Trump is now directly helping Russia kill Ukrainians.

Three episodes from the past week show that the U.S. President has gone over to the dark side.

(Kyiv on fire after Russian bomb attacks, June 2025)

BY MICHAEL ANDERSEN

As we have seen several times before in the Trump-Ukraine-Putin triangle, the latest trigger for the U.S. President’s latest round of Ukraine bashing seems to have been a Ukrainian ‘action’, or rather a Ukrainian re-action to the Russian invasion: June 1, the so-called ‘Spider web’ drone operation took out a good chunk of the Russian bomber fleet. In reality, it was self-defense: according to the Ukrainian Ambassador to Australia, so far Russian bombs carried by drones and bomber planes have killed 12,000 civilians in Ukraine.

In March, we saw how Volodymyr Zelensky ‘not saying thank you’ nor wearing a suit at the Oval Office bust-up on February 28, triggered Donald Trump to cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

I am unsure how many Americans realize that the March pause in U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine - which helped the Ukrainian army neutralize Russian attacks - according to an investigation by TIME magazine, cost “hundreds of dead”.

Meaning that the U.S. President deliberately helped the Russian dictator kill Ukrainians. And now we are seeing this deadly game repeated. The U.S. President basically playing God, deciding who dies and who lives.

Exhibit one: Trump hating on operation ‘Spiderweb’

While many pundits (and behind the scenes also many West European politicians) celebrated the audacious Ukrainian ‘Spiderweb’ drone attack, the U.S. President was not one of them. To put it mildly.

“I don't like it, I said don't do it, you shouldn't do it, you should stop it,” was Trump’s reaction to the Ukrainian operation. “They went deep into Russia and (Putin) actually told me we have no choice but to attack based on that, and it's probably not going to be pretty,” Trump said about his phone conversation with the Russian dictator a few days later.

“We discussed the attack on Russia’s docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides,” Trump wrote on his social media - as if Ukraine ‘had started’ and now Russia simply had to retaliate.

Almost as if - imagine here a Trump shrug of the shoulders - the U.S. President agreed with Putin’s ‘logic’.

And ‘retaliate’ Russia did. Or, as the rest of us would call it: Continued its three-year-long bombing campaign, only even more intensively.

But where Ukraine had eradicated Russian military power with its ‘Spiderweb’ operation, Russia instead killed dozens and dozens of Ukrainians sleeping in their beds, injuring hundreds, with the biggest, longest attacks of the war on civilian neighborhoods in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa and other places.

(Kharkiv on fire after Russian bomb attacks, June 2025)

To give it an extra nasty touch, the Russians are now increasing the use of the ‘double tap’ where the first round of bombs a few minutes later is followed by a second round aimed at the same buildings - with the goal of killing ‘first responders’, fire and ambulance personnel etc.

Two things, Donald: One, the Russians have rained down bombs over Ukraine for more than three years by now. So what was their ‘excuse’ before the Spiderweb operation? And secondly, we know that you are not great with words, Donald, but still, it is quite difficult to ignore the impression that you basically ‘allowed’ Putin to attack and kill Ukrainians? That is certainly how many of my friends and colleagues around Ukraine, taking shelter night after night, see it.

Exhibit two: Trump blocking sanctions

Trump is now actively trying to make the Senate soften its plan on sanctions on Russia. According to the Wall Street Journal, June 6, the Trump White House is ‘working on’ leading senators to soften the bipartisan bill, introduced on April 1 by Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Richard Blumenthal, which includes a 500% tariff on imports from countries that continue to buy Russian oil and raw materials.

The U.S. President even argued that sanctions could possibly apply to both Russia and Ukraine - “it takes two to tango,” Trump said. (No, I don’t follow this ‘logic’ either. Maybe he is back to his earlier idea that it actually was Zelensky who started the war - by invading Ukraine?)

Trump keeps repeating that he does not want to impose sanctions on Russia, because he feels that it could hurt the prospects of a peace or ceasefire deal. On May 29, the U.S. President again repeated that he thought that a deal could be reached “within the next two weeks.” This is, at least, the sixth time that the U.S. President expresses that hope - that a deal is just around the corner….

Most Europeans have the exact opposite reading of the Russian dictator. While Trump was expressing hope in Putin, the European Union imposed its 18th round of sanctions against Russia, for the first time really trying to hit Russian oil exports.

“Russia's goal is not peace,” the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said. “Strength is the only language that Russia will understand.”

Exhibit three: Trump actively weakening Ukraine’s defense

On June 4, President Zelensky told ABC that the Trump administration had diverted 20,000 anti-drone missiles that President Joe Biden had allocated to Ukraine - they are now instead being sent to U.S. forces in the Middle East.

(Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky interviwed by ABC/Pravda Gerashcenko, June 2025)

Ukraine was counting on these missiles, said Zelensky, to defend its cities and people from Russian drone attacks, which often include the Iranian Shahed drones. Since the ‘Spider web’ operation, Russia has every night sent record numbers of such drones at Ukraine, 4-500 a night. Every night, 8-12 people are killed and 60-100 injured.

“We have big problems with Shaheds,” said Zelensky, “we counted on this project - 20,000 missiles, anti-Shahed missiles. It was not expensive, but it's a special technology.”

After a week of increased Russian drone attacks, the Ukrainian President asked the West for what he called “a concrete answer” - Donald Trump has already given him his response: making it easier for Russia to kill Ukrainians.