Trump and His White House Tried to Throw Ukraine Under the Bus in 2025, But Europe Stepped Up

March 2 ------ Three years into Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, with Trump’s ascension to power, the United States of America reneged on its promise to help Ukrainians defending their families and homes “as long as it takes” against a full-scale military attack by a police state intent on wiping their country off the map.

Engineered by President Donald J. Trump and a Congress controlled by his allies, the almost-overnight cancellation of US backing to a Ukrainian nation fighting for its survival, and the traditional American values of Democracy and Freedom, rocked the NATO alliance to its foundations. America’s abandonment of Ukraine was, by far, the most significant geopolitical event not just of the fourth year of the Russo-Ukraine War, but of the entire war itself.

As the year has played out, Ukrainians and their allies have, at times with difficulty, but also with tenacity and persistence, found their footing following that military-diplomatic body blow (in Ukraine, the common expression is “betrayal”) by the US and its government. For the first time since the early 1900s, arguably, the great European capitals Berlin, Paris, London and Warsaw – along with significant help from Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Prague and Den Hague, among others – have united, found resources, hashed out alternative support schemes and collectively mastered a continental security crisis – all very much without Washington.

A tenet of MAGA dogma is that effete Europe can neither act collectively nor fight a war effectively. That turned out not to be true. That result, achieved by a coalition of Europe’s leading states without one thin dime of American funding, was achieved sometimes in the face of bluntly cynical White House pressure for quick concessions to Russia. But as the fourth year of the Russo-Ukraine War turns into its fifth, Kremlin assaults are mostly stalled along a 1,100-kilometre front, and Russian soldier casualty counts are at record highs.

The end of US military and financial support, with the Trump administration in power, is a matter of record, but so is the European replacement of that assistance. When the Trump regime pulled the plug on Ukraine, taxpayers across Europe, but particularly in Germany, Britain and Scandinavia, have stepped in, and, by and large, they have filled the gap. Once in power, the Trump administration declared Ukraine unimportant to the US and Trump, famously, in a late February 2025 face-to-face meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded Ukraine make concessions to Russia immediately because “you have no cards.”

Meanwhile, US Vice President JD Vance, sitting smugly on a nearby sofa, mocked the wartime president for wearing black military fatigues, in solidarity with Ukrainian defenders, instead of his Wall Street-style business suit. The White House ended all future arms deliveries and financing to Ukraine, and already-paid-for (by vote in the US Congress) assistance that the AFU (Ukrainian Armed Forces) was depending on became conditional.

For ten days in March, all weapons and military intelligence sharing was stopped completely, per a White House demand for Ukrainian acceptance of a ceasefire and Russian troops in Ukrainian territory, without any preconditions or Russian concessions. Another arbitrary cutoff affecting short-range Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, long-range PAC-3/Patriot interceptor missiles, and AIM-9 air-to-air missiles, and ground-launched precision-guided munitions was imposed during July.

Source: kyivpost.com