“I’m working tirelessly to end the savage conflict in Ukraine. Millions of Ukrainians and Russians have been needlessly killed or wounded in this horrific and brutal conflict with no end in sight. The United States has sent hundreds of billions of dollars to support Ukraine’s defense with no security, with no anything.”
Donald Trump’s Tuesday night speech to Congress was notable for its 90-minute length and sustained crowing, interspersed with petty swipes and veiled threats. Eventually, the president got around to the subject that has dominated global politics since his outburst in the Oval Office on Friday: the war in Ukraine. “2,000 people are being killed every single week — more than that. They are Russian young people, they’re Ukrainian young people. They’re not Americans, but I want it to stop,” he said.
The more I observe international politics, the more I return to former Israeli statesman Abba Eban’s characteristically dry observation that “political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.” Trump has always been plain about who he is and what he wants. One of his few good qualities is that he never pretends to be what he’s not. And he’s never liked Ukraine, and he’s never believed in its war of defence against Russia.
Trump’s speech came barely 24 hours after the announcement that he was pausing aid to Ukraine. As a result, tens of billions of dollars in military assistance, including the supply of not just future aid but arms and associated tech already earmarked (but not yet delivered) to Kyiv has been frozen. To do this to an ally under attack from a murderous neighbour is lethal, and morally treacherous. Ukraine is now severely exposed.
A cessation of aid is going to be difficult for Ukraine. Sources over there tell me that the army could continue fighting for anywhere up to a few months, longer if the Europeans really step up. But their message was clear: they need the Americans. I fear they are right. It’s hard to spend any time on the front without running into soldiers using US equipment, while almost all digital communications are run through Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service. For now, though, everything has stopped, except, of course, the Russian attacks.
That doesn’t bother Trump. In any case, the US has done similar things in the past. Back in the Seventies and Eighties, Washington occasionally paused aid to Egypt when its policies ran counter to American interests, notably when Cairo started cosying up to the Soviet Union. Congress also often attempted to limit the Reagan administration’s aid to Nicaragua and El Salvador on account of their corruption and authoritarian governments. Aid has always been used as a means of chastising regimes that irritated them.
But to slap a longstanding US ally at war with one of Washington’s traditional foes? The only precedent for that is… Donald Trump — in 2019. That year, he halted aid to Ukraine for various supposed and different reasons, mainly, he said, because of Ukrainian corruption. Many suspect, however, that he did it because of Ukraine’s refusal to launch investigations into Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden, as Trump wanted to nobble his likely rival in the 2020 presidential election.
So why the power play this time? It seems that, in the end, the divide on Ukraine between the Europeans and the United States is the one at the heart of so many divorces — irreconcilable differences. In this case, it’s irreconcilable enemies. For the Europeans and Britain, Putin menaces their continent. The threat is on their doorstep, which makes it not just proximate but inescapable. For the Americans, though, geography intervenes. Trump knows this. As he said: “We have an ocean separating us, and they don’t.” It’s China that poses a more serious multi-pronged threat to Washington, ranging from conventional military competition to crime, counterintelligence, and cybersecurity. More than this, China is the only nation that is big and rich and powerful enough to conceivably challenge Washington for global dominance. Russia is just too poor and dysfunctional.
From this position of relative safety, it’s small wonder Washington feels such dissatisfaction at the Europeans who, in its view, simply aren’t doing enough to protect themselves. To America, Europe looks recklessly blasé. As Trump stated last night: “Europe has sadly spent more money buying Russian oil and gas than they’ve spent on defending Ukraine, by far. Think of that. They’ve spent more buying Russian oil and gas than they have defending.” In fact, this American view long predates Trump (even if it wasn’t felt with such force). Biden mentioned it several times, and even Obama complained that “Europe has sometimes been complacent about its own defence”. They are right. In Europe, we have lived off American largesse for 80 years. We love welfare states and so we outsourced our security to Washington to pay for them. Whether we like it or not, in certain regards the true father of the NHS is not Nye Bevan but Harry Truman.
This sort of freeloading was always going to irk a president whose view of geopolitics is fundamentally mercantile. For Trump, everything is transactional. “If we have to safeguard everyone else, what do we get out of it?” is the attitude. As the President said, he wants to deliver “the greatest economy in history”. Behind the vague and typical boasting lies a note of fear. The American deficit, which sits at around $1.2 trillion, has concentrated minds. As the historian Niall Ferguson observed, when superpowers spend more on debt repayments than on defence, they soon cease to be superpowers. Washington did that for the first time last year. The trend must be arrested. The deficit must come down, or else the United States might go down with it.
No wonder, then, that the desire to bring in revenues is high on the Trump agenda; resources, be they in Ukraine or Greenland, are seen as a fruitful means to this end. His beloved, misunderstood tariffs are too, which “are not just about protecting American jobs. They are about protecting the soul of our country. Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again.” The stock market may yet have other ideas.
But for all those statesmen who don’t see Ukraine as a security issue, and are aware of how much leverage Washington has, Kyiv offers value only as a cash cow that can be bilked, not least from a man who’s spent his life bilking everyone he can. And make no mistake, he intends to bilk Ukraine. And it seems his playbook is working. Zelensky has been made to atone. In a letter which Trump read out last night he said: “Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer…. Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it at any time.” This is the deal that was due to be signed until the meeting between Zelensky, Trump and JD Vance descended into finger-jabbing acrimony.
The threat of facing Putin alone has also pushed Europe into action. Not only has Starmer promised that Ukraine’s Western allies would continue providing military aid to secure lasting peace and protect the country’s sovereignty. The PM has also declared the UK’s readiness “to put boots on the ground and planes in the air”, invoking a possible “coalition of the willing” for Ukraine’s defence.
Finally, Europe was getting its act together — rhetorically at least — which you’d think would be music to the White House’s ears. But then Vance hit the airwaves to tell the world that “If you want to actually ensure that Vladimir Putin does not invade Ukraine again, the very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine.”
“That is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years,” he said.
Apart from the inanity of the outburst, forgetting, perhaps, that the UK sent around 150,000 troops to Afghanistan and around 140,000 to Iraq, this response to the European willingness to do what the White House has repeatedly urged them to do is striking. But perhaps not surprising. If Kyiv can survive with only European help, then it may well be goodbye lucrative minerals deal. But more broadly, it is not in the US interest for the Europeans to become totally self-sufficient militarily. If that were to happen, Washington would lose the largest part of its leverage over a continent that is, in the end, the richest and most dynamic free space outside of the US. The ideal situation is for the Europeans to pony up much more cash yet still have to defer to Washington when it counts.
