Kremlin officials say the American president is getting bad information. They claim his reports being filtered by people who want to “draw the United States into more aggressive action against Russia” — a problem they will try to correct.
Over the last few days, President Donald Trump has been harder than usual on the Russians. On Tuesday, he said Russian leader Vladimir Putin is “playing with fire.” He posted on his Truth Social account: “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!”
These comments came days after Trump said Putin was going “absolutely CRAZY!” because he struck Kiev for “no reason whatsoever.” Russia launched a blistering attack on Ukraine over the weekend, which included heavy strikes on its Capital, killing at least a dozen civilians and injuring a lot more. In response, Trump rattled off a social media post accusing Putin of needlessly killing people in a quest to take all of Ukraine. His special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, accused Russia of violating international law with that attack.
But missing from Trump’s high-profile scoldings was any mention of the fact that Russian strikes followed almost an entire week of Ukrainian drone attacks deep within Russia. From where the Russians stand, they had 700 reasons to strike.
Trump’s seeming ignorance of this is especially interesting considering that even the mainstream media reported on it. Left-wing British newspaper The Guardian reported on Saturday that “the [Russian] strikes followed several days of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia, including Moscow, which prompted the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, to vow retaliation.” A day earlier, on Friday, The Washington Post published an article detailing how Ukrainian drone attacks “rattled multiple Russian regions for the third consecutive day, grounding flights, disrupting internet access and stretching the country’s air defense systems thin.” The strikes reached deep into Russia, the Post reported, “disrupting day-to-day life in a jarring reminder to Russians far from the front lines that the war is not confined to the trenches.”
And just a few days before that, on May 19, the day Trump and Putin held their long conversation centered on establishing peace in Eastern Europe, the Post ran a story titled “These drones are hitting Russia’s energy sector. Moscow wants them stopped: Inside Ukraine’s deep-strike drone program that has bedeviled Russia’s energy infrastructure ahead of ceasefire talks.” The article said that “more than 300 Ukrainian drones descended on Moscow in what the city Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called its ‘largest drone attack’ of the war.” The Russians claimed they intercepted more than 700 drones that crossed over into their country, nearly 100 of them near Moscow, before launching their scorching response over the weekend.
Former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson echoed the prevailing bafflement among many when he made the following point:
Gee, why would Putin order massive strikes on Ukraine on May 24 and 25? “No reason whatsoever”? It appears that no one briefed Trump on what Ukraine did, starting May 19.… Just imagine how Donald Trump would react if Mexican drug cartels launched 700 attack drones into the United States. We all know the answer…. The US would be bombing Mexico as we speak. Trump’s failure to acknowledge the precipitating actions of Ukraine is a reminder that this man is driven by emotion, not thought or reason. Trump’s outburst, in my opinion, is a disgrace.
The Russians claim Trump doesn’t fully understand what is going on. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday:
One thing is clear — Donald Trump and those who actually make decisions regarding the Ukraine conflict in particular, are not being told everything. The information he [Trump] is given is filtered through a sieve, which is prepared by those who want to draw America into more aggressive action against Russia, in support of the Kiev regime.
The Kremlin suggests that what is happening is forces within the West are working overtime to prolong the war. Lavrov said Ukraine’s attacks are part of “an attempt to derail the US-brokered peace talks between Moscow and Kiev.”
Given that Russia occupies 20 percent of Ukraine and likely intends to keep every inch of it, it’s understandable why forces within it may not want to end the war. A deal would almost certainly include new borders that would render Ukraine smaller than it was in 2022.
The Ukrainian hardliners are also likely emboldened by promises from certain European nations to step in the resource gap created by the U.S. On Wednesday German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that Berlin will increase military aid to Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Germany will “maintain and expand” its military support to Ukraine and the two countries will start a joint program to produce long-range weapons that Kyiv can use against Russian targets, Merz said at a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Berlin.
“This is the start of a new form of military-industrial cooperation between our two countries and one that has huge potential,” he said.
But while it makes sense why some Ukrainian forces want to prolong the war, what’s in it for the rest of Europe?
Russians are notorious masters of propaganda, but the allegation that Europe doesn’t want the war to end is not meritless. A Danish intelligence report from February suggests Europe wants to keep Russia mired in Ukraine to buy time. According to a Journal report:
In a February report, the Danish intelligence agency warned that Russia could launch a large-scale war in Europe within five years if it perceived NATO to be weak. A cease-fire in Ukraine would allow Russia’s military to be ready even faster, Western military officials warn.… Russia’s ability to take on NATO will depend in part on its ability to rebuild its forces after the war in Ukraine, which has depleted its officer corps but provided experience in precision fire.
This war has inflamed talk of and instigated preparation for another large-scale conflict on the European continent. Big trouble is brewing in Europe. Germany, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and others are dusting off the war machines, opening up their pocketbooks to splurge on defense spending, and getting back into fighting shape, all in response to Russia’s “unprovoked” attack on Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia is ramping up recruitment and bolstering infrastructure in preparation for a possible war against NATO. General Christopher Cavoli, commander of U.S. forces in Europe, told a Senate committee in April that “the Russian military is reconstituting and growing at a faster rate than most analysts had anticipated,” adding that “the Russian army, which has borne the brunt of combat, is today larger than it was at the beginning of the war.”
Each side portrays its buildup as a response to belligerence on the other side. For the Russians, invading Ukraine was the culmination of decades of warnings against NATO’s eastward expansion. This part of their narrative is indisputably accurate. Author of the Soviet containment strategy and expert diplomat George Kennan warned back in 1997 “that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.” Kennan added:
Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.
But from the perspective of the Ukrainians, it’s none of Russia’s business who they want to be friends with. As a sovereign nation, it’s a choice Ukraine should be able to make without being invaded by the bigger, badder neighbor.
This is an oversimplification that doesn’t take into consideration several other factors — which may be all the more reason for Trump to follow up on a threat he made to bow out of the mess on the Eastern Bloc. On April 19, the American president floated the idea of walking away from his self-appointed position of mediator and let Ukraine and Russia settle their differences without him in the middle. Trump was frustrated because he was five months into his promise to end the war in Eastern Europe on Day 1.
The atmosphere on that continent is heating up. And Americans don’t want to be there when it blows up. This may seem like an extreme approach, but it’s likely what the Founding Fathers would do.
Like the great Biblical king Solomon said, there is nothing new under the Sun. Or to paraphrase, some things never change. In his farewell address to the nation, before retiring back to his slice of heaven in Virginia, the first president of the United States warned Americans not to get mired in Europe’s endless conflicts. This type of foreign policy is unlike anything the United States has practiced in over a century. But perhaps Washington was on to something. We’ll give him the last word:
Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships, or enmities.