Everything Putin ever wanted

The endgame for Ukraine is bleak, but let Russia drink bitter water rather than toast their victory in the White House.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan to decapitate Ukraine failed in February 2022, and his troops were humiliatingly booted from the Kiev area, the war settled into a bloody stalemate of land mines, drones, artillery, and missile strikes. In this war, time is on Putin’s side, even if he is losing manpower at a frightening pace. Ukraine is losing too, with a lot less to lose.

Vladimir Putin chaired, via videoconference, a meeting on current issues with permanent members of the Security Council, the Kremlin, 1 April 2025. Photo credit: The Kremlin

President Donald Trump is not wrong when he called Ukaine a “killing field.” However he is tremendously wrong to blame Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky for “prolonging” the killing, when it is Putin who continues to flood Ukrainian skies with missiles intended to inflict civilian casualties. It does not take a genius to know Putin’s war plan, even from before the 2024 elections. He was willing to take a half million casualties (up to a quarter of a million dead) to wait out U.S. political resolve, to get to the point where we are at right now.

That point is, the current U.S. administration is tired of maintaining Ukraine’s war goals, which is to repatriate a hundred percent of its seized territory, including Crimea. Republicans in Congress are just fine cutting Americans’ taxes, or doing nothing to tie the president’s hands in inflicting massive economic damage on our country with tariffs and chaos. But they are not fine with giving billions more to fight Russia and beat them.

Long-term, I am not sure of the viability of the Ukraine war plan handed to Trump by former President Joe Biden. I think it was untenable to sacrifice Ukrainian soldiers while giving them weapons, ammunition, technology, and—the most important help—real-time intelligence in their war. The Russians have dug in in the Donbas, planting more mines than the entire Vietnam War, or even the Balkans in the 90s, where they are still digging out and clearing mine fields. It is foolhardy to plan or attempt a ground assault across the Dnieper River and the muddy marshes surrounding it to take and hold Russian-occupied land.

Ukraine does not have enough resources to expand its salient into Russia, and in fact Russians are now pushing hard to retake Ukraine-occupied land in the Kursk oblast. These are facts.

Trump’s remark about “killing fields” mostly refers to Russian dead, however. So to save Russian lives, Trump and Republicans want to end the war, and force Ukraine to sacrifice land to do it. This gives Putin everything he ever wanted. If Putin walks away with a more-or-less permanent cease-fire agreement that hands him Crimea and all land occupied by Russia in the Donbas, which Russia claims is now annexed to itself, then he has won.

Carving Ukraine into zones where Europeans need to defend the Kiev and western areas, with a no-mans-land in the middle as a buffer, and Russia keeping the Donbas is only a recipe to kick the can down the road for when Putin, or his successor, violates the agreement and goes for the rest of the prize. This has been known since before the war—I wrote about it in January 2022: “Let’s be clear: Russia wants Ukraine more than NATO wants it.”

The U.K. or France, or even Poland, is not willing to place its own troops in harm’s way against Russian, or North Korean, soldiers, in order to preserve whatever political independence Kiev enjoys. One day, Zelensky will not be the leader of that nation, and there’s not a small chance that its next leader might be more open to bribery, corruption, or Russian pressure to move closer to Moscow’s camp. Then the calculus will be entirely different than it is today.

Trump’s and Vance’s plan hands political control of Ukraine more or less to Putin now, kind of like an escrow agreement that will become open to Russia when it matures.

I have always thought that the window for clear action was in 2022, and Biden missed it completely, cowing to Putin’s nuclear threats. I don’t think nuclear threats would cow Trump, but it doesn’t matter at this point, because Trump values dealing with Putin more than he does honoring Zelensky, who Trump considers his enemy due to his first impeachment—that will never fade. Zelensky will continue to be the problem in Trump’s world, even when it’s really Putin who is the monster.

My position here is divided. One half of me would like to see the war end, and knowing the reality on the ground, the only end would be what Vance and Trump are advancing. The other half hoists the middle finger at the monster and says, you know what, let Ukraine fight to the end, even if it means they lose and take out another half million Russians. Whether we give them another dime or another bullet is not the point, it’s that this is Russia’s killing field, and Russia must pay in blood. If the rest of Europe wants to involve themselves, good.

Today, I am favoring the half of me that tells Putin where to stick his missiles and fire them. Giving Putin everything he ever wanted at the end of his own war plan—which was focused on getting exactly to where we are now—is just wrong. If Secretary of State Marco Rubio says we will “move on,” then let Zelensky show them the door. Better than the Russians drink bitter water rather than toast to their victory in the White House.

SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS: You can follow us on social media at several different locations. Official Racket News pages include:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NewsRacket
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/NewsRacket
Mastodon: https://federated.press/@RacketNews

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@theracketnews
David: https://www.threads.net/@captainkudzu71
Steve: https://www.threads.net/@stevengberman

Our personal accounts on the platform formerly known as Twitter:

David: https://twitter.com/captainkudzu
Steve: https://twitter.com/stevengberman
Jay: https://twitter.com/curmudgeon_NH

Thanks again for subscribing! Don’t forget to share us with your friends!