Ukraine Update for 2026

[John Corbett]

No one ever argued that things were hopeless in Ukraine.  That is a false premise.  The Trump argument has always been that the US should not bankroll the entire effort while others sit back and do nothing.  Trump solved that problem by not giving Urkaine billions of dollars.  He is requiring them to pay it back and putting pressure on our so called "allies" to do their part.  It's unfortunate that Obama only sent Ukraine blankets while sending Iran a plane load of cash.  Biden's weakness emboldened Putin to invade.  Biden's only plan was US taxpayers funding an endless war in Ukraine while Europe sat back and laughed at us.

Do you really think Biden planned anything during his presidency. I doubt Biden could even plan what he would have for lunch. I wonder if we will ever find out who the puppet masters were who pulled Joe's strings.

[Richard Smith]

Do you really think Biden planned anything during his presidency. I doubt Biden could even plan what he would have for lunch. I wonder if we will ever find out who the puppet masters were who pulled Joe's strings.

His plan was no having plan except to send more and more money.  The US bankrolls the entire effort while "Europe" sits back and does nothing.  Most countries try to avoid these situations and spend money on their own citizens.  Our politicians want to control the flow of billions to military contractors who kick back the funds in the form of donations and cushy jobs for supporters and family.  This creates an endless cycle of war and spending that brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

[Michael T. Griffith]

It has been a long time since we have discussed Ukraine. A couple of years ago, particularly after Trump won the 2024 election, some here were arguing that things were hopeless for Ukraine. Well, how are things going there? Russia gains have ground to a half. Their main efforts now seem to be to kill as many Ukrainian civilians as they can.

Will the Ukrainian civilians stand up to these drone attacks? I am confident that the answer is yes. So far, in four years of war, Russian has killed around 15,800 Ukrainian civilians, according to the UN's OHCHR estimates. How do these losses, in proportion to their population, rank with other civilian loses in the past and recently.

Germany, 1940-1945: One in 177 civilians killed
Great Britain, 1940-1945: One in 618 civilians killed
America, 2022-2026, One in 2,068 civilians killed in automobile accidents.
Ukraine, 2022-2026, One in 2,318 known civilians killed by Russia.

I expect America to throw in the towel and swear off driving cars before I see Ukraine throw in the towel.

Also, likely far more Ukrainians have died in face-to-face encounters with Russian troops than from drone or missile attack. Most of these deaths are unrecorded because they occur in Russian held territory. But when Ukraine recaptured a lot of territory in the spring of 2022, the bodies of 4,313 were found, killed not by drones but Russia troops. The true number of Ukrainians killed by drones or missiles is more like 12,000. And the number of Ukrainian civilians killed at close range by Russian troops is likely several times that. Giving in to Russia will likely not cause this death rate to stop but to greatly increase.

Ukraine has a wolf by the ears. They have no other choice. And as they stay the course, the wolf is getting weaker and weaker and must eventually whimper for mercy and abandon all Ukrainian territory. It will quickly turn into a strong wolf if they do otherwise.

Slava Ukraine!

This is a great post. Ukraine is near and dear to my heart, especially because my wife and I hosted an exchange student from Ukraine for a school year in 2017-2018, and then we visited her and her family in Ukraine in 2019. We totally fell in love with Ukraine.

I am utterly disgusted and sickened by Putin's unprovoked, criminal invasion of Ukraine. Our exchange student and her family had to spend time in bomb shelters in 2022 and 2023 because of Russian missile and artillery attacks.

[Lance Payette]

I worked with a deputy public defender in a completely podunk county - his name was Ben Cole, really! - who, together with his devoutly Mormon wife, had adopted, one at a time, SIX Ukrainian children. Do you have any idea of the work and expense involved in doing that? He never even mentioned it to me; I learned about it second-hand. Even though our offices were theoretically bitter enemies (not me, fortunately, since I did only civil work), I thereafter thought of him (and still do) as Saint Ben.

Somewhat more relevant to this thread: On the first morning of my first visit to Minsk in 2007, I happened to have breakfast at the Minsk Hotel with a woman form the State Department. She mentioned Ukraine as a cautionary tale. In contrast to the other former Soviet republics, she feared that Ukraine was too quickly embracing the worst of Western culture. At that time, Ukraine seemed to be riding high - but it was indeed a hotbed of Western-style corruption. Certainly, we cannot "blame" Ukraine for Putin's unilateral invasion, but I have to wonder if it would have happened if Ukraine had not moved so quickly toward Westernization.

To close on a humorous note that my wife taught me: She said that the Ukrainian language is so "unmelodic" that a Soviet expression for anything that simply doesn't work was "Ukraine opera." At the moment, Russia's invasion is proving to be something of a Ukraine opera for Putin.