The Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Trump, Putin, and Zelensky

Although Trump has significantly corrected his attitude towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there are several things that people should know about Trump’s record on that issue. 

First is the fact that in general he is very deferential to Russian President Vladimir Putin. This has taken the form of Trump siding (for example) in July 2018 with Putin over his own intelligence community when it came to the allegation that Russia interfered with the 2016 election hoping to help Trump get elected. Trump’s initial response to the February 2022 full-fledged Russian invasion of Ukraine was that Putin was “smart.” In the Spring, Summer and Fall of 2025 Trump would occasionally express a negative opinion of Putin’s behavior in relation to the war but continued to occasionally act as if Putin was a partner for peace (i.e. at the August 2025 Summit between the two leaders).

Why is Trump so deferential to Putin? In addition to reading a huge number of relevant articles at CNN, Politico, the BBC and some miscellaneous sources, I read the 2018 book “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump” by David Corn and Michael Isikoff. They don’t analyze hardly anything AFTER the 2016 election, but there’s plenty of material about how Trump admires Putin and is connected to him in a few ways. There’s some small possibility that Putin has a compromising video of Trump.

More generally we know that Trump likes strongman leaders (including El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, and many others). Although this will not be a lengthy description of Russia’s democratic deficit, Putin is widely seen as a strongman. Some bases for this includes the legal shackling of pro-democracy foreign NGOs, the extreme suppression of gay rights and information about homosexuality itself, and the muzzling of any anti-war voices in the last four years. In Trump’s first administration Mike Pompeo was for one year Director of the CIA and then spent three years as Secretary of State. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Pompeo said that Putin, with his KGB background, knows how to “use power” and should therefore be respected.             

It’s also possible that Trump is friendlier to Putin than Ukraine’s President Zelensky partly because the latter is socially liberal. Although Trump makes it difficult to say that he hates the LGB in LGBTQ+, he is certainly on the HOMOPHOBIC half of the spectrum between HOMOPHOBIC and ANTI-HOMOPHOBIC, while Zelensky has expressed support for gay marriage. Zelensky is also against anti-Muslim bigotry. And as far as I can tell, Zelensky has also lobbied non-white nations for support without referring to them as “shit-hole countries.” (On a brief, related note, between this paragraph and the fact that Zelensky is partly Jewish, Putin’s propaganda when the war started, that there was a serious Nazi problem in Ukraine, was nonsense)

Although it is almost ancient history at this point, we need to take a closer look at the February 2025 meeting in the Oval Office where Trump and VP Vance attacked Zelensky. There’s a lot of details about the amount of aid sent Ukraine’s way that I won’t go into here but which undermine Trump’s idea that Zelensky was an ungrateful brat. There’s one thing about that which seems to have been barely mentioned in the mainstream media. When Zelensky came to the White House that day he brought a special gift for Trump. Trump is at least moderately if not seriously into martial arts and Zelenksy brought Oleksandr Usyk's 2024 undisputed heavyweight world boxing championship belt as a gift for Trump. He made a small mis-step and postponed presenting it to Trump- after Trump and Vance ambushed him he left the Oval Office and almost nothing has been heard about the belt since then.

There are three more aspects of Trump’s failure to support the VICTIM of the invasion, and one is that he briefly pushed the idea that UKRAINE was the aggressor in the war. Trump was probably saying it because he’s pro-Putin, but it also reminds me of what a lot of American progressives believe about the war. Whether it’s coming from Trump or the Left, it should be understood that Ukraine is definitely the victim- the Russian military crossed the border, it wasn’t the other way. Some progressives believe that Ukraine’s desire to join NATO justified the invasion. I have no idea how people who are usually driven by a strong opposition to state aggression believe that WANTING to join a military alliance which MIGHT be a threat to Russia is worse than ACTUALLY INVADING Ukraine. If Ukraine had invaded Russia that would be as bad as what Russia actually did. Ukraine was nowhere near invading Russia and they are clearly the smaller, weaker state which had already been militarily violated twice by Russia. It’s Orwellian. 

(Trump leans towards supporting Russia not because he thinks the invasion is legally a good cause, but partially for the same reason that he recognized Israel’s claim to sovereignty over the Golan Heights- he agrees with his Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller who said “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power”)

Trump has some times suggested that Zelensky is an illegitimate President because elections haven’t taken place since the invasion. This is nonsense. Because of the war martial-law has been declared and elections held under those conditions would be illegitimate. No one has said that the United Kingdom (outside of Northern Ireland) was no democracy during WWII even though they suspended normal politics and did so when practically ZERO parts of the Union were occupied by a foreign power and when there was a barrier (the sea) between them and their enemies.

