The West gets ready to cut & run on Ukraine

Berlin signals the direction of Europe's support by cutting military support to Kyiv by half next year as the Trump-Vance appeasement bandwagon rolls on.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Finance Minister Christian Lindner.

That didn’t take long. Now we know what the collective West meant when its leaders said they would support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”

This means “for as long as it takes” Ukraine to understand that it will soon be on its own, so Kyiv had better hurry and figure out how much of its territory and independence it is willing to surrender to Moscow.

Can it be any clearer?

The Trump-Vance team, which could rule America until 2029, is eager to drop Ukraine. Trump is a dictator-loving fool who will give Vladimir Putin what he wants. Donald Trump’s choice of J.D. Vance, who has publicly said he doesn’t care what happens to Ukraine, ranks as one of the most explicit political messages ever delivered.

Germany, which had pretensions of being the new security leader in Europe, has decided to pursue fiscal austerity instead. As Vance accepted the nomination for vice president on Wednesday, news broke that Berlin is cutting its military support to Ukraine by half next year—from 8 billion euros to 4 billion euros.

Its finance minister, Christian Linder, is cynically sending the message that there is nothing to worry about because Ukraine will have a $50 billion upfront loan to be repaid through profits on frozen Russian assets.

That is such an immoral claim. First, the $50 billion is nowhere near enough for Ukraine to prevail on the battlefield, and Germany knows this. Second, with the prospect of Trump-Vance taking over the White House, Germany should double its military commitment to Ukraine—not cut it in half. This appeasement will only fuel Trump’s already enormous contempt for Europe and confirm his belief that Ukraine is Europe’s problem.

This betrayal comes from a nation that is No. 2 in military support for Ukraine, behind only the United States.

No one else in the West is even in the ballpark. France talks a big game but delivers little. The UK would love to spend more, or so it says, but it can’t afford to – so Ukraine is stuck with $4 billion a year from London. Canada is pathetic: far from delivering on the promise “as much as it takes, for as long as it takes,” as Boy Justin likes to say, Canada is a perpetual free rider on the United States for its defense. Ottawa recently announced feebly that it hopes to meet its NATO commitment of spending the minimum 2% of gross domestic product on defense by…2032. What a joke.

Yes, the Baltics, the Nordic nations, and Poland are contributing more than their share, but collectively, they are too small to make a big difference in the war.

Where does this leave Ukraine?

In big trouble.

Financially, things are so bad that the mouthpieces of its richest billionaire, Rinat Akhmetov, are running around the world trying to drum up financial support to keep the lights on and the electrical grid in Ukraine protected from Russian bombs. Things might get so bad that Akhmetov, owner of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, might have to sell his billion-dollar portfolio of mansions and other real estate or divest from other nations’ energy sectors.

None of the so-called “security agreements” that Ukraine is signing with other nations require those nations to send troops to help defend Kyiv, nor do they represent ironclad financial commitments, as Berlin’s 2025 budget cut shows.

Does this mean Ukraine will collapse?

No. The nation is too big and too committed to its independence at this stage to collapse, and it faces a foe that is destructive and dangerous, but ineffective.

But it does not mean that Russia will give up. Nor will Moscow collapse, as pundits (including me) keep hoping. That is wishful thinking.

But it does mean that Ukraine may have to make painful compromises that will reshape its future.

While it can justifiably blame the Western allies for not doing their part, Ukraine must shoulder some blame. We all know that for decades, Ukraine’s elite lined their pockets with fabulous fortunes while not building the nation's defenses, educational system, and so on.

We also know that mistakes continue to occur. For all the good that President Volodymyr Zelensky has done, he bungled the military manpower and many other issues.

Any nation whose territory is nearly 20% occupied by a foreign enemy should have transformed into a military society long ago. That is not happening in Ukraine, even though Russia’s war started 10 years ago (in Donbas and Crimea). The current Ukrainian forces are outnumbered, outgunned, and exhausted. Belatedly, the nation is scrambling to draft and train a fresh crop of men to replace them at the front.

Ukraine can complain about the lack of Western weaponry. But Kyiv spent years degrading its own military, selling off its own weapons stocks, and letting corrupt insiders or Russian traitors dominate the industry.

The Victory Parade is not coming. There will be no magic Victory Day to circle and celebrate on the calendar. Given the genocidal nature of its immovable neighbor, Ukraine will have to fight for generations to come if it wants to keep its statehood.

Ukraine just surveyed its fighting-age men and found 5 million out there. Drafting, training, and arming them (with Western help) would be a good place to start turning the war more decisively in the nation’s favor.