I fully understand President Trump‘s anger on February 19 in demanding economic concessions from Ukraine for the $350 billion, which Biden gave Kyiv since Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022. Unbelievably, Biden irresponsibly required neither loan repayment nor any interest despite our massive national deficit of $36.5 trillion with the interest increasing $1 trillion every one hundred days.
I fully understand Trump’s anger because the American people have never been totally aware of the huge amounts of corruption, graft and theft that have occurred in Ukraine during the last three years. Why the Biden administration did not send a small four-person permanent team of accountants and auditors to monitor the billions of dollars given to Ukraine is beyond my comprehension. However, I can only think of three words to describe Biden‘s decision-making: cognitive decline and stupid.
I fully understand with the widespread corruption in Ukraine how tens of billions of dollars have probably been deposited into secret Swiss bank accounts since 2022 belonging to corrupt Ukrainian military officers, CEOs, Cabinet officials, politicians and most likely Zelensky himself. Meanwhile, 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died, 380,000 have been wounded, 61,000 people have been reported as missing and 3,574 (November 2023) troops taken as prisoners of war mostly along a 800-mile stretch of eastern Ukraine resembling the static World War I trench warfare on the Western front.
Plus, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency as of February 2025 Ukraine has 3.7 million internally displaced people and 6.9 million people living abroad, and about “12.7 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance … including nearly 2 million children.”
I have a plausible theory why President Trump had an astute war of words with President Zelensky on February 19. Trump for unknown and mercurial reasons has scathingly blamed Zelensky instead of the dictator Vladimir Putin for starting the Ukraine war. This is according to a New York Times article entitled “Trump Flips the Script on the Ukraine War, Blaming Zelensky not Putin” written by Peter Baker on February 19.
Trump’s inflammatory remarks did not exactly ingratiate Zelensky to him when the Ukrainian president found out that both Trump and Putin had been having secret meetings prior to February 19 to end the war. In fact, there has been strong speculation according to the New York Times on February 21 that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was “charged by Mr. Trump to reach an agreement to end the war in Ukraine – and potentially turn Russia from an enemy into an ally [my emphasis].”
Trump‘s view of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine embarrassingly contradicts the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. This is both undoubtedly revisionist history and pure “vitriol” at its worst by Trump, which is unbecoming of a U.S president. However, I suspect that Trump is much more concerned about the future of U.S.-Russian diplomatic relations in the 21st century than Ukraine’s immediate fate in 2025.
Trump now sees Zelensky not as a victim, but as a villain in not attempting to negotiate an end to the war. Trump has insultingly called him a “dictator without elections” and a con man for shaking down the United States for $350 billion in military, economic and humanitarian aid with no legal obligation of repayment.
This has further infuriated Trump because all the NATO loans of “EUR 40 billion annually” ($41.8 billion) given to Ukraine in the past three years have to be repaid with interest.
Trump’s “vitriol” towards Zelensky became so bad that he wrote on Truth Social on February 19 that “a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy [sic], talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion [sic] Dollars [sic], to go into a War [sic] that couldn’t be won.”
Trump angrily added, “On top of this, Zelenskyy [sic] admits that half of the money we sent him is “‘MISSING.’” He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls [sic], and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden “‘like a fiddle.’”
According to Trump, Zelensky incredulously cannot account for $175 billion. This accusation reeks of corruption, graft, and theft as previously mentioned.
Plus, I am certain that Trump still harbors deep personal animosity towards Zelensky because during his first impeachment on December 18, 2019 he refused to testify against Hunter and Joe Biden regarding their corruption with Burisma Holdings in Ukraine.
That is in addition to Zelensky’s highly partisan visit to the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Joe Biden’s hometown on September 23, 2024. Indeed, there seems to be much more personal animosity between Trump and Zelensky than there ever was between FDR and de Gaulle from 1940 to 1945.
Trump harshly concluded on Truth Social that the Ukrainian president was a “Dictator without Elections [sic], Zelenskyy [sic] better move fast or he is not going to have a Country [sic] left.” That certainly sounded like a final U S. ultimatum to negotiate an end to the war with Russia.
To say that Trump‘s harsh language towards Zelensky is confusing to both the average Ukrainian and our European allies is truly an understatement. Contrary to Trump‘s harsh criticism, Zelensky presently had a high 57% approval rating according to the Kyiv Independent, and elections cannot be legally held under a declaration of martial law in Ukraine.
My theory is that Trump’s grand strategy is that he is trying to improve diplomatic relations with Russia through “shadow diplomacy,” and slowly dislodge Russia from its “alliance” with Communist China. This would be similar to how President Richard Nixon normalized diplomatic relations with the greatest mass murderer in human history or Mao Zedong of Communist China on February 21, 1972.
Trump’s long term strategy of realpolitik is to isolate our one true enemy or Communist China, and expeditiously transfer many NATO American troops from Europe to the Indo-Pacific.
Trump is obviously much more interested in ending the Russo-Ukrainian war much more on Putin’s terms than on Zelensky’s. However, Putin will never allow Ukraine to join NATO or reclaim Crimea or the conquered Russian-speaking areas of eastern Ukraine
Zelensky may naively think that Ukraine can still defeat Russia with continued NATO military assistance without American support. However, Trump knows that the present war is unwinnable, a financial black hole, and he is looking far into the 21st century with a hope of a post-Putin Russia on the side of the West or at least neutral to it and not allied with Communist China.
Of course, Trump’s view of Zelensky could still positively change if a satisfactory draft agreement is soon reached to give the U.S a cost sharing agreement to 50% or a significant portion of Ukraine‘s rare earth minerals and natural gas rights, which is estimated to be worth $500 billion. This would also include an American-Ukrainian military and economic security agreement with Ukraine becoming a neutral country like Switzerland, Austria or Serbia.
Meanwhile, Trump is playing worldwide three-dimensional chess wanting to turn Putin’s Russia and his successors into western sympathetic allies for the remainder of the century along with promoting greater economic and political development with the Kremlin. Unfortunately, Zelensky is playing local geopolitical checkers in a dangerous proxy war, which he can neither win nor fund with NATO’s military assistance in the next four years because of continued heavy casualties, chronic military desertion, widespread draft evasion and ultimately Russian military superiority.
Besides, what American in his or her rational mind really wants to risk World III over a Russo-Ukrainian proxy war?