The casual cruelty of Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine

Sadists do it because they enjoy it

Photo by Ivan Skorovarov on Unsplash

The most terrifying lines in English poetry I know are the depiction of cruelty in W.H. Auden’s Shield of Achilles. Auden did not show rational cruelty, inflicted to ensure that a cause triumphed or a battle was won. But casual cruelty done for the sake of it because cruelty was the only imaginable option.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

These lines apply well to a Trump administration that never met a promise it could not break and knows no pity other than self-pity,

You can see casual cruelty in the cuts to the US aid budget, which will kill countless thousands – maybe even millions, and in the decision of the supposed champions of the left-behind to remove healthcare provision for the working class to fund tax cuts for the rich. But most of all you see cruelty in Ukraine tonight.

Vladimir Putin and his commanders have no strategy beyond terrorising civilians. On the battlefield Russian armies inch forwards while sustaining huge casualties. So Russia does what it did in Syria and Chechnya and targets defenceless civilians instead, in the hopes of breaking their spirit.

Natalia Yermak of the Kyiv Post has just put up a piece saying that Russia had increased the civilian casualty rate by almost one third by targeting Ukrainian cities with cluster munitions. They got through far too often.

"The biggest issues are the lack of air defense batteries coupled with the lack of interceptors from the Ukrainian side," Dr. Marina Miron, a post-doctoral researcher at the War Studies Department at King's College London, told the paper.

"As the Russian side uses decoys and electronic warfare (in the attacks), this in sum creates a huge issue for Ukraine trying to defend against incoming missiles and drones.”

Trump is about to widen the holes in Ukraine’s defences. From nowhere, the US has abruptly stopped the supply of defensive equipment. The halted weapons’ shipments include PAC-3 interceptors for Patriot air defence systems, dozens of Stinger man-portable air defence systems, precision-guided artillery shells, more than 100 Hellfire missiles and AIM missiles launched by Ukraine’s NASAMS and F-16 fighter jets, senior US officials told the Financial Times.

And so as Russia attacks Ukraine’s cities Trump clears the paths for Putin’s missiles. It’s almost as if he is pointing them in the right direction, and ushering them to their targets.

Why Trump and the MAGA movement hate Ukrainian democracy with such a cruel passion is an urgent question that no one can fully answer.

The official explanation for cutting vital supplies is that American stocks are running low. But the US is not under attack – Ukraine is. In any event, low stock levels do not begin to explain the lies that the MAGA movement has thrown at Ukraine for years

One day, if I live long enough, I hope to see the Putin dictatorship overthrown. I can pretty much guarantee that, when the arhives are opened, we will see that the Russians spent lavishly on buying up the American far right. We already know that Russia covertly subsidised right-wing American journalists, and only fools believe the influence campaign stopped there.

Indeed, I wrote a long piece a few months ago on why it is plausible to think that Russian intelligence services have had their claws into Trump for decades.

The best argument against believing Trump is a Russian agent is hardly a comforting one. My friend Phillips O'Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, asked his contacts in the CIA whether they thought Trump was on Putin’s payroll. They replied that the only reason to believe he wasn’t a Kremlin agent was that no real agent would work so obviously and publicly to further Putin’s interests as Trump does because they would fear blowing their cover.

That said, it is clear that beyond the power of bribery and blackmail to influence US government policy lies the appeal of the know-nothing cruelty of the far right.

Its adherents must believe that anyone who asks them to feel pity or honour a promise is a con artist and liar who is ripping off America.

“There are people who would cut Social Security, throw our grandparents into poverty. Why? So that one of Zelenskyy’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht?” J. D, Vance said in December 2023 as he repeated a Russian propaganda lie about corruption in Kyiv

As it has turned out, it is J. D. Vance and Donald Trump, who will cut medical services and throw America grannies into poverty, and they are doing it all by themselves and without a blush of shame.

But as telling as the hypocrisy is the eagerness with which Vance and his friends seized on lies. They are desperate to prove that the world of freedom and democracy is a fraud. They want to prove that Zelensky is a liar and a crook – just like they are. They hope that crimes will pay off for Putin, just as they hope that they will pay off for Trump and Vance. And they hope that no one will care or hold them to account, and that the world where promises were kept or one could weep because another wept no longer exists.

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Here is piece on Trump and Russian intelligence I mentioned (for paying subscribers but see offer below.)

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