Ukraine update: Trump and Putin negotiate the destruction of the West

Since the election—and especially since the inauguration—many people have been waiting for the moment Donald Trump begins arguing with Elon Musk. Those people are likely to be waiting a long time.

Yes, Musk has assumed most of the authority of the White House. Yes, he's running off on his own agenda, closing down whole departments and parking his anklebiter corps in one agency after another. He's assumed power beyond that of the entire executive branch. It seems like the sort of thing that should create a conflict with the guy who is supposed to be running this show.

Except Trump doesn't care about running the government. He has never cared. As long as people continue to sing his praises and the cameras are always on whenever he opens his mouth, he's good.

Trump is never subtle. He's vocal about his concerns. Right now the thing he cares about is really simple: Real Estate.

Trump is serious about his ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza. He's serious about his screw-NATO plan for taking over Greenland. And he's serious about shredding the treaty that recognized that the Panama Canal should belong to the nation where it was built.

He's also serious about Molotov-Ribbentrop 2.0, now underway in Saudi Arabia.

The original 1939 pact, is mostly remembered now for putting a line down the middle of Poland to split the nation between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. However, it also handed over five other European nations to Stalin. Everything else was Hitler's. A week after the pact was signed, both the Nazis and the Soviets began their invasions.

Similarly, the discussion between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will not just agree on a division of Ukraine, but fundamentally alter the alignment of forces in Europe.

The purpose of this meeting is two-fold:

• Divide Ukraine in a way that benefits both Russia and the United States, with the ultimate goal of making Ukraine into a Russian state
• Destabilize and isolate Europe so that authoritarian great powers can exploit divisions, weaken Western democracy, and seize resources

Ukrainian officials have been deliberately excluded from this meeting that will theoretically decide their fate. European leaders have also been shut out of the discussions. This comes just a week after J.D. Vance attended a meeting of NATO members intended to discuss security in the region and used it to attack America's allies over their failure to embrace fascism. And it comes a week after a group of Republican congressmen presented Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a White House ultimatum demanding half the nation's mineral wealth in exchange for continued friendly relations with America.

Zelenskyy did not sign on to the theft of his nation. European leaders refused to go along with surrendering to Nazis.

Trump responded by blaming Ukraine, and specifically Zelenskyy, for starting Russia's unprovoked, illegal invasion.

“Today I heard, ‘oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years ... You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

He went on to call Zelenskyy a "dictator."

Trump has no interest in peace and even less in a fair solution that recognizes Russia as an illegal aggressor. Not only does Trump view Putin as his greatest ally, he sees the invasion of Ukraine as a gift.

Decades after the world had agreed that military invasion for territorial gain was immoral and impermissible, and decades after millions of Americans and Europeans died thinking they were making this concept untenable for all times, Putin invaded Ukraine. To say the response of America and most of Europe was half-hearted is giving us way too much credit.

Putin's invasion could have been crushed within days of being launched. If not hours. Russia could have been made a pariah state for even considering this venal act. Ukraine could have been a byword for how the world responds to violations of the most fundamental agreement between nations.

Instead, U.S. politicians on both sides of the aisle were more frightened of the term "boots on the ground" than they were of seeing an ally ripped apart. Meanwhile, European leaders were more focused on the price of natural gas—and its effect on the polls—than they were on holding back the authoritarian tide.

Instead, the world's wealthiest and most powerful nations left their fighting to the poorest nation in Europe; a nation that had already surrendered its nuclear arsenal on the promise that, should it be attacked, those wealthy, powerful nations would be there to help.

What Ukraine has received has been cast-off systems, leftover ammo, and token levels of training that have generally treated them like slow children not to be trusted with big boy toys. Putin invaded Ukraine. The West betrayed them. Now Trump is here to finish them off.

Trump doesn't want to punish Putin for his invasion. He wants to reward him.

Because Trump has a long and growing list of potential invasion targets. He's made it clear that he intends to own Gaza. He's continued his claims that the U.S. needs to control both Greenland and the Panama Canal, leading to concerns that Trump will order a military invasion.

That's why the language Trump is using about Ukraine isn't just infuriating and sickening, it's a signal of where he is going. Trump is saying that Zelenskyy "started" the war because he refused to hand over territory to Putin without a fight. He's ready to reward the man who carried out the invasion and punish the man who resisted.

Hear that, Greenland? When the Marines land at Nuuk, it's going to be your fault. Trump wants Ukraine as precedent.

Musk also has some interest in Ukraine. As with Greenland, he sees much of the world in terms of resources that he can convert into CyberTrucks. Trump invades, Musk exploits, and the government buys the end product. Circle of life. Or at least, circle of corruption.