Understand this and understand that the White House is using Ukraine as a means through which to more broadly reorder international relations for a new era; in Trump’s machinations can be seen as an adumbration of the world as he wants it to be.
What, then, will Vance make of what happened last night in Germany. In response to the White House’s outburst, it overturned the debt brake which prevents it from spending more on defence. “In view of the threats to our freedom and peace on our continent,” said Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin, the motto “whatever it takes” must now apply to the country’s defence. Merz now argues that defence spending must go above 1% of GDP. Isn’t this what America wanted?
It’s almost impossible to predict what Trump will do, but what is clear is that the United States is no longer a reliable ally. If we are back in the age of empires, then he is a fickle emperor indeed. The lesson for Europe is bleak but unambiguous. We are alone. While Moscow is revelling in Trump’s actions and China is seething at the imposition of tariffs, Europe has no choice but to become self-sufficient. We must understand that paying 3% of GDP for defence now is better than having to pay 6% five years down the line when the Russians are in the Baltics.
Of course, it’s not just foolish but dangerous to take Trump at his word. Of course his speech was filled with exaggerations and lies. The US hasn’t spent $350 billion on Ukraine; in fact, since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Congress has passed five spending bills to provide support to Ukraine, totaling about $174.2 billion. Meanwhile, Europe hasn’t merely spent $100 billion. A February EU fact sheet reported that its member states had provided about $145 billion since the start of the war, and then in February, the EU committed up to $54 billion for recovery and reconstruction.
Minerals, tariffs and the annexation of territory (“one way or the other, we’re going to get it,” he said about Greenland) — it could be the 1800s again in DC. Trump, let’s be clear, doesn’t like war: because it’s expensive. But he likes to fight (or “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as everyone chanted in that room yesterday), and to do so while making “great TV”. His weapons of choice are, it seems, economic, all backed up by massive US hard power in the background of course.
And so, for now, we continue to stumble into an uncertain future, unsure of where the whims of one man will take us next. Trump says it will be like nothing we have ever seen before. And, in that at least, we can take him at his word.
David Patrikarakos is UnHerd‘s foreign correspondent. His latest book is War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the 21st century. (Hachette)
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SubscribeSounds like the warmonger is angry… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAWk1tY3oFk
I almost stopped reading after looking up the verb to bilk. = to swindle, cheat etc. So that’s the premise of the article?
Then the ridiculous number of UK troop sent to Afghanistan. How can we have sent over 150,000 when we only have 75,000 troops in total?
Unherd do better please. This is just more crap. Your readers don`t want this.
About 100,000 in the British Army at that time, not all deployed of course so the numbers in this article are just made up.
Like oh so strong words about billions of Euro money and boots on the ground. Made up words.
I too baulked at that, To have transmitted those figures without scruple or interrogation casts doubt on this entire piece and, indeed, the good sense and perspicacity of the author altogether.
HM Forces in Iraq peakd at 46,000 men.
The figures appear to refer to an FOI request drawn up by thr MOD in 2014.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7479da40f0b646ce8d9bb7/PUBLIC_1398344624.pdf
These figures must surely refer to numbers deployed rather than individual servicemen sent. I know chaps who went over 3 times to Afghan and twice to Iraq so perhaps they were counted 5 times.
It also refers to ‘personnel’ rather than troops.
I’d be intrigued to know how that figure was realised otherwise.
One of those 46,000 was that Proconsul and plenipotentiary extraordinaire Rory Stewart. He who backed the late Camilla Harris 100%.
Ah yes…Florence of Arabia…
10,000 was the UK’s maximum deployment in 2010.
By comparative analysis BAOR used to be about 55,000.
That is the correct figure for the total number of British troops who served in Afghanistan, not the number in theatre at any given time.
The corrct number of individual servicemen or the correct number of deployments?
I would be interested to know.
It seems very high given the size of the Army during that period.
this is where the figure is from, or at least this is 2nd hand source from another: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2021-04-20/debates/D68CC774-5960-47AC-BF53-FCF1D27B99C5/Afghanistan
In nearly 20 YEARS! 2001-2021.
It’s the number of people who served. They didn’t all go at once. Doh!
So HM armed forces trained three armies worth of individual servicemen between 2001 and 2014 with no redeployments?
It seems extraordinary to suggest that none of the 46,000 who served in Iraq at the peak of deployment in 2007 did a second tour.
More so because we now know that multiple tours of duty was the rule rather than the exception and that the MOD frankly acknowledged that ‘Harmony Guidlines’ (restrictions on how often service personnel can be deployed) were ‘routinely broken’.(https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmdfence/1241/1241.pdf)
If Britain had possessed a reserve force of 150,000 (300,000 apparently, including Afghan) then why did the MOD need to breach rules on redeployment repeatedly?
It seems obvious that it is a bad statistic, repeated uncritically on the web. What those numbers record are deployments, not individual servicemen.
But I stand to be corrected.
Indeed, you should have abstained from reading through this very good analysis. What the ‘readers’ want instead, is probably a Russian media. These days, you dont need to watch it in original (like i do), as the Oval Office goes on air every day with a faithffully translated EN version, worb-by-word.
”Unherd do better please. This is just more crap. Your readers don`t want this.”
Exactly, we don’t want this.
I mean for Christ’s sake. Why not let all of us post here and just spout from the script, saying exactly the same thing about the same people in the same demeaning, dehumanizing, demonizing way based on nothing factual, only our subjective interpretation that we take to be objective fact, and take to be the only way to see things. Not giving a f**k about the audience because we don’t surround ourselves with anyone who thinks different and so believe everyone thinks like us.
Why pay these pathetic wankers for ridiculous opinion peices when they have absolute no real world knowledge of dealing with leaders of countries, or the rich and powerful, and would be completely useless at it. Yet they’re so dripping with the most lecherous and pervy self-lust and self-adoration they act like they’re superior to people like Trump.
