https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p/trumps-turn-against-ukraine-and-eu
Trump’s turn against Ukraine and Europe’s leadership
Published by gilbertdoctorow
Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels. View all posts by gilbertdoctorow
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Well, at least those who claimed that Ukraine was simply an American puppet were proven wrong. Rather, the US was always a restraining force on Ukraine, not an enabling or encouraging force. Even in the Biden era, the US was a restraining force on Ukrainian desire for revenge. Biden kept denying Ukrainian requests for more advanced weapons and permission to strike deep inside Russia. Ukraine could have struck Russian oil refineries and critical infrastructure in 2022 instead of waiting until 2026. The only reason Ukraine had to wait until 2026 was because they had to build their own military industrial base first. And it’s now quite formidable.
If Trump severs the relationship with Ukraine, that only makes the situation more dangerous for Russia. Trump may have just destroyed the leverage that he has on Ukraine. Why should Zelensky listen to him now? Zelensky can finally take the gloves off, and Russia is about to find out what an unhinged defender fighting for their home is ready to do.
Ukraine is more than capable of striking independently with its own domestically produced missiles and drones, and also with whatever the Europeans will now let them have. Without US restrictions, Ukrainian attacks are likely to increase and become more devastating, not less. The Ukrainian army does not need US intelligence to find Yandex data centers or Russian oil refineries or power plants or cargo highways on Google Maps.
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