But that's not Musk's biggest reason for being interested in what Rubio brings home from his trip to Riyadh. The world's wealthiest man has also taken time away from torturing the world's poorest children to show his continued interest in wrecking European democracy and supporting the new generation of fascists who are calling for Germany to get in on the action by making nice with Russia.

Like Trump, Musk sees Putin as his natural ally--someone who can be counted on to place his personal greed and ambition ahead of everything else. He sees Zelenskyy as an obstacle. And worse, as a mystery.

For Musk and Trump, a leader motivated by something other than unenlightened self-interest is incomprehensible. And their joint response to anything they don't understand is simply to crush it.

No matter what gets written into the Lavrov—Rubio Pact, there's little doubt about where this is going: The United States will emerge as Ukraine's enemy, siding with Russia in an effort to get Zelenskyy to surrender all or part of Ukraine's territory and give up hope of being part of a wider security agreement. Don't be surprised if Trump doubles down by threatening any European nation that continues to pledge support to Ukraine with tariffs. Or worse.

Ukraine needs our help, but they would likely survive our negligence. It's Vladimir Putin who desperately requires Trump's aid to salvage his failing invasion and hold together his fractured economy. As the Independent reports, Russia is currently experiencing 21% inflation along with shortages of everything from food to car parts. Holding onto even a pretense at normailty has drained the Kremlin's coffers with little chance of an improvement.

Putin needs Trump to salvage his disastrous invasion. Trump needs Putin's invasion to look like a good idea. Everyone else is just trying to survive these two assholes and their useful idiots.

Meanwhile, Ukraine keeps fighting.

The big reminder: Russia is losing

As of this writing, we are five days away from the third anniversary of Putin's second illegal, unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine. This is a good time to remember the most important fact of the last 35+ months — Russia is losing.

And without the assistance of Donald Trump, Russia's ultimate defeat is likely to be crushing.

Within hours of the invasion's launch, Russia had occupied the airport outside Kyiv. On hearing this, the United States contacted Zelenskyy and offered him transportation out of Ukraine. "The fight is here," said Zelenskyy. "I need ammunition, not a ride."

Try to imagine Trump or Musk saying those words. Try to imagine Putin.

By the first week of March, Russia was on the edge of Kyiv, occupying suburbs like Hostomel and Bucha, where Russian soldiers strolled past Ukrainian bodies left to rot in the streets. Russia had crossed the bridge to occupy the city of Kherson. Russian troops held much of the Kharkiv Oblast, with convoys moving toward the heart of Ukraine from the north, northeast, and east. Russian forces were right outside the city of Kharkiv, dosing the city in waves of artillery fire.

Russia lost all of that after Ukraine began a series of counteroffensives in April. They lost at Kyiv. They lost at Kherson. They lost at Kharkiv.

For almost two years now, Russia has been mostly dug in, holding onto the territory that it captured in the first few weeks against counterattacks conducted at the urging of the West. The one area of Russian advance in the last year has been a breakthrough that began near Avdiivka and has stretched toward Pokrovsk in Donestk Oblast. Russia advanced steadily, if slowly, with their combination of massive numbers and heavy artillery seeming unstoppable. But in recent weeks, something has changed. As in, they've kind of been stopped.

Here's Pokrovsk on Jan 18.

This map is little changed since updates published in December. The bright yellow areas indicate areas of Russian activity over the previous week, but these are small areas on a high-resolution map.

Here's the Pokrovsk area a month later.

Over the last month, Russia managed to keep some--though not all--of the area where it had been advancing along the highway in January. However, Ukraine has launched multiple counterattacks into the line southeast of the city, successfully liberating some areas that had been under Russian control and diverting Russian efforts to advance to the west. Russia is less prepared to assault Pokrovsk now than it was a month ago.

Over that same period, Ukraine has significantly expanded its presence in the Kursk region of Russia. That includes driving Russian forces from the town of Malaya Loknya as Ukrainian control has expanded to both the north and east.

This map is actually at a lower resolution than the one at Pokrovsk because the scale of actions in this area has been larger.

Ukraine has made advances in this area despite Russia injecting thousands of North Korean troops into this fight. At least 3,000 of those North Korean troops were killed or wounded in January. Reportedly they have not been seen in Kursk during February and may have been withdrawn.

The word "culminated" is extremely dangerous to deploy at any time in an invasion, and it's certainly been misused multiple times in this war. But boy ... it is tempting.

Drones continue to expand their role as the principle way of destroying military equipment in this war.