Just pay me to write here. I’ll do it for a pound an article. I have no end of opinions. But at least mine will be based on objective research, evidence, indepedent thought, innate morality that isn’t imposed from without or relative based on what minority is doing something immoral. And it will be grounded in the real-world, not just gobbing off the political ideology other people have indoctrinated me into.
The editors of these places feel that they have to keep creating content non-stop. Sadly it’s clear this place is another money-hungry, anything for clicks ‘content creator’ that thinks more is better.
I’d pay triple the price for subs if you focused on quality like the Lyons article and checked shit like this. Most would. You’ve be unique and rare, and people pay for that. Instead your desperate for views anyway possible and will host any writer for content.
I thought UnHerd had largely escaped the TDS pandemic. But I was too hasty.
Since Trump himself often appears deranged (eg the mad Gaza plan, Ukraine starting the war by being invaded, $350 billion dollars sent in aid to Ukraine = 2x actual amount, annexing Canada and Greenland), I think
‘TDS’ should actually stand for our awareness that the man’s ideas are, quite simply, often unhinged. He gets some things right (eg European defence underspending, DEI and trans follies, government waste) but if you machine-gun a target, you will hit the bullseye sometimes. I thought Patrikarakos made some good points, especially about the awfulness of siding with the murderous Putin and his kleptocratic cronies.
The belief that Trump is in league with Putin is the classic symptom displayed by the TDS sufferer. There was a bad outbreak between 2016 and 2018 (thankfully halted by the Mueller treatment) but it seems to have reoccurred in 2025.
I get very tired of people trotting out the tired ‘TDS’ nonsense when anyone criticises Trump, and there are plenty of reasons for doing so. I note that you don’t comment on his mad Gaza scheme, or the lies he tells (his figure for US military aid to Ukraine just being one), just for starters. If you have listened to any of his campaign speeches, you should be aware of the rambling nonsense that he spouts to his faithful followers: you don’t have to be suffering from some form of ‘derangement syndrome’ about him to see that he is a very low-grade politician, prone to voicing schoolboy insults and making ridiculous boasts. I am agnostic as things stand on whether there are indeed sinister reasons for Trump’s giving Vladimir Putin an easy ride on Ukraine, but I think that there are very real questions to be answered about this, as the following article points out:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/09/21/russian-agent-trump-counterintelligence/
This isn’t a recent article, but I’d like to know if much of the necessary ‘digging’ referred to has been done.
Setting aside whether Trump has something to hide regarding his apparent favouring of Putin, it is still the case that he gives out the Putin line with regard to the origins of the Ukraine war, blames the victim (Zelensky’s Ukraine) rather than the aggressor (Putin’s Russia), and ensures that Ukraine is weakened in its defence (most recently by denying Ukraine satellite-based intelligence). So he is effectively in league with Putin, and says nothing at all about what compromises he expects the Russians to make in return for ceasing their vicious campaign against a sovereign state.
” ceasing their vicious campaign against a sovereign state.” I’m surprised you omit the obligatory adjective “unprovoked”.
I’m surprised, too. I should indeed have added that!
We take Trump seriously, but not literally about statements like Gaza, Greenland, and Canada takeovers by the US. These are clearly not going to happen, but indicate that Trump wants to do something to stir things up, or, with Canada, is merely trolling Trudeau. Gaza is prime real estate – and this is Trump’s mileau, so he sees the potential. And now Egypt et al are making some moves. Trump spurred them to move. That is something to cheer … loudly.
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Trump has done that to great and positive effect. Remember, Little Rocket Man?
On your final paragraph: don’t you think that voting in the UN with North Korea, Belarus and Russia AGAINST a resolution proposed by your erstwhile allies is taking keeping ‘your enemies closer’ a bit too far? It makes one think that those ‘enemies’ might just now be your friends, and that is a worrying thought, especially if we continue to share intelligence gathered in Russia with the US.
I don’t see how you can take a politician ‘seriously’, if you don’t actually believe what he says, in this case about Gaza, Greenland and Canada.
The ‘Little Rocket Man’ who supplies Putin with troops for his war on Ukraine?
What you don’t get, and what is so vile to witness about people in general, is they think whatever information they get from the media is correct. It’s not. It’s their reaction to a comment that was said for a reason, processed through an extreme bias via an apparatus that sees it’s job as ensuring the public think only a certain way, the way the shadow State wants. Like the Gaza thing, and totally seized on and given a different spin and reacted to through this mentally deficient Lefty mania on the issue that the ‘little guy’, the ‘underdog’ is always virtuous and can do no wrong.
America going in there rebuilding it, not that it was ever really seriously going to happen, would be incredible for Gazans in the long run and would lead to peace, IF the people there weren’t fanatic followers of the religion of peace and could ever be reasoned with with sanity. Gazans are Islamic fanatics that hate Jews and would kill their whole people rather than be rational and look to be caving in to Jews. They are the dominant group that God has given the right to behead and slaughter people while chanting his name. Their religion is sick supremacist nonsense created by a lunatic pedophile, enslaver, and criminal. Any other group would look at the rubble, having no place to live and bite the hand of the offer of that land being redeveloped in the right deal that means they can move back.
It’s just too forward thinking and unorthodox. Too solution oriented. The status quo will mean decades of more killings and war. And that is what you consider sane? Yeah, right. 70 more years of Hamas brainwashing little kids to want to eridicate Jews? ‘Yeah, but it’s there land. They’re occupied. Free Palestine!!”
There is far more provocation that has been done to Russia by NATO and their overlords, the handful of money men and others behind globalism who do not act in our good. Only a moron believes that. These are the richest people on earth that just want to make more money, more power, more control. Like the aristocracy always have and see it as their right to let the little people die for years to secure their empires and wealth. They know how to manipulate the masses. It’s the same few pyschological traits and direct emotional response tricks any student of propaganda or copywriter knows. But you’re ignorant of them and oblivious and wholly taken in.
You just have to be a certain type of person to be able to observe reality and be immune from propaganda and make your own mind up. Any decent, humane person, being objective, after listening to his speech last night and realizing what he is actually focused on doing and having great success at doing, and taking into account he’s running the greatest country on earth with ease, effectiveness in accomplishing what he was voted in to do, the way he has an incredible team around him with massive ambitions and admirable goals like saving trillions in corruption, or dealing with the poisoning of America’s kids in the epidemic of autism, going after the deep state, would have to concede, this guy is getting results and doing things with an efficiency we’ve never seen. His goals for his nation are laudable.
