On May 19th, after a two-hour phone call with American President Donald Trump, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin made a promise. Putin promised that he would work with Ukraine on a memorandum to advance president Trump’s effort to end the Ukraine War, the War that Donald Trump told voters he would stop in his first 24 hours in office.
But work on that Putin memorandum never began. Instead, Putin attacked Ukraine with almost a thousand drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles in just three nights. On just one of those nights, according to the Associated Press, “Russia hit Ukraine with 367 drones and missiles, including 69 missiles and 298 drones.”
It was as if Putin were flipping the bird to peace efforts and to, of all people, America’s president Donald Trump.
In response, on Sunday May 25th at 8:46 PM, Donald Trump tweeted something on Truth Social that defied the norms of diplomacy.
“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia,” Trump tweeted, “but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever. I’ve always said that he wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia!”
That’s a disturbing notion, the downfall of Russia. After all, if Russia goes down, it will want to take us with it.
However the media on both the left and the right interpreted Trump’s Tweet as revealing something powerful: that the scales had finally fallen from our president’s eyes and he had seen that Putin is not a golden god but the maker of a catastrophic war.
Newsweek crowed that “Trump Turns on Putin.” ABC News said, “Trump attacks Putin.’ The Latin Times said “Trump’s souring on Putin.” And Fox News said, Trump warns Putin is ‘playing with fire’.
But Trump wasn’t just turning on Putin. Trump was also turning on Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Said Trump on Truth Social, “President Zelensky is doing his Country no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop.”
All of this leads to a very big question. Some hoped that President Trump now realized that Vladimir Putin, the man who attacked Ukraine for no reason three years ago, is a villain. But if so, what is president Trump going to do about it? As ABC put it, “Will he impose consequences?”
Right now, at least four of Trump’s loyal Republicans are working on those consequences. Like Lindsay Graham’s push to levy a massive 500% tariff on goods from any nation that buys oil from Russia. And Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s commitment to move a bill punishing Russia through the Senate if Putin refuses to negotiate in good faith.
However sanctions like this have done nothing to stop Putin’s attacks on Ukraine in the past and are not likely to stop Putin in the future.
Meanwhile, a truly horrific crisis looms. Today Ukraine is able to fight on because of arms shipments that were authorized in December 2024 by Joe Biden. But those arms shipments are rapidly coming to an end. If they are not renewed, Ukraine’s ability to defend itself will drop disastrously.
Will Donald Trump continue arms shipments to Ukraine? There’s every sign that he won’t. Trump asserts, “This is Zelenskyy’s, Putin’s, and Biden’s War, not ‘Trump’s.’” Trump adds that he would prefer to “”just back away and they’re going to have to keep going.” On their own. Or as J.D. Vance puts it, “We are more than willing to walk away.”
And if President Trump does turn his back, Ukraine will lose to Vladimir Putin. Russia will take over Ukraine and will brutalize a people it regards as cockroaches. But there’s worse.
Ukraine will become the stepping stone to what Vladimir Putin really wants: all of Eastern Europe and the Baltic nations that were under Russian control in the days of the Soviet Union. Putin wants to be a builder of the Russian Empire like the tsars of old. He wants to acquire control over vast new realms.
Will President Donald J. Trump let him do it?
References:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114571369956761390
https://kyivindependent.com/us-weapons-aid-to-ukraine-is-about-to-run-out/
https://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
Timofei Sergeitsev, What Should Russia Do With Ukraine?, RIA Novosti, https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html
Dugin, A. G. (1997). Osnovy geopolitiki: Geopoliticheskoe budushchee Rossii [The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia]. Arktogeia.
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/understanding-bellicose-apocalypticism-of-aleksandr-dugin/13947756
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5321889-trump-putin-ukraine-ceasefire-stalls/
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/vice-presidential-pool-reports-may-19-2025
https://www.newsweek.com/maga-divided-trump-turns-putin-2077211
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/25/politics/trump-putin-ukraine-airstrikes
Trump attacks Putin over Ukraine onslaught but will he impose consequences?
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About the author: Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. Bloom’s new book is The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong. Says Harvard’s Ellen Langer of The Case of the Sexual Cosmos, Bloom “argues that we are not savaging the earth as some would have it, but instead are growing the cosmos. A fascinating read.” One of Bloom’s eight previous books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. Bloom’s work has been published in scientific journals and in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. Says Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution’s End and The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, “I have finished Howard Bloom’s [first two] books, The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, in that order, and am seriously awed, near overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he has done. I never expected to see, in any form, from any sector, such an accomplishment. I doubt there is a stronger intellect than Bloom’s on the planet.” For more, see http://howardbloom.net or http://howardbloom.institute
