From the Atlantic / Yahoo!News:
"Trump’s Betrayal of Ukraine
Now, that system of peace and security received one of its severest tests when Russia accelerated its attack on Ukraine. The war began in 2014 with the attack on Crimea and the occupation of Crimea. But in February of 2022, Russia made a direct lunge for the capital, Kyiv. The heroism and endurance of Ukrainian soldiers beat back the Russians, and Ukraine has continued to fight for its independence to this day. This is a war not about boundaries, but about Ukraine’s sovereign existence. The Russians and President Putin, their dictator, have made it very clear that what they are offended by is that Ukraine imagines it has any right to exist as an independent nation at all.
As Putin has told many people, including American interviewers—including pet American interviewers, like Tucker Carlson when Tucker Carlson interviewed Vladimir Putin—what this war is about from Putin’s point of view is that Ukraine is not a country. It’s just part of Russia. It has no history. It has no language. It has no literature. It has no right to be any kind of separate people at all. It’s little Russia, in his mind, that must be ruled forever by big Russia. The Ukrainians see it otherwise, and they have fought and struggled and died to maintain their national existence...
Biden did seem to understand what was at stake and did want to help, even if it was never in time and never enough. But now, in the Trump presidency, we are in a very different world, a world of outright hostility to Ukraine, where Donald Trump’s goal seems to be to pressure Ukraine, sometimes risking Ukrainian lives, sometimes dooming Ukrainian lives, pressure Ukraine to a negotiated form of submission to Russia.
I don’t know that we have yet or ever will get to the bottom of the reason for Donald Trump’s strange attachment to Russia. The why question—it’s been speculated about, psychological blackmail, cronyism. It’s been speculated about forever. And I have to admit, I sometimes have joined in some of the speculation, but I think always we need to have skepticism about it. We don’t know and maybe we’ll never know the why of the Trump-Russia attachment.
But we can see the what. We can see the thing. We can see that there is something going on here that is way beyond the usual about how Americans feel about foreign dictators—a kind of something that is influencing American policy in ways that are injurious to all kinds of societies, not only Ukraine, and that has biased American policy toward the support of the goals of this aggressive dictatorship in Moscow...
This administration has proven that all those op-eds and think pieces and campaign propaganda about Trump as a dove, as a noninterventionist were nonsense. Trump struck Iran. Right now, there are American Predator drones flying over Mexico. And many in the Trump administration, including the vice president, have talked about using American military force inside Mexico... They’re not noninterventionists. They’re not pacifists. They’re not doves. What they are are people who are hostile to the Ukrainian cause...
Give us a sense of both the military and the economic state as of mid-June 2025.
Brink: Well, I mean, I think one thing’s very clear, is that Putin has figured out that he can show—or pretend, I would say—that he’s ready to negotiate while he continues to fight on the ground and to try to gain more territory and change facts and conditions on the ground. I think that’s a mistake for us to allow that...
Frum: As I listen to you speak, I hope this comes out the right way, because I don’t mean this in any way a disrespectful or querulous point. But I notice you’re arguing with a lot of things that you would think no rational person would propose in the first place.
You’re arguing that Russia is the aggressor, not Ukraine. You are arguing that the defense of this embattled, invaded democracy is something that Americans should care about. You sound a little bit like someone who’s been on the receiving end of arguments with the most anti-democratic, anti-social, anti-American people you can possibly imagine over the past number of months. And that is the judo pose in which you are ready to spring into action.
Am I hearing the reverberation of six months of discussions against people who would say things like, Well, maybe Ukraine’s at fault. Maybe this isn’t important?
Brink: Well, I mean, of course, you’ve heard what the administration and what the president’s position has been, you know, to be some kind of independent—or, yeah, like, independent mediator.
I strongly disagree that that is a position that is good for U.S. interest. In the small sense, and this is really important for Ukraine, it’s really vital that we don’t allow Putin as an aggressor to just change borders by force, because this sets a terrible precedent here. It sets a terrible precedent in other places around the world.