But you cannot separate low-grade b***h emotion from clear, rational, objective thought. Quite simply. Your points are all taken from Globalist-Left media lies, not facts. It’s embarrassing, you should be ashamed of yourself. Every single success story and example of the corruption they uncovered shows why the West was nearly destroyed.
A mentally ill ideology mixed with corrupt politicians nearly destroyed America. The same people are doing it to the West and UK. Boris got in on a landslide, with a mandate to stop the destruction and horror of open door immigration and the cultural replacement of Brits with Islamist migrants that don’t integrate. We thought he was in charge. They let in 100,000 more, record numbers.
We need a Trump. You’re insane mate. And do have TDS. TDS-by-Proxy perhaps because you foolishly think the media is a credible source of info. They deliberately create people like you and fill your head with dogshit. Trump threatens everything the anti-democratic global elite stand for. And that elite stand for everything the average British person stands against and despises them. They go unnoticed because they create other enemies to demonize to take the heat off them, like Trump, and just sell you their narrative like it’s the way things are and it gets accepted without question.
Shit for brains “freethinkers” like you are about the most gullible idiots. I doubt anything you believe about politics has any connection to reality. Your types swallow propaganda from the most evil regimes without a question.
It is quite possible that within his first 100 days in office Trump will have been able to broker a ceasefire in Gaza and another in Ukraine. His methods (“mad Gaza scheme”, “lies about military aid”) might baffle you but the outcome is the same: fewer dead people.
I have indeed watched many, many hours of Trump’s rallies. To suggest he is a very low-grade politician is to ignore the fact that he won election twice in the face of the most concerted opposition from the US and international Establishment that any politician has every faced and two assassination attempts.
As to the view that Trump is somehow beholden to Putin. This isn’t only a classic conspiracy theory but it is distinguished from other conspiracy theories by having been disproved by a three year investigation by Robert Mueller.
Trump simply realises that he has to work with Putin. That doesn’t mean he’s “siding” or aligning with him. Unfortunately the gap between the realpolitik of the situation and the moral rectitude of it are far apart, I appreciate that that proposition can be a bit mind-blowing.
I agree that Trump has to work with Putin, but it seems strange that someone who prides himself on making ‘deals’, has given away all his cards at the outset, ensuring that Putin knows that he doesn’t have to give much, if anything, away. Putin can hang tough, knowing that Trump won’t challenge him. Putin’s position is not wonderful: economy weak, battlefield losses of men and materials huge, and further progress in the war would be slow and costly if he was facing a Ukraine with access to US intelligence and resources. Trump, the great deal-maker, could have played his hand much more skilfully. As it is, he seems to have given it all away, and one wonders why. Surely a Nobel Peace Prize is not so worth having?
I’d be surprised if Trump cares a fig about the Nobel Peace Prize – he knows very well he will never get it even if he ends the war in Ukraine AND brings peace to the ME. After all, he engineered 3 peace deals in the ME and that was roundly ignored.
Hate so deeply infests the left, they cannot think clearly. Hence TDS.
I thought the mineral deal was an attempt to create a demilitarized zone on the Russian/Ukranian border. But Zelensky showed on world television that the US and Ukraine weren’t on the same page. He couldn’t have done more to empower Putin and now all sides must run faster to stand still.
The thing with people like you is you think you’re smart enough and informed enough as any head of state in the world and understand how to deal with leaders of nations.
You don’t, and you’re not informed (not in the sense of an independent thinker that knows to do their own homework and question facts and talking points for veracity, you’re partisan media agenda informed and you should be embarrassed). You jump at every strategic sound-bite and negotiation tactic like a buffoon, not seeing it for what it is, or not knowing that Trump is privy to the greatest intelligence network and experts in the world and knows what’s going on. You truly think, in your sad little lives, with your modicum of social status, perhaps you’re a resident mouthpiece on TV like Nadia Khan or even a low-level politician, that you’ve lived a far greater life at the deep-end of business and the highest level of politics and that whatever ludicrous bullshit that comes out of your mouth, which is based on nothing but petty, obnoxious toxicity and intolerance, is true.
Trump’s a billionaire, yet all you people see is that he went bankrupt, or he got given the wealth. Like he’s mentally impaired and stupid, and just became a billionaire by luck. Broke people that will never even make a million. Ludicrous. One of the most famous businessmen in US history and apparently he’s a drooling dufus that doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, despite being also a two-term US president (but that’s only because MAGA people are so dumb and racist, just listen to yourselves, delusional, evil, demented people).
Every one of you think you’re a far superior person to Trump and to anyone that doesn’t hold Left-Wing/Woke/Globalist group-think. You take your weak little bullied child at school neurosis you share with all the weak, feminized people on the Left, plus the fact you were subject to ‘liberal parenting’ and have never been disciplined or used to being disagreed with, and it’s created a seriously broken personality type, and the hatred and resentment that means you can’t relate to people normally, and just demonize and caricature all people that disagree with you. But you then take that caricature to be reality.
The little orange tyrant. The new Hitler. A far-Right fascist. A narcissist that only cares about himself. Whatever it is your fetid, unhinged little minds concoct out of inability to control your emotions and think like a grown up, you actually think that’s reality. Because you don’t live in actual reality. And you don’t know what it really is, and don’t even care to. That’s why I hate you people with the deepest passion only surpassed by nonces. You’re despicable beyond words, the way you caricature and abuse anyone if they even remotely think different. Even your own. Hitchens got it. So did Nick Cohen, or Neo Cohen as they instantly and childishly called him, for going against the Left on an issue. Everyone gets that treatment. And you think it’s reality when it’s as real as Father Christmas in the minds of children. It kills me there’s so many of you and you’ve infiltrated the highest levels of society and been able to make this normal.
I didn’t have a personal view of Trump either way before the election. But after seeing him shot, and observing his family, and who he calls friends. Who he has surrounded himself with, and what those people have to say about him. The regard he has with a lot of good people that don’t suffer fools. And then since getting a second term, what his actions are.
