Trump joins Putin’s Ukraine blame game: Almost exactly three years ago, Russia’s military launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a young democracy on Russia’s western border with Europe. The invasion quickly turned into the largest war on European soil since Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.
For several weeks leading up to February 24, 2022, White House officials declassified surveillance imagery for European allies and the wider public to argue a likely Russian invasion appeared to be imminent—and it appeared to be much larger than Russia’s 2014 covert invasion, which involved soldiers in unmarked uniforms purporting to be separatists longing to annex portions of eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Within three years, Russian leader Vladimir Putin openly admitted those were in fact Russian soldiers, and not separatists or “little green men,” as Putin initially suggested.
Just days before the larger invasion began, top Russian officials said there were no plans to invade Ukraine and that Russia is “not going to attack anyone.” You can read over an accounting of those public statements via a fairly lengthy timeline published the day of the invasion by FactCheck.org.
It remains important to remind ourselves of this sequence of events, which has sent shockwaves through European capitals as their under-prepared militaries face the prospect of another war on the continent. So moved were those nations that previously neutral Finland and Sweden rushed their applications to join the Russia-focused NATO alliance; and after some drama and hesitation by officials in Hungary and Turkey, those applications were approved by lawmakers from every member of the alliance. It can feel like these events happened long ago; but they are all still very recent, and the effects are still reverberating across both sides of the Atlantic.
Yesterday, U.S. President Donald Trump attempted to rewrite that history of Ukraine’s invasion, telling reporters that current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “should have never started it.” Trump found himself in a defensive position Tuesday after the White House announced it would launch talks with Russia’s leader on the future of the war in Ukraine—but those talks hosted in Saudi Arabia, notably, would not include Ukrainian officials. The first such meeting occurred Tuesday and featured the top diplomats from both countries. Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy condemned any such talks on the future of Ukraine without Ukraine; and his remarks had upset Trump on Tuesday.
“Decisions on how to end the war in Ukraine cannot be made without Ukraine, nor can any conditions be imposed,” Zelenskyy said during a trip to Turkey on Tuesday.
“I think I have the power to end this war,” said Trump. But “Today I heard, ‘Oh, well we weren’t invited,’” the U.S. leader told reporters, referring to Zelenskyy’s concerns. “Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should’ve ended it in three years.”
“You should have never started it,” Trump alleged, falsely. “You could have made a deal,” the U.S. president said of Zelenskyy, speaking to reporters from his golf resort in Florida on Tuesday. “I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished and not one dome would have been knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way.”
Why bring it up: Trump showed the world that, at least for now, he has “sided fully with Russia’s narrative blaming Ukraine for the war,” Catherine Porter and Andrew Higgins of the New York Times report. Their colleague Peter Baker described it as “one of the most jaw-dropping pivots in American foreign policy in generations, a 180-degree turn that will force friends and foes to recalibrate in fundamental ways.”
What’s going on? “In Mr. Trump’s circle, the pivot is a necessary corrective to years of misguided policy,” Baker explains. “He and his allies see the cost of defending Europe as too high, given other needs,” including China’s much-lauded economic and military power.
Zelenskyy’s reply: “We have seen this disinformation. We understand that it is coming from Russia,” he said at a press conference Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, he is living in this disinformation space,” said Zelenskyy. “I want there to be more truth in Trump’s team,” he added. Zelenskyy spoke just ahead of a meeting with Trump’s top Russia and Ukraine envoy, retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg.
“Part of my mission is to sit and listen,” Kellogg said upon arriving to Kyiv, the Associated Press reports. “We understand the need for security guarantees,” he said, and added, “It’s very clear to us the importance of the sovereignty of this nation and the independence of this nation as well.”
Trump’s blaming of Ukraine also shook French President Emmanuel Macron, who the Times reports “called a second emergency meeting of European allies on Wednesday to devise a united response to President Trump’s remarks embracing Vladimir Putin’s narrative that Ukraine is to blame for the war.”
One Ukrainian soldier told the Wall Street Journal Trump’s comments showed “a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the war, its real causes and the mentality of the Ukrainian people.”
“Russia doesn’t want to negotiate with Ukraine, it wants to destroy it,” a different Ukrainian officer said. “So negotiations with them are impossible unless victory on the battlefield becomes impossible for them.”
An artillery officer warned, “When authoritarian terror faces no resistance, it doesn’t stop—it spreads, like mold. Let it consume Ukraine, and the entire free world will suffocate in distrust and drown in fear.” Read on, here.
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which led to the incarceration of nearly 70,000 Americans for several years without due process.
DOD firings expected to start soon. DOGE members have ordered Defense Department officials to give them lists of civilian workers who are in a probationary status—generally speaking, that means workers promoted or hired within the past year—the Washington Post and New York Times report, citing “five people” and “three officials” respectively. Such requests have led to firings at other federal agencies in the past month. (AP has a list.)
Tell us about your DOGE-related experience. Contact Defense One’s Audrey Decker (adecker.59 on Signal or email [email protected]), Lauren C. Williams (laurencw.62 on Signal or email [email protected]), or Ben Watson (watson.90 on Signal).
Who’s in charge at DOGE? It’s not Elon Musk, according to the White House, which said in a court filing that the world’s richest person is not even a DOGE employee, let alone the official in charge. Trump leads DOGE, officials told the Washington Post.
Then why is Musk doing all the talking? Norm Eisen, chairman of the State Democracy Defenders Fund, has filed a lawsuit challenging Musk’s disruption of government agencies. “Because if he is in charge, given the nature of the activity, he would be a principal officer who was not confirmed by the United States Senate,” he said. “That means that all of his actions to date have been unconstitutional and would have to be unwound,” Eisen tells the Post, here.
Judge slams Trump’s anti-trans order: “Would you agree with me that if our military is negatively impacted in any kind of way that matters…we all have a lot bigger problems than pronoun use? If that is the case, we have a military that is incompetent. Any common-sense, rational human being knows that it doesn’t,” Judge Ana Reyes of the U.S. District Court of D.C. told Justice Department attorney Jason Lynch at a Tuesday’s hearing, where lawyers for trans service members challenged a Trump executive order that led the Defense Department to block trans recruits. “If you want to get me an officer of the U.S. military who is willing to get on the stand and say that because of pronoun usage, the U.S. military is less prepared…I will be the first to buy you a box of cigars.” The Independent reports, here.
Uncertainty mounts at Space Development Agency. A Feb. 11 memo signed by Air Force Inspector General Lt. Gen. Stephen Davis, said there will be an onsite inspection of the satellite-acquisition “constructive disruptor” agency from March 10 to 14, using “data, surveys, interviews, and applicable directives to conduct the inspection.”
The inspection notice follows weeks of turmoil at the agency after SDA director Derek Tournear was placed on “investigative administrative leave.” Tournear was replaced on Jan. 16 in an acting capacity by Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, who leads Space Systems Command. Less than three weeks later, Garrant himself was replaced as temporary SDA chief by William Blauser, a longtime acquisition official currently serving as deputy director of the Air Force’s rapid capabilities office. Defense One’s Audrey Decker reports, here.
Additional reading:
- “Office overseeing Afghan resettlement in US told to start planning closure,” Reuters reported Tuesday;
- And DHS Secretary “Noem Directs Polygraph Use to Target Homeland Security Leaks,” Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
The post The D Brief: Trump blames Kyiv for war; DOGE at Pentagon; Uncertainty at SDA; State’s Afghan-resettlement office at risk; And a bit more. appeared first on Defense One.