The very last thing I’ll talk about is the main thing that inspired me to write this- it’s something that I don’t think anyone has said in defense of Zelensky. Part of the rationale for the Oval Office ambush of Zelensky was that he dressed very casually for a meeting IN THE OVAL OFFICE WITH THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT. At the beginning of the war Zelensky decided that he would dress in a military style to express that he was symbolically with Ukraine’s soldiers in harms way. He wore that outfit all the time, including meeting with other governments. Apparently Trump and his supporters decided that was dis-respectful of Trump. The thing is, Trump loves the idea of being some kind of “war-time president.” During the first several months of the Pandemic he tried that, apparently thinking that leading during a major health crisis was similar enough to leading during armed conflict with a foreign nation. In Aug 2025 he declared that he was a “war hero” (apparently because he decided that Netanyahu was a “war hero” and Trump was supporting Netanyahu or maybe Trump just felt left out and so declared that he and Netanyahu were “war heroes”) The thing is, Zelensky was a war-time leader for real, in a conflict where a decent chunk of his country was either occupied or made up the front lines, where initially a massive effort was made to seize the Ukrainian capitol and where the invasion involved tanks, soldiers armed with powerful fully automatic rifles etc. Zelensky’s status as a war-time leader is twice as legitimate as George W. Bush’s was, and Trump has ZERO claim to being a war-time leader. Although this can be taken too far and I’m not sure if I can be totally non-political about this, tweaking some of the rules of statehood to accommodate a real War-Time leader seems appropriate, especially in this case (in the movie “Iron Jawed Angels” when suffragettes continue protesting the President after America entered World War I they were severely criticized for protesting a war-time President but they shouldn’t have been).

Trump is on the side of aggression, land-grabs, social conservatism, and is in no position to be criticizing political leaders when it comes to how democratic they are. Although the cause of Ukraine is not something that energizes me as a socialist, it is an important cause and I’m glad to say that most Saturdays when I protest Trump with local progressives near a Tesla dealership in Superior (CO), there’s usually one or two Ukrainian flags held by the protestors.

 

An earlier post on the war is here. 

My Position on Ukraine

As I’ll explain below, I basically support Ukraine. I don’t see a Nazi problem there any more serious than what most white countries have, I don’t see why it’s so important for Russia to intervene in support of the the Russia population in Ukraine, I find Putin offensive for various reasons, etc. However I am also concerned about a war starting between the US and Russia.

About 40% of my info for this is from CNN, about 40% is from NPR, and the rest is miscellaneous stuff including Dave Anderson’s column.

1. I have heard almost nothing about a current problem with Nazis in Ukraine. According to Dave Anderson in the Boulder Weekly, the Nazis are no longer politically significant. I DID read on CNN.com about a battalion of the Ukrainian military that is more right-wing than most military units. But I got the impression it was also not very significant. I have read that the President of Ukraine is Jewish, probably less than 100%. And although it’s not a good sign for him that I feel a need to say this, I get the impression he is okay with people of color (he recently addressed some body of the African Union and met with his counterpart from Indonesia). I have read of Putin making vague references to Nazism in Ukraine, but they’re incredibly vague. I have heard some stuff making me think that RUSSIA is the one with the Nazi problem.
2. I have heard almost nothing about Russian-speaking people being oppressed in Ukraine. I’m not sure what to think of what happened with Viktor Yanukovych. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but everything else I have read indicates that Ukraine is a healthy democracy and aside from the thing about Yanukovych I have not heard of anything about the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine being oppressed.
3. I don’t believe that NATO expansion explains what Putin is doing to Ukraine and I’m certain it doesn’t justify it. Putin has been acting like an imperialist- taking little bits here and there into his State or at least his spheres of influence- parts of Georgia, then a part of Ukraine and now more of Ukraine.
4. I cannot understand why anyone would blame the Ukrainian people for fighting back. At least some part of that population is going to be under the rule of a foreign nation, a foreign nation that has shown zero respect for the Ukrainian people (what Putin said shortly before the invasion, and what his forces have been doing as part of the invasion). I can only imagine how horrible that is.
5. I don’t like Putin. Last I heard, about 15-20 years ago, he made governors in Russia appointed instead of elected. He’s friendly with Trump. He’s incredibly homophobic. In general he seems pretty repulsive to me. My hope is that if the Ukraine invasion is too costly (in economic and military terms) it might weaken Putin.

6. Practically every European country that is not Russia is in NATO. And some of the exceptions are in the EU which is also supporting Ukraine. Critics of Biden’s Ukraine policy have been out-voted by almost all of Europe that is not Russia. They are worried about Russian aggression.

I realize what I just wrote might not change many minds. I’ve only been reading about 1,000 words a day about the conflict and related issues and in earlier years I am sure I missed a lot of relevant stuff. But I do support Ukraine.

I AM worried about the US getting into a war with Russia. In fact, in 2016 I told 1-3 people that Russia was the only issue where I preferred Trump over Clinton (I voted for Clinton (there were enough serious problems with Trump (i.e. he accepted support from David Duke) that I ignored the fact CO is not a swing state and failed to vote for a good 3rd party)). I can’t believe that Zelensky repeatedly asked for a no-fly zone and I’m really glad that Biden answered with a firm NO. I think the US can help Ukraine defend itself and at the same time avoid a conflict with Russia (Vietnam didn't become WWIII and neither did Afghanistan in the 1980s). Although I ended up looking a little stupid with that book review about nuclear war, the tension between the US and Russia is one of the reasons I am trying to promote the book and discussion about nuclear war.

Tom