Why the US Needs Ukraine as Much as Ukraine Needs the US

The US appears to have picked a side over Ukraine, and it’s not Kyiv.

As President Volodymyr Zelensky not so subtly called on US President Donald Trump to “stay in the middle,” Trump has pursued deals with Moscow and has ostensibly chosen Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s side – that of a man who, according to Ukraine, has been responsible for 228,992 war crimes committed by the Russian army as of Oct. 12, 2026.

According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, a total of 17,605 civilians have been killed and more than 55,000 injured as a result of the war. Among them, 760 children have been killed and 2,950 injured.

And that is on top of more than 114,000 Ukrainian civilians, including over 2,000 children, who are considered missing due to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The largest group, estimated at between 20,000 and 40,000 people, consists primarily of those killed in Russian bombardments of Mariupol, a city leveled in the initial days of the 2022 invasion.

One of the latest victims was a one-year-old girl killed while sitting in her stroller, when Russia struck a park in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Monday, killing six locals.

The attack coincided with Trump’s statement about the war, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, was not taken kindly by Ukrainians:

“Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine. They haven’t been doing much.”

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European diplomats fear Washington is pressuring Kyiv to accept a peace deal while showing too little willingness to force Putin to stop the war.

That, on top of his administration’s recent plan to exempt Russian shadow fleets from sanctions and its decision to throttle Starlink access for Kyiv, which crippled Ukraine’s ability to conduct deep strikes and intercept incoming drones, raises one simple question.

Why?

The most logical and straightforward explanation is that the US wants to end the war as early as possible, and it’s easier to pressure a non-nuclear nation than a nuclear power. And business deals, of course.

But for a country working hard to rebuild its democracy from the ashes of the USSR, establish anti-corruption institutions and an independent judiciary, and align itself with the best examples of democracy, these developments are nothing short of a betrayal.

Moral questions aside, foresight is also a good thing to have for any government, and here’s why aiding Russia can backfire on Washington long after Trump is gone.

Russia is not a friend

The central issue behind Trump’s seemingly misguided shift toward Russia is that Russia has never been an ally of the United States – and never will be.

In Russia’s national mindset, the US is an adversary and its principal global competitor, even during Trump’s presidency and despite the fact that the US has come to Russia’s aid numerous times.

The Lend-Lease program during World War II is just one example. More recently, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and close Putin ally who sits on Russia’s Security Council, put it plainly.

“We have been, are, and will remain systemic adversaries,” he wrote on Tuesday.

Second, Russians themselves believe that the United States should become Russia’s next target after Ukraine. In 2014, Kremlin mouthpiece Vladimir Solovyov threatened to turn “Washington into radioactive ash,” and the latest polls on the street indicate that Russians view the US as an enemy and NATO countries as US proxies.

Moscow’s values are also far removed from those of the US. Democracy, freedom, an independent judiciary and parliament are not considered core values in Russia – just look at how Putin’s term limit was removed in 2021 and how anti-war parties were simply barred from running in this year’s elections.

Unlike democratic countries, autocrats do not remember acts of goodwill. They exploit them.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has spent 35 years steadily building democratic institutions and working with the US on a range of issues, particularly reforms and improvements to its legislation. There are hiccups, of course, but big changes come in small steps, and the Ukrainian people have kept marching in the streets, rallying against corruption, war or not.

Relations with Kyiv have always been a two-way street

Speaking to journalists on Monday, Trump claimed, among other things, that Ukraine had received a great deal from the US but had contributed little during the war.

Neither claim is true.

Ukraine received not simply cash from the US, but weapons and equipment, not “$350 billion,” as Trump claimed and debunked by Kyiv Post; it received only $66 billion, much of it drawn from old Cold War-era stockpiles that would otherwise have needed to be disposed of.

It’s also worth noting that restocking US arms means jobs at the factories making those weapons.

Beyond that, Ukraine has given the US two of the most valuable things in this war: real-world combat data on US weapons and air defense systems against a world power, and time to rearm and prepare for a major conflict that is now looming among the world’s powers.

The US can use these lessons, and it has gained this experience without losing a single soldier.

The Ukrainian military, with its invaluable combat experience in modern warfare, could also become a genuine pillar of European security and NATO’s eastern flank should the day come.

Ukraine today, US and Europe tomorrow

Russia’s ambitions extend beyond eastern Ukraine.

By Putin’s 2022 decree, Russia incorporated four Ukrainian regions into its constitution, including Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which Russian forces do not fully control. If Russia were to achieve its objectives, it would become the dominant power in the Black Sea.

Russia has also openly called for a government change in Ukraine, with its advance on Kyiv in the spring of 2022 showing that it does not just seek to subjugate a part of Ukraine, but the entire country, either as part of Russia or as a puppet state.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has considerable industrial potential, a strong base of educated engineers, and a population with combat experience. If defeated and then used by Russia as a battering ram against its Western neighbors, Ukraine could become a threat to NATO.

Russia has also long portrayed NATO as an ideological enemy, calling not only for Ukraine’s membership ban but the alliance’s withdrawal from the entire eastern flank in its pre-2022 invasion ultimatum.

Without an eastern flank, the problem is no longer a Ukraine problem; it becomes a NATO problem, and, under the Article 5 mutual defense clause, also a US problem after Trump leaves office.

Ukraine is preventing that with the lives of its people, and NATO’s cost for helping Ukraine is nothing more than financial contributions and weapons drawn from its stockpiles.

With power comes responsibility

Turning its back on Ukraine – a victim of aggression – does not bode well for global trust in Washington.

Just as Americans once fought for independence from British rule, Ukraine is fighting to break free of Moscow’s sphere of influence, which plagued the country throughout the Russian Empire and the USSR.

These are not merely lofty words – the US is long seen as a bastion of democracy, and the success of US companies around the world stems not only from Washington’s economic and military power, but primarily from the perception of the US as a reliable partner.

Eroded trust is not easily restored, as recent examples show when the US, whether the White House or billionaire Elon Musk, flipped the switch on Ukrainian access to Starlink and Starshield during the latest row, with Europe now seeking alternatives worth billions in government contracts.

Betraying allies, refusing them support promised under previous commitments, and siding with autocrats and dictators undermines the most valuable form of capital the US possessed until recently: trust, and the expectation that its words are backed by the principles of freedom and solidarity with everyone fighting for that freedom.

It’s also worth noting the commitments made when Ukraine gained independence.

On Dec. 8, 1994, Ukraine, the US, the UK and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine voluntarily gave up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal at the time in exchange for security assurances and guarantees respecting its borders from Britain, the US and Russia.

Ukraine was still invaded.