Anyone that is beyond feeble-minded and doesn’t base their humanity on binary, Left or Right-Wing bollocks, and knows the media is nothing but a propaganda machine for the tiny handful that siphoned off trillions and own everything, and can think clearly, has morals, and understands other people rather than being so narcissistic and self-absorbed they only think about themselves like the Left, can see everything the media depicted, apart from being bombastic and unorthodox and not as refined as a Clinton or Obama, was mental illness on behalf of those who genuinely thought that. Completely deranged by primitive toddler-level hatred, and conditioned to be so by a vicious, dishonest, disgusting corrupt media.
trump is a thief and a con-artist, given that the average voter is rather stupid, ignorant and nasty it is not a surprise that he is popular.
Seems it is you that suffers from Trump ‘derangement syndrome’ ….
Trump’s speech, he writes near the start, was “interspersed with petty swipes and veiled threats.”
That’s where I stopped. Trump’s speech wasn’t debanking his opponents, gleefully censoring them, or attempting to jail them.
TDS is especially tedious when combined with rank hypocrisy.
“To do this to an ally under attack from a murderous neighbour is lethal, and morally treacherous. Ukraine is now severely exposed.”
Ukraine isn’t an ally, it’s a proxy, which was always meant to be used as a punching bag and occasionally poke the Russians back.
I have to say though, I think it’s more “lethal and morally treacherous” to be cheering for the needless and pointless slaughter of your “allies” youth than it is to find a solution that will stop the bloodshed. In fact, if the author were using his brain he’d maybe consider that any pause in hostilities would be to Ukraine’s benefit, because the Russians have been advancing since the so-called summer counteroffensive (and still are, if slowly).
Warmongers like Patrikarakos pretend to be somehow representing Ukrainian opinion, when in reality it is the Zelensky regime they shill for and anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to throw more money and weapons into this dumpster fire should go and volunteer instead of being a keyboard warrior.
If the EU nations really believed Russia was going to invade them, they wouldn’t all have their own militaries in a shambles. Poland for example, right on the border, recently claimed that they only have enough ammunition and supplies of thier own for three days of war. So that’s how worried they are that Russia is going to invade them.
The other thing that is true is just as Trump noted. Druing this war, the EU nations spent more money on Russian oil and gas than they did on the Ukraine war.
If you use logic and reason these things tell you all you need to know. r.
If the EU nations really believed Russia was going to invade Ukraine, they wouldn’t have been so overdependent on Russian energy.
There’s depressingly little in Europe’s very recent history to suggest that the elites running things in the EU are as clear-sighted, sharp and puissant as one might hope, and I fear the cumbersome machinery within which they work would hamper even those that were.
The scary thing is that the Poles are militarily as decent a land force as Europe can muster. The Germans are training with broomsticks.
Ha-ha-ha-haaaagh ! Reading Unherd these last few days is great entertainment. American comments have gone bonkers. They are so up themselves they are practically inside-out.
An excellent article. Little wonder that the words of wisdom were not going to be appreciated by predominantly Putin admirers. Those, who vilify the ‘war-mongers’ will get both the war, and the dishonor.
An excellent article indeed, thoughtful and erudite. I am now informed that Russia is itching to invade Europe and American foreign policy is self -serving and callous. Europe needs to arm itself and defend our close friend and ally Ukraine and also to declare war on Russia. Have I misunderstood anything?
“But to slap a longstanding US ally at war with one of Washington’s traditional foes?”
Ukraine is not an ally of the US. An ally, is a country like the UK tied to the US with treaties, in particular NATO. Deliberately pretending that this distinction doesn’t matter seems to be part of a concerted attempt to convince us that we are at war with Russia.
But there is a treaty between Ukraine, the USA and the UK.
https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-what-is-the-budapest-memorandum-and-why-has-russias-invasion-torn-it-up-178184
Russia broke its terms, obviously, by invading. Trump is now reneging on his obligations.
This chap should be re-assigned to the Guardian Newspaper to spill his bilge.
The content of this warmongering armchair sanctimonious warrior is so misguided and wrong-headed it makes me despair for the future of Unherd. Don’t the editors give these ramblings any scrutiny?
I was suspicious too, but the author is correct: 150,000 British service personnel served in Afghanistan. Download the pdf from the House of Commons library here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9298/
It’s a nonsense figure.
UK soldiers were there for 13 years and, from the IWM website:
By 2010, UK troop numbers reached their peak with around 10,000 troops deployed across Afghanistan. Later the same year, discussions began over the withdrawal of NATO forces and in 2011, US President Barack Obama announced the planned withdrawal of US soldiers. Over the next few years, UK forces concentrated their efforts on training Afghanistan’s own security forces, and began handing over key parts of Helmand Province to Afghan forces.
In the first year 2001 there were only 5,000 soldiers from all 50 contributing countries. So even if they rotated soldiers every year that number can never be reached. In fact many soldiers did many tours.
“In keeping with the many thousands of British Service personnel who have served with such courage, commitment and distinction in Afghanistan – many repeatedly – I know that they will approach their extended final tours with professionalism and dedication.” Major General Patrick Sanders, Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (Operations) 2013
“many thousands...” not 150,000.
As a simple formula, this is a plausible characterization. I’m sure it’s a bit too simple, and it’s dangerous to underestimate Trump. But he refers to peace negotiations as business and thinks, however seriously, that he can turn the Gaza Strip into a Riviera or Las Vegas Strip. That’s pretty nakedly transactional.
One evident thing that complicates the Dealmaker/breaker-in-Chief label is Trump’s just about unsurpassed hunger for attention—favorable when he can get it. If not, outraged or baffled attention will do. He’s swallowing much of the attention and energy of the world. Many watch with admiration or glee. TDS is prevalent among his followers too. No one knows where this will end. Including Trump. I doubt he cares where the world actually stands after his departure as long as he is remembered as powerful and important, and adored by some.
I couldn’t vote in the American election, but had I been able, I would have voted for Trump simply because four years under a Harris presidency was an even more frightening prospect. But after a couple of months, I have to say I’m disappointed. Trump has revealed himself to be, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, a man who knows the price of everything, and understands the value of nothing. In fairness to Trump, this is always who he was, but I’d hoped that the broad coalition he’d surrounded himself with prior to the election might have had a restraining effect on some of his more deranged impulses. Although this hasn’t happened yet, I’m still hopeful that the likes of Kennedy, Rubio and Gabbard will eventually see just who it is they got into bed with.
