Trump could be a winner on Ukraine if he recognized Kyiv’s stunning turnaround of the war

As President Donald Trump sinks deeper into an Iran quagmire, he looks like a loser for joining an ill-planned war of choice and failing at peace talks.

Even if a U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding (or MOU) is signed soon, this will not be a “peace deal” but will merely kick negotiations on all the tough issues down the road. And the MOU will most likely leave the U. S. worse off than before the war.

Yet, on another front, the Ukraine war, where Trump is supposedly still working on a peace proposal, the president has new opportunities to advance a reasonable deal and be lauded as a winner.

Kyiv, through incredible bravery, fortitude, and technological brilliance, has finally turned the tide against Russian aggression via its innovative drone war. The conflict is far from over, but Russia has been stalled for months, gaining almost no ground, and is now losing more men than it can mobilize.

And President Volodymyr Zelensky has just proposed freezing the war along current lines while negotiating directly with Vladimir Putin in a third country, an offer the Russian leader immediately refused.

Yet, Trump continues to aid the loser, Putin, and to undermine the advances of the increasingly visible winner, Kyiv. He has cut off all military aid to Ukraine (even though Europe will pay for the weapons), including vital air defense systems Kyiv desperately needs to destroy the ballistic missiles Putin is raining down on civilians. POTUS is also resisting bipartisan efforts in Congress to restore limited Ukraine aid and add sanctions to Russia.

The House just passed the Ukraine Support Act in a bipartisan push that overcame Speaker Mike Johnson’s efforts to block it, but the White House has strong-armed pro-Ukraine Republicans in the Senate to sit on a similar measure. The GOP‘s cowardice has become a national embarrassment.

If Trump insists on going down in history as a foreign policy loser (or a Russian dupe), Senate Republicans must decide whether they want to share the shame.

It is pathetic to watch how the Kremlin has been making fun of Trump’s weakness. The president keeps claiming he doesn’t want to provoke Moscow by sending more weapons, yet his vacillation has made him a punching bag on RT, the Kremlin’s mouthpiece TV outlet.

“Vladimir, STOP!” Trump begged on Truth Social on April 27, after massive Russian drone and missile attacks on Kyiv and other cities. “Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!” He told reporters he thought Putin would listen. Haha!

“What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!” POTUS posted on May 27. RT posted sarcastically: “Trump’s message leaves little room for misinterpretation. Until he posts the opposite the next morning.”

A Kremlin spokesperson dismissed his remarks as “emotional overload.” Trump appears unaware of Kyiv’s extraordinary achievement in bringing the war home to Russia, hitting deep into the country with mid-range and long-range drones that take out military bases, oil depots, refineries, bridges, and rail lines.

When I spoke to Ukrainian military officers as they were displaying videos of sophisticated drone operations to business and political leaders at the Munich Security Forum in March, they told me their goal was to interrupt Russian supply lines and thus cripple military logistics inside Russia and inside Russian-occupied territories.

Another main point was to finally bring the cost of the war home to Russians, since Kremlin-controlled media and internet constantly portray Russia as winning.

Even under President Joe Biden, Ukrainians were frustrated that U.S. aid, notably medium- and long-range missiles, was conditional on their not being fired into Russia — lest it “escalate the fighting.” Under Trump, who has cut all aid, the Ukrainian military feels no such compunctions.

This approach is succeeding. Fuel shortages are spreading across Russia, and fuel supplies in Crimea have reportedly run dry last week, after Ukrainian drones took out two land bridges to the Russian-occupied peninsula.

Even more embarrassing to Putin, he was forced to curtail the huge annual May 8 and 9 World War II Victory Day military parade due to fear of Ukrainian long-range drone strikes.

Yet, Trump refuses to take advantage of Russia’s new weakness and to endorse Zelensky’s call for a freeze along current military lines. Instead, the president’s ill-equipped negotiators have swallowed Putin’s demand that Kyiv surrender critical cities, which Russia has been unable to take by force.

Even more idiotic, Trump has failed to take advantage of Zelensky’s year-old offer to share Ukraine’s brilliant drone technology and swap just-in-time, battle-tested drones and interceptors for U.S. weapons. This, at a time when the unacceptably slow pace of U.S. drone development has put America on the back foot in the Iran war, and forced our military to use $2 million missiles to down $50,000 Iranian Shahed UAVs (as unmanned aerial vehicles are called).

All of America’s Sunni Arab allies are begging Kyiv for help downing Iran’s drones, as U.S. private companies are rushing to test new drone innovations in Ukraine. Even some Pentagon officials are waking up to how much they need Ukraine’s help, yet Trump remains aloof — and still blames Ukraine, not Putin, for causing the war.

My only explanation for such stupidity is that POTUS has never gotten over his anger at Zelensky for rejecting the president’s famous 2019 demand in a phone call to dig up (nonexistent) “dirt” on Biden. That phone call was the basis for Trump’s first impeachment.

I’d add to the mix Trump’s envy of dictator Putin’s total control of everything in Russia and his past, frequent displays of bare-chested masculinity. (Perhaps the choice of a bizarre UFC mixed martial arts match for his birthday on the White House lawn Sunday is a way for POTUS to play catch-up.)

The result, however, is that America rejected the vital help of an important Ukrainian partner at a critical moment in the Iran war, while aiding a Russian adversary who is assisting Iran. And the U.S. president has squandered hundreds of scarce Patriot and THAAD long-range interceptor missiles in the Iran war, which, if Europe could have purchased them for Ukraine, could have saved that country’s urban infrastructure.

Instead, Trump refuses to put Ukraine in the queue for receiving new missiles when the woefully slow U.S. production lines are sped up. And he has just halted a scheduled deployment of Tomahawk missiles to Germany, supposedly from fear of upsetting Russia, even though Putin is now openly threatening Europe.

From June 15 to 17, the leaders of the G7 group of the world’s top industrial nations will meet in France, on the shores of Lake Geneva, and French President Emmanuel Macron has invited Zelensky to speak. The topic will be Ukraine, and Trump will have a chance to strongly endorse Zelensky’s proposal.

I don’t expect much from Trump, who has complained about Russia being kicked out of the former G8 after invading Ukraine. But who knows? Maybe POTUS will decide he doesn’t want to be a loser after all.