Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump said at least 53 rimes in 2023 and 2024 that, as President, he would end the war in Ukraine “in one day.”

Now well over 400 days since his inauguration as President, Russia’s war against Ukraine continues.

Russia’s brutal, illegal war against Ukraine, illegal under international law as partly developed by Jamestown’s own Robert H. Jackson, Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, has lasted longer than World War II for the United States (December 7, 1941-Auugust 14, 1945).

What is difficult to understand is why the Trump Administration does not side completely with a democratic Ukraine that has been invaded by Putin’s Russia.

In early March 2025, Trump proposed a 30-day “unconditional ceasefire” which Ukraine agreed to. Russia’s Putin said “No.”

On May 8, 2025, Trump again proposed a 30-day cease fire. Ukraine’s President Zelinsky immediately agreed. Russia’s Putin said “No.”

No cease fire has ever happened, only because Russia has not wanted one.

Only one country in NATO and the European Union (EU), Hungary, has been an ally of Putin in the Russian war against Ukraine. Hungary’s President, Viktor Orban, has repeatedly blocked NATO and EU assistance to Ukraine.

What is difficult to understand is why the Trump Administration joined with Putin’s Russia to try to re-elect Orban in the April 12 Hungarian election. The Vice President of the United States even traveled to Hungary to campaign with Orban. Why?

To the relief of NATO and the EU the people of Hungary, with a record 80% voter turnout, defeated Orban and his party by about a 2:1 margin.

Since Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the West has imposed sanctions on the export of Russian oil and gas. (Russia’s oil and gas (and vodka) is about all they have to sell. No one buys Russian cars or commercial aircraft or other manufactured goods).

As part of Trump’ war in Iran (he has not sought any Congressional authorization of any kind for this sustained military action), Trump has lifted sanctions on Russia’s oil shipments, directly resulting in billions of oil dollars flowing into Putin’s depleted war machine. Why?

When Trump was confronted by the press that Russia was providing Iran (an original member of President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil”} with intelligence helping Iran target U.S. military installations and American forces, he downplayed Russia’s help to our enemy of 47 years. He noted that if Russia is aiding Iran, it is similar to the U.S. aiding Ukraine, stating, “They do it and we do it.”

Why does the President of the United States see a moral equivalence between the United States helping a democratic country that was no threat to Russia or anyone else defend itself from an invasion by Russia, and Russia helping Iran, a terrorist state that threatens the Middle East and much of the West declaring “Death to America” for 47 years? Why?

Why does the President of the United States liken the President of Ukraine, Zelensky, to P.T. Barnum, when the rest of the Western world likens him to Winston Churchill when Churchill and Great Britian stood alone against Adolph Hitler and the Nazis in 1940?

P.T. Barnum is known for saying “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Winston Churchill on June 4, 1940, told his besieged nation: “We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight…on landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender….” Why does Trump not stand shoulder to shoulder with Zelensky as he does with Netanyahu?

Zelensky has never once asked the United States to put any of the members of our military at risk to defend Ukraine against Putin’s Russian invasion. All he has ever asked for are American weapons that can counter the might of the former Soviet Union superpower.

Many of us will not live long enough for historians to discover what in the world is going on here with our government’s lack of unconditional support for helping Ukraine have the means to defend itself (unlike our government’s support for much of Israel’s military actions in Gaza and support for Israel’s decision to go to war in Iran, and according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, bringing along American military personnel to be placed in harm’s way).

Fred Larson is a graduate of the Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Yale Law School and is a retired Jamestown City Court judge.