I could have voted in the American election, but didn’t. I don’t feel like I should be contributing to the shape of a country where I no longer (and will never again) live. But I heard from Trump’s campaign that he would (a) cut the deficit, (b) bring peace to Gaza, (c) bring peace to the Ukraine, (d) close off the border with Mexico, (e) use tariffs to accomplish his agenda, (f) put America first. As far as I can tell, he’s doing exactly what he said he would.
“Morally treacherous.” Unlike our breaking our solemn vow to never expand NATO?
“Longstanding US ally.” WUT?? You mean the country we overthrew ten years ago??
Poke the bear, the bear eventually reacts. Sometimes I hate us.
Which solemn oath is that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_One_Inch#:~:text=The%20title%20of%20the%20book,White%20House%20and%20the%20Kremlin.
You are misrepresenting this (lying in fact) Baker was not authorized to make any such promises. russia signed the NATO russia founding act in 1997 that explicitly allowed new NATO members provided no NATO troops were stationed east of Germany. NATO kept that promise until 2014 and most member states kept disarming themselves even after 2014 and some even after 2022.
If the new US Administration is serious about defusing recently ramped up conflict with Russia things can only improve. Trump’s been President before and knows exactly how Ukraine’s been twisted out of shape as a weapon in that and he also knows that it’s perfectly possible to make mutually beneficial agreements with Putin’s Russia as under G W Bush in 2005-7. He’s aware it’s not Russia that moved away from those. If he doesn’t fully avow American responsibility for fostering unnecessary conflict in Ukraine and elsewhere, and polluting political discourse with anti Putinism, he may at least be.prepared to do something about it.
Ironically, this author is very much of the herd mentality.
Absolute tripe and a black mark on UnHerd.
what do you disagree with and on what basis?
Aren’t we all getting ahead of ourselves? Whatever Trump might have heard in private, there’s no indication at all in the public domain that Putin wants to stop fighting. We have no idea what Trump thinks peace looks like and the notion that some long term US economic interests in Ukraine would deter Putin is nonsense. Without deploying troops, what leverage would Trump have?
We have a better idea what peace would look like to Putin but no detail.
I’ll believe Trump has an actual peace plan when I see it.
Two indications. One was Russia saying they had no objection to Ukraine joining the EU. Just compare that with the reasons for the coup. The second was Russia saying they would accept peacekeeping forces from NATO countries. Last week they wouldnt accept it.
Could you clarify that? Are you suggesting that Russia has said that it WOULD accept NATO peacekeeping forces in Ukraine? If so, I’d like to know where you get that information from. The last I heard, Putin is absolutely against allowing peacekeeping forces from NATO countries to deploy in Ukraine: no change there. And with Trump applying maximum pressure on Zelenski, and zero on Putin, I can’t imagine that Putin will change his mind on that.
OMG, I’ve barely got through a third of the article and already have too much to object to here:
Firstly: the USA has stopped aid going to Ukraine to pressure it into continuing the peace plan that the Trump administration is pursuing. Which, as far as I’m aware, is currently the only one in town. The author then makes the argument that this is a typical example of the US being nasty by halting aid to countries to make them bow to US interests. Right, I’m buying all that, but how is pressuring for peace not in the Ukraine’s interests when this war clearly isn’t going anywhere?
From this position of relative safety, it’s small wonder Washington feels such dissatisfaction at the Europeans who, in its view, simply aren’t doing enough to protect themselves.
That’s because they aren’t.
To America, Europe looks recklessly blasé.
It looks a lot like that to me aswell.
This sort of freeloading was always going to irk a president whose view of geopolitics is fundamentally mercantile.
It seems to have irked a succession of presidents, so I honestly don’t know what the author’s point is.
“That is a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years,” he said.
Even though Vance didn’t specifically refer to Britain and the outrage seems highly confected, it is true that Britain hasn’t gone into war alone since the Falklands War, which was 43 years ago. Otherwise, Britain has been in a coalition – usually lead by the US. So Vance did have a point, whether that was his intention or not if you look at the issue from the standpoint of independent capabilities, which is what the US wants from Europe now.
And frankly, what is there to cheer about about the condition of Britain’s armed forces and the willingness of the young to fight for their country? Starmer’s sabre-rattling just comes across as entirely toothless and I guess the US reaction is – understandably – “GET REAL”.
I’m sorry but this is exactly the kind of self responsibility-evading tosh coming from Europe at the moment that raises my concerns even further about the future security of the continent.
The only take perhaps is that Trump is an American leader defending American interests.
Hardly news, except for uberrascht author.
The hysterical pearl clutching contrasts so vividly with years, decades, of apathy and irresponsibility, on pretty much every issue, defence, energy, procurement, net zero à tous prix, internal security and justice, destructive market distortions and protectionism.
And on every issue, should you differ from dogma, you are a nazi. On every issue, the norm is not rational conversation, it is silencing
When Europe finally realises that Hitler’s influence has been greater him dead than alive, when Europe finally stops living in fear and distrust, then maybe there’s hope for our young
We must understand that paying 3% of GDP for defence now is better than having to pay 6% five years down the line when the Russians are in the Baltics.
‘We’ must look at Russia as Estonia does as a perpetual enemy? The view from Estonia must determine the UK’s foreign policy?
How useful is this defence spending without American satellites and intelligence? Is it designed to enable the waging of a war of industrial production and manpower, and the one of the sort of positional combat that has been developed by Russia’s adaptation?
All the high dudgeon over Vance’s comment is little more than GCSE jingoism. In the House of Commons Starmer declared that British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan died for their country. Not in the service of a war party in another? The British Army used as a colonial police force in Iraq was doubly humiliating given that Iraq was once a British mandate.
In 1918 it was made obvious to Germany that it was useless to continue the war when the sailors of the High Seas Fleet refused to be taken by their admirals into one last fight-to-the-death battle with Britain’s Grand Fleet. Such a clear example of futility would not appear in the current type of warfare being waged in Ukraine. It might be more humane to deprive those who want to fight to the death, even in a just and noble enterprise, of the means to fight to the death.
Thinking about taking you off the Retard List, Citizen. Well said.
“the peace plan that the Trump administration is pursuing.” I am sorry, what ‘peace plan’ ?
Please do not be naive
bilk or milk?