But I think what I want to say is that, more strategically, I think Putin’s goals are much bigger. I don’t think it’s just Ukraine. I think people who think that, Oh, Putin will stop at Ukraine, that’s not my experience in 28 years working in this part of the world. Putin doesn’t stop unless stopped, unless given clear positioning that we and partners will oppose a specific direction. I believe he’s going to keep going. I think it’s clear to me that he wants to reverse Ukraine’s path toward not just the EU, which is where this all started, but also to NATO, to weaken NATO, to divide Europe, and to weaken the United States.
And to me, we need a policy that is strategic in the sense of framing what our actions are to achieve the goal, which I think should be to stop Putin from being successful in this attempt.
Frum: But you’ve spent a lot of time arguing things that one would’ve thought were settled, like this war is Russia’s fault, not Ukraine’s fault.
Brink: Yes...
Frum: ...The United States was late to give Ukraine the things it needed and the chance to score more-decisive gains in the summer of 2023. Maybe it wasn’t ever there, but if it was there, it wasn’t seized. But as I listen to you, I hear the reverberations of something that sounds like some kind of cheesy, paranoid Cold War novel—where back home, in Washington, there are important voices that aren’t people of good faith, aren’t imbued with shared patriotic values, don’t stand up for democracy and actually want to see our friends lose, not our friends win...
We’ve seen how it has sucked the soul out of some of the people who had those, like the secretary of state, once a normal American...
Brink: I think it’s a mistake not to rely on people with expertise in the area. I think it’s a big mistake, especially in Russia. Putin has a larger strategic plan, which is very dangerous to the United States, and we ignore that plan at our peril.
And although he operates tactically, so he can be defeated. But I think it requires a very thoughtful, strategic, coordinated approach, and that’s something that in the second Trump administration, my challenge had been getting advice to the right person, because there are a number of different people who are working on Ukraine and on Russia policy. And in that bifurcated way, it was very difficult to get advice.
And when I asked, How I best relay advice and information? I was told I had to go to a multiple number of people across our government in order to affect the policy because there wasn’t, as I said, a policy process, a decision-making process. And my problem was: I was in a war zone...
Frum: Let me ask one final question: As you departed from Ukraine, when the Ukrainians in the summer of 2025 look back toward the United States, the country that gave them some if maybe not enough aid at the beginning of the war, what do they see now? And what do they think of Americans?
Brink: Well, maybe I’ll tell you a story of my last few days, when I was in Ukraine and met with a very senior official. It was one of my last calls. Basically, he showed me what he said had been presented to the Ukrainians as a possible way forward in terms of a peace negotiation.
That paper, which I won’t go into detail of, included what I would say Putin’s wish list of everything that he wants. And he looked at me and he said, You are our closest strategic partner. That’s all he said. And I had nothing I could say, because I myself, as someone who dedicated a big part of my life to supporting freedom and democracy in Ukraine and in the wider European space for the benefit of Americans, I had nothing to say either.
Frum: They feel that the United States is lost to them.
Brink: I don’t think they understand. I don’t think I understand, or many of us who are experts and long patriots and public servants understand.
Frum: Is it that we don’t understand, or that we do understand and our hearts can’t accept the answer?
Brink: I think it’s a different administration, and it’s a threat to our future, and that’s why I’ve come out. That’s why I left. That’s why I’m speaking publicly. I think it’s bad for America to be where we are. It’s not who we are. And I just—we have to be on the right side of history. There are very few pivotal moments in history. And as someone who has now done this for 28 years, I think it’s vital that we stand on the right side.
Frum: Ambassador Brink, thank you so much for your time today... And we all hope that your service to the United States has not ended and that the United States that you believed in has not ended either.
Brink: I don’t think it has. I’m sure it hasn’t. Thank you. Thank you, David."
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America as I knew it has become a rotten, disgusting, evil shell of its former self. In my heart, it is dead. But I still have kin and friends there. To them, and to all Americans who are trying to bring the light back: Happy 4th of July! And good luck! You surely need it.
