Never, Never Underestimate Ukraine

First there was Donald Trump calling Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator.” Then there was the infamous, heated exchange at the White House on Friday, where Ukraine’s wartime leader was accused of not being grateful enough for years of U.S. support. Then there was a U.S. decision on Tuesday to pause aid, and another one on Wednesday to cut off intelligence sharing. 

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Now the Trump Administration is considering stripping legal status for 240,000 Ukrainians in the U.S. who fled the Russian invasion, potentially putting them on a fast track for deportation.

These are the moves of a U.S. President throwing a tantrum over Ukraine, trying to twist its arm like it’s some kind of personal colonial asset or Banana Republic. All with the expectation that Ukraine will just roll over and sign a “peace deal” with no security guarantees.

No negotiations, no discussions, no pesky Ukrainian democracy—just kiss the ring and get on with it. 

Yet Trump is making the same mistake as Vladimir Putin—grossly underestimating Ukraine as a sovereign nation determined to survive. And, as history keeps showing us, that is a terrible idea.

This is where Trump and Putin, two very different men with a Ukraine problem, collide with reality. Trump, much like Putin, sees Ukraine as an inconvenience, an obstacle, something that should be grateful to even have a seat at the table. Instead, to his visible frustration on Friday, he met a leader who wouldn’t grovel. The upshot was an unprecedented public spat between two wartime allies that saw Zelensky storm out of the White House before a minerals deal could be penned.
Putin made a similar blunder when he convinced himself that Ukraine was some kind of fake country, created by Vladimir Lenin as a clerical error. He expected a leisurely parade into Kyiv and instead walked straight into a nightmare of his own making—one where demoralized “peasants” from Russian jokes turned out to be one of the world’s best warfighters with an entire society fiercely backing them.

Like Putin, Trump just doesn’t get Ukraine. His approach hasn’t weakened the Ukrainian President. If anything, it’s done the opposite. Even people who can’t stand Zelensky’s failures have given him credit for standing his ground. That’s because Trump’s approach isn’t just an insult to Zelensky but to Ukraine itself—its institution of national leadership. And if there’s one thing Ukrainians love more than anything, it’s proving arrogant world leaders wrong.

Trump doesn’t see the nation behind the name. Instead, his Administration is sending feelers out to opposition figures like Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko—both of whom only 6% to 10% voters say they would back. Neither has a realistic chance of leading Ukraine in free and fair elections—with Zelensky and war hero General Valeriy Zaluzhny the clear frontrunners.

If the idea is to find a more compliant Ukrainian leader, good luck with that. Putin tried the same thing with his long-time collaborator Viktor Medvedchuk, his pick for a puppet leader, before Medvedchuk was arrested on treason charges in April 2022.

That’s because—and this part is key—this war isn’t about Zelensky. It’s about the people. It’s about the 1 million men and women serving in Ukraine’s army, standing in trenches, dodging drones, evacuating the wounded, and keeping the front lines intact. It’s about the millions more who are keeping the country running, raising funds, developing new weapons, and refusing to break under relentless Russian bombardment.

History is full of examples of what happens when an army loses the will to fight—the Syrian regime’s collapse in December, the Russian front in World War I. That’s not happening here. Russia is advancing and inflicting heavy losses on Ukraine. But Ukraine is still standing because Ukrainians are still willing to pay the price for their survival. Yes, Western weapons help greatly—but weapons don’t fight wars. People do.

Which brings us back to Trump’s decision to pause military aid and intelligence sharing. It’s a terrible blow to the defenders of Ukraine.
But, again, it won’t force Ukraine to surrender any time soon or accept a peace deal without security guarantees. If there’s one thing this war has proven, it’s that Ukrainians are good at improvising when they have to. When Russian firepower became overwhelming, they introduced and mastered things like FPV drones and naval drones, which effectively revolutionized modern warfare.

Ukraine has options. Europe is still in the game. The country’s domestic weapons production is ramping up. Across Ukraine, small workshops—what some call the “shadow military-industrial complex”—are working 24/7 to keep the war effort going. Ideas on how to mitigate the damage from Trump’s siding with Putin are boiling.

As long as we the people want to keep our country we love, there is always a way forward.

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