrete steps and attempts to convince Putin to end the war through negotiations is, in fact, a path to its continuation? That Putin understands only the language of force, the language of destroying his own economy and political prospects? Everything else is irrelevant to him. I am convinced that if Ukraine has more weapons and greater financial resources for defense, Russia will have far less desire to wage a war of endless attrition.

The task of the American president is not to reassure his Russian counterpart, but to recognize the full scale of the challenges. Challenges primarily for the United States, not only for Ukraine. Against the backdrop of air terror and killings, Putin traveled to China to present, alongside the Chinese leader and India’s prime minister, a world without the West, a world that can disregard Western values, threats, and sanctions. And we can see: in this alternative world, there is no shortage of solidarity. China consistently supports Russia, while Iran and North Korea, under sanctions, develop weapons, advance nuclear programs, and terrorize and devastate Ukraine. And the less solidarity there is in the Western world, the greater the unity in the world of Russia and China.

And the stronger that unity becomes, the less security the collective West, and the United States itself, will have. Because then, sooner or later, war will come to Americans at home. And no great ocean will stand in its way.

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About the author. Vitaly Portnikov, journalist, laureate of the Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine.

The editorial team does not always share the opinions expressed by blog or column authors.