“Longstanding ally”.
Ukraine is not a longstanding ally. Biden and the EU were 100% prepared to abandon it until the Ukrainians fought back. Stop pretending Trump is the outlier because he wont risk WWIII over who controls the Donbas. Where do we do find these tired talking points?
The matter unfortunately isn’t limited to ‘who controls the Donbas’, which is clear from the discussion inside Russia and Putin’s own writings on Ukraine. And As Trump is quite prepared to abandon Ukraine, there is no risk of WWIII. Russia would simply roll forward and slaughter millions of people with a reign of terror as it has done in the past.
Classifying Putin as an irredeemable revanchist is just war-mongering in different clothes. Of course war is inevitable if Putin is a roving boogie-man intent on destruction. But you are assessing him incorrectly. Putin is a leader with interests. If we can speak to those interests, we can tolerably reduce the probability he will resume fighting.
Further, the “no appeasement” argument founders on the rocks. It seems to imply that Russia cannot be credibly deterred in the future by NATO or European soldiers, yet is capable of defeat now, at the zenith of its war-making powers using only Ukrainian soldiers. That’s a strange read of the military reality on the ground or even just basic counting logic. Is it because the EU, the main proponent of this argument, is perfectly happy to cut military spending to the bone and send billions to Russia for oil and gas once peace sets in?
Further, nothing about this war suggests Putin’s army is ready to deal with NATO air power. Putin is grinding on in his war with meat and shells. He cannot attain air superiority over most of Ukraine with its cobbled together air force and IADS. Do you think he would last a moment confronted with overwhelming air power? He could barely make it 50 miles into Europe’s poorest country.
Hmm. Mostly hogwash. But lets not blame UnHerd: we all need too see what is being said by the “other side”. As a wake-up call if nothing else..
What a bunch of hogwash! Who moved NATO eastwards! Transactional! About time someone stepped up to the plate! Trump is the only leader in town with a plan! STOP THIS FRIGGEN UNNECESSARY WAR! Pull your finger out Europe! The ‘continent’ always at war, internecine and and all manisfestations in between. Hungary, Slovakia, Italy and all like thinking rationalists. Thanks President Trump for seeing the light rather than snuffing it out! No apologies for the !!!!!!
Since Britain can more likely send a brigade of front line fighters rather than 20000 troops it has, since the days of Afghanistan and Iraq, indeed become ‘some random country’.
Good to see you haven’t fired all the lunatics, I was getting worried by the spate of good articles on Donald Trump recently.
This is an appalling piece of TDS nonsense. Full of the usual ad hominem attacks and compromised by incorrect statistics, anyone thinking that the answer is 2TK committing to ‘boots on the ground and planes in the air’ is unworthy to be called a ‘foreign correspondent’.
Utter drivel, even for Unherd’s centrist dad failures. What next, Rory Stewart on ‘How to save Ukraine’?
All well said.
America may regret Europe finding itself through the US abandonment of an order it created.
Putin very much had to invade Ukraine if he wanted to stop is drifting west, while Ukraine very much had to fight back if it wanted to survive. So calling this conflict ‘unnecessary’ seems an odd thing to say.
Could’ve been stopped in 2022. Or NATO could have made good on their (repeatedly broken) promises not to move further eastward and signed the treaty Moscow proposed, prior to the war.
Here’s the counterfactual. Canada cosies up to China for reasons of its own, to the extent that it’s happy to have Chinese military on the border with the US. And also maybe French Canada bans teaching English or something. How do you think the US would respond to that?
There was never any NATO promise not to move eastward, which Gorbachev confirmed if you read the relevant documentation and look beyond the Russian claims. In any case, NATO’s Slavic members joining took place peacefully and Russia has never attacked them after their joining, so all good! You might ask yourself WHY those countries wanted to join NATO.
The Russian proposal of 2022 was designed to fail because it demanded NATO pull troops out of its bases in Poland, which no military alliance worth its name would ever do. Putin had made the decision to invade already.
There was of course no serious possibility of Ukraine joining NATO due NATO members’ misgivings about whether it qualified and sensitivities over Russia. NATO simply wouldn’t promise Russia Ukraine would never join. And don’t forget it was Russia that triggered Ukraine’s own ramp up in military capacity with its invasion of 2014. That spurred many in Ukraine to want to join NATO even though it was not a foreseeable prospect.
The point about Canada and China is largely moot as ‘NATO-Ukraine’ wasn’t a serious prospect. If the US did launch military action in a situation like that it would be targeted strikes on particular facilities and they wouldn’t write an essay denying Canada’s existence as a nation before hand, as Putin did about Ukraine. His real fear was of Ukraine becoming a prosperous Western-facing democracy like Poland, not the military angle. Don’t forget he often tells the Russian public that their nukes keep them safe.
It seems remarkable just how easy some ‘liberal’ politicians and writers find it to cheerlead for the continuation of an unwinnable war, just so long as it’s other people’s sons, husbands and fathers doing the fighting and dying.
Trump’s methods may seem heavy handed, but only when compared to the European leaders who’ve offered warm words of support and little else.
A very good article. Some commentators are trying hard to say things as they are. Particularly in the Telegraph today.
The American economy is in freefall. Trump, Vance and Musk are out of control. It will be only months.
Reading the comments here on Unherd, I realise how precarious Unherd must be, and hope it does not pander to its kommentariat.
If only there was a British politician with the spine and fearlessness to say what’s on their mind, to represent free speech and majority traditions and culture…..
Where do they get these people from? TDS in the extreme. ‘For Trump, everything is transactional’. Wow, that’s original. Big news – for most politicians everything is transactional. This reminds me of the Brexit period – the EU behaving like a very ‘transactional’ bully and the commentariat fawning over Barnier and Tusk. Trump does it, and it’s moral outrage all round. I tell you what is morally indefensible:
-Needlessly prolonging a war in which neither side can win, just rack up more dead citizens
-The EU still buying Russian gas and through that actually sending more money to Russia than Ukraine, all the while pretending they are standing up to the big Russian threat…sickening
Some serious drivel here.
“To do this to an ally under attack from a murderous neighbour”
I’m no fan of Putin, but this kind of language winds me up.
How would we describe the Ukrainians who were shelling civilians in separatist areas before Russia intervened?
Murderous neighbours, perhaps?
