Trump Picked Putin Over Ukraine This Week. Will It Stick?

Background. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was the largest military escalation in Europe since World War II, but the conflict's roots extend decades earlier. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became an independent state and, in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, relinquished the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. NATO's post-Cold War enlargement — admitting former Warsaw Pact states through multiple rounds beginning in 1999 — became a persistent source of tension with Russia, which viewed expansion toward its borders as a strategic threat. In 2004–2005, Ukraine's Orange Revolution brought pro-Western leadership to power, and in 2014, the Euromaidan protests led to the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych, followed almost immediately by Russia's annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of armed conflict in the Donbas region. The Minsk I and Minsk II agreements (2014–2015) attempted to establish ceasefires but were never fully implemented. Western nations responded to the 2014 annexation with targeted sanctions, though these were widely considered limited in scope. After the February 2022 invasion, the United States, European Union, and allied nations imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia — including on Russian energy exports — and provided Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in military, economic, and humanitarian aid. The U.S. aid packages were periodically contested in Congress, particularly by members aligned with former President Donald Trump, who during his first term (2017–2021) was accused by congressional investigators of withholding congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine in 2019, an episode that led to his first impeachment. The Starlink satellite communications system, operated by SpaceX, became a critical component of Ukrainian battlefield operations after Elon Musk made it available following the 2022 invasion, though its terms of use and potential restrictions became a subject of public controversy.