“Ukraine is dead, gone!” – Donald Trump calls time on Ukraine and aims to do the same on U.S. assistance.

The Republican nominee's hatred for Ukraine should make anyone interested in the survival of the nation take notice and take action.

BY MICHAEL ANDERSEN

Can it get any worse for Ukraine? You wouldn’t have thought so, but on second thought, yes, it can. The 5th of November is looming over Ukraine's future.

Touring incessantly through several of the swing states up to the presidential elections, this week Donald Trump has ramped up his attacks: Firstly on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for supporting Ukraine against Russia, of course. But as the week has gone on, Trump has increasingly gone after Ukraine and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky personally.

(“Ukraine is gone”, Donald Trump said on Sept. 25, 2024, source: Viory)

I have been watching the many videos from the many rallies and have been reading and amalgamating the enormous amounts of venomous Ukraine rhetoric spewed by the former president just this week. Trump has put forward four claims on Ukraine – in a manner that even for him has been unusually bombastic:

1)   Ukraine is dead, demolished, gone.

2)   Zelensky should have made a deal with Vladimir Putin and handed over parts of Ukraine to the Kremlin.

3) Instead, the U.S. is wasting taxpayers’ money on an unwinnable war because Russia never loses a war, says Trump, reciting Soviet history. He claims that the U.S. has given Ukraine $300 billion in assistance. (He is wrong by a factor of 4; as we proved yesterday, the real figure is $75 billion, although the U.S. has approved $175 billion.)

4)   Oh, and to rub salt in the wound, Trump repeatedly states that “millions and millions have died,” and that Ukraine is lying about the death toll.

With Trump as with many other demagogues, it is not just what he says but as much the manner in which he says it. And Trump’s repeated “Ukraine is dead and demolished” was delivered with venom, as he travelled through the swing states. I’ve studied politics for 40+ years, and I only ever remember a U.S. president directing such attacks at The Evil Empire, the Taliban, Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Iran – all sworn enemies of the U.S. But Ukraine and Zelensky are close allies. At least for now. It increasingly looks like that a Trump victory on Nov. 5 might change that.

“The country is absolutely obliterated.”

“Ukraine is gone… Ukraine is not Ukraine anymore.”

“Millions and millions of people are dead.”

“Those gorgeous golden towers are demolished.”

Those brazen - and untrue - statements are shocking enough, coming from a man who could be the U.S. president in four months. But what was new this week was the added direct and personal attacks on Zelensky, who, according to Trump, “is making little, nasty aspersions toward your favorite president (me),” “he (Zelensky) entered the war through a lot of bad and stupid statements, and he is no angel.” “And we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal.” Always ending with the false assertion that Zelensky and Ukraine are siphoning off money of the U.S. - “every time he comes to the U.S, he leaves with $100 billion”.

(Donald Trump, Tuesday in Georgia, source: Fox News)

Zelensky, Harris and Biden are fighting a useless war, Trump has concluded:

“More people will die, more cities will fall, and the ones that feel will continue to receive more and more bombs, they will be broken up, asunder, worse than they are right now… there is really nothing there for the Ukrainian people to move back to.”

“Any deal that could have been made would have been better than what they have now,” Trump asserted last night, “they would have given up a little bit [of land] …. if not for the incompetence of Biden, Harris, and Zelensky.”

Listening to Trump’s words, I am increasingly reminded of the time back in March when Trump ally, Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, explained what Trump’s so-called peace plan consists of: "Trump will not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war. That is why the war will end … it is obvious that Ukraine cannot stand on its own feet, and the war will be over," Orban explained.

Finally, at every meeting with his followers, Trump ends with bringing the aim back to Biden and Harris, with a bit of old-fashioned scaremongering thrown in for good measure: “They are not going to be satisfied until they send American kids over to Ukraine and that’s what they are trying to do. But American moms and dads do not want their kids to fight Ukraine and Russia, and we are not going to have our kids dying across the ocean.”

And no one, including Ukraine, is asking for American soldiers.

To save Ukraine, all of its supporters will have to rally with all their might and vote like never before to stop Trump from retaking the White House.