Trump’s Ukraine negotiators are too chicken to visit Kyiv and support its independence

There were two noticeable no-shows as Western leaders gathered Monday to mark the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence — and its five years of resistance to Vladimir Putin’s effort to re-subjugate the country to Russian rule.

There were multiple news reports that President Donald Trump’s clueless peace envoys — son-in-law Jared Kushner and real estate magnate Steve Witkoff — might finally join European allies at anniversary ceremonies.

I say “finally” because neither of these supposed peacemakers has ever deigned to visit Ukraine. Not once. Meantime, Witkoff has visited Moscow eight times, and gushed over Putin as he and Kushner (also a repeat visitor) discussed business deals with Russia.

It is no surprise, then, that Trump’s blinkered envoys postponed their trip, reportedly blaming their absence on intensified Russian missile and drone strikes. Never mind that former Vice President Mike Pence, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, and other European leaders showed up.

They recognized — as Trump and his envoys still do not — that Ukraine is fighting not just for its own freedom, but for the security of Europe and the United States.

Burnham, who came to Kyiv on his first foreign trip as prime minister, understands the significance of Ukraine’s brave stand against the world’s second-largest army. A Russian military that is heavily aided by the dictators of China, North Korea, and Iran, all eager to undermine America and the democracies of the West.

The U.K. leader rightly compared Ukraine’s resistance against Russian imperialism to Britain’s fight against Nazi Germany in the 1940s, telling Ukrainians, “My nation kept the flame of European freedom alive in the 20th century; you hold that flame in the 21st.”

Burnham is right on the mark.

The image of London firefighters bravely battling the blazes caused by the German Blitz, which rained rockets down on civilians in order to break their morale, comes right to mind when watching video of Ukrainian rescue workers pulling women and children out of the rubble of collapsed apartment towers that have been hit with Russian missiles or drones.

Then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill understood that if Britain fell, the Nazis would take over Europe. The Battle of Britain in the summer and fall of 1940, in which incredibly courageous Royal Air Force pilots pushed back the Luftwaffe, forced Adolf Hitler to abandon his planned invasion of England. The courage and spirit of Britons under bombing gave the RAF the time to regroup and attack the Nazis in Europe. It gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt time to act on sending Lend-Lease war supplies to Britain.

Burnham grasps that Putin is a stalking horse for an axis of adversaries - namely China, North Korea and Iran - that backs and finances Russia’s crimes.

» READ MORE: Trump ignores joint efforts by his favorite dictators to undermine U.S. security | Trudy Rubin

Ukraine’s battle of the skies is effectively the first round of World War III. And only one weapon can take down the ballistic missiles Russia is pouring down on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure: U.S.-made Patriot interceptors.

Yet, Trump has wasted much of America’s Patriot missile stock chasing cheap Iranian drones, and refuses to sell Kyiv a small percentage of what the U.S. retains. And after proposing joint production of Patriots with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the U.S. president immediately backed off.

That is why Burnham announced Monday that the U.K. (along with France) will help Ukraine make its own version of a Anglo/French long-range cruise missile by sharing classified technical information. That will help Ukraine preempt Russian missiles by eliminating the firing sites.

But setting up that production line will take months or years, and Ukraine desperately needs Patriots now.

It is hard for many Americans to grasp how important Ukraine’s survival is to our future security. Few U.S. politicians consider Ukraine to be a critical campaign issue. Trump has communicated his disdain for Kyiv to his MAGA followers, and Vice President JD Vance boasts that his proudest moment was helping cut off aid to Ukraine. As for Democrats, they’d rather focus on cost of living and the endless Iran war.

But Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, nailed it when he told me recently that what’s been missing from the lack of U.S. attention “is the recognition that it’s in the U.S. interest for Ukraine to be successful.” President Joe Biden was too timid, he noted, and Trump is worse.

America’s enemies are taking full notice.

China is watching and learning from the drone, robot, and electronic warfare being fought in Ukraine, while sharing dual-use weapon parts and technology with Moscow. Every lesson is being fed into the hopper of Xi Jinping’s massive agglomeration of data used for prep to take back Taiwan and dominate South and East Asian neighbors and territorial waters.

» READ MORE: The tale of Trump’s food cart escape in Ankara explains why he is losing in Iran | Trudy Rubin

North Korea is earning hard currency by sending troops and missiles to aid Russia’s war on Ukraine. In return, it is accessing Russian technology to build up its nuclear arsenal. Iran sends Shahed drones to Russia and learns from Russian upgrades of those drones, which helps Tehran attack U.S. bases and threaten Gulf Arab states in the Middle East.

Meantime, Trump is focused on his White House ballroom, car races, and starting a trade war with Canada, while Kushner and Witkoff chicken out of visiting Kyiv. They have no clue that the fate of the Ukraine war will overshadow everything they now think is important.

Their trips to Moscow are feckless unless they recognize that Putin has no interest in peace. Any “peace process” is dead (irrespective of CIA Director John Radcliffe’s secret visit to Moscow last weekend) until the United States recognizes reality and joins Europeans in squeezing Putin until he fears the war is endangering his survival.

I believe Ukraine will hold out via its tech brilliance and innovation, and its people’s determination not to surrender to the brutal domination of Russia. But the United States will pay a dear price for failing to step up when it could have blocked Putin and his allies — before their war on the West got much, much worse.