I think we’d describe them as people defending their country from an insurrection begun and supported with men and materials by a hostile neighbour.
Guardian: ‘Ukraine’s allies had no notice of Trump freezing military aid, Poland says’
Earth to America….. Hello ? Is anybody there ? Hello ?
When you say that Europe is ‘alone’, what you mean is the ‘woke’ oppressor class in Europe feels abandoned by a previous ‘woke’ ally. Hundreds of millions of people in Europe certainly don’t feel alone for once.
The Pile On against this article is a revelation.
The Trump cultists are simply following their instructions. Russia is now their dear ally. Canada and Europe are the enemy. Ukraine will be sacrificed. This is how it has always been and always will be.
Of course when all this changes next week then they’ll pretend that whatever madness Trump tells them at that time is the way it has always been.
It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious.
The Washington Post today has listed 26 false claims (what we used to call lies) in Trump’s speech: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/05/fact-check-trump-speech-address-congress/
I wonnder how many of them the Putin apologists think are wrong? Or whether they think it matters whether they are wrong or right?
They know that he lies all the time – any sentient being knows better than to believe a word Trump says.
They just don’t care. Its a cult and the cult leader is infallible to them.
What does everyone expect us to do? We could prosecute a nuclear war. Oh, not that? We could prosecute a conventional WWIII and hope Putin doesn’t go nuclear. Not that either? We could continue to send arms, but Ukraine will run out of fighters before Russia does, and that money will be wasted.
There are very few options and perhaps no good one.
A quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing, eh?
You really are a bunch of cowards and appeasers, aren’t you?
You vacillate between the tantrums of a 3 year old and the screeching of a shrew. Doubtless you will win over many.
”One of his few good qualities is that he never pretends to be what he’s not”.
What a wimpy, embarrassing breed Western men like this are today. Any decisive, powerful man puts so much fear into these emasculated, weaked, cucked little men.
f**k the globalist Left. Enough. They’ve had their day. I cannot bare these people and we should not tolerate their evil. They’re like Nazis and the far-Right, only their hatred is turned to anyone that opposes them. Did any here the horrors that fell to Trump’s administration to overturn.
Everyone was pure insanity and mental illness. These lunatics are not just repulsive and aggravating in the extreme. They are dangerous and suffering a mass psychosis.
We pushed Nazism and the far-Right racists to the fringes. We need to push odious, intolerant, weak, unstable, feeble-minded tossers like ideological fanatics that have been brainwashed and perpetuate the hateful narratives of the ‘elites’ that hate normal people and hate democracy.
What David is failing to appreciate is the difficult democratic dynamics within Ukraine between ethnic Ukrainian speakers and ethnic Russian speakers and as a result fails to understand that Trump is trying to resolve the dynamics of a civil war in which ethnic Ukrainians, prompted by presidential coups which were backed by the EU and the US, were easily able to militarily overpower ethnic Russian separatists in the east which then led to the mobilisation of Russian Armed Forces to fight back the violence of ethnic Ukrainian Azov Battalions.
The reason why David cannot see this is because he is blinded by fear for Putin and as a result cannot see the human rights of both ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians and the strong ethnic relationship between ethnic Russians in east Ukraine and ethnic Russians in west Russia bordering Ukraine.
His ethnicity blind approach is being replicated across Europe because Europe wants the hydrocarbons and minerals in the Donbas for itself and in the long term wants to conquer or coopt Russia as part of a regime change in order grab Russia’s rich reserves of resources because Europe effectively has none.
By creating Putin and by extension the Russian people as the bogeyman, all that David is trying to do is provoke an Eurasian war for future generations when in reality, most of Russia is populated by Caucasians like much of Europe.
Ultimately the civil war in Ukraine arose because of a Constitutional crisis because of the insistence of a Unitary State by the EU and the US whereas Russia wanted a Federal State which grants regions some amount of autonomy. This still needs to be discussed by the people of Ukraine especially that there isn’t a strict binary between ethnic Ukrainians in the west and ethnic Russians in the east since there are ethnic Ukrainians in the east too.
But the failure to resolve this Constitutional crisis led to civil war and the eventual Russian invasion which Trump is trying to resolve by placing American commercial interests across the Donbas region.
As a result, we should be looking to create Peace with Russia, considering the extent of its resources, by joining the Eurasian Economic Union or creating a more inclusive Eurasian trading bloc that can include the rest of Europe. However for the likes of David, they just want Russian resources for themselves.
Trump wants Eurasian peace knowing that Europe has no substantial resources of its own since without Peace there will eventually be War.
Keep your eye on the prize, which is an end to the war in Ukraine. What follows that, including Trump’s unique approach to diplomacy and the end of the US presence in Europe after eighty years, is something Europe (or to be precise the western tip of the Eurasian continent) will have to deal with in a grown up fashion, i.e., without being besotted by the non-existent threat of an attack by Russia. Russia will, almost certainly, reabsorb the Baltic States in return for giving Germany back Konigsberg. There will probably be other border changes in eastern Europe as well (that might have been avoided if the Ukraine War had been avoided or quickly ended, as it should have been but wasn’t) but Russia will not advance on Finland, Sweden, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary or Greece although there might be border changes involving some of those countries. Russia and Romania swapped Moldavia a few times in the 19th century, if I remember my history, but Europe (aka the western tip of Eurasia) will be fine if, God help us, it gets some leaders to assist Viktor Orban.
Keep your eye on the prize, which is an end to the war in Ukraine. What follows that, including Trump’s unique approach to diplomacy and the end of the US presence in Europe after eighty years, is something Europe (or to be precise the western tip of the Eurasian continent) will have to deal with in a grown up fashion, i.e., without being besotted by the non-existent threat of an attack by Russia. Russia will, almost certainly, reabsorb the Baltic States in return for giving Germany back Konigsberg. There will probably be other border changes in eastern Europe as well (that might have been avoided if the Ukraine War had been avoided or quickly ended, as it should have been but wasn’t) but Russia will not advance on Finland, Sweden, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary or Greece although there might be border changes involving some of those countries. Russia and Romania swapped Moldavia a few times in the 19th century, if I remember my history, but Europe (aka the western tip of Eurasia) will be fine.
Keep your eye on the main event, the war in Ukraine and how to end it.