Letters from an American - February 24, 2026

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

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February 24, 26. Four years ago today, Russia's President Vladimir Putin launched a special military operation involving dozens of missile strikes on Ukrainian cities before dawn. In 1994, in the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, Russia, along with the United States and the United Kingdom, agreed not to use military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, in exchange for Ukraine's giving up the Soviet stockpile of nuclear weapons left in Ukraine after the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991. At the time, Ukraine had the third largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. Russia violated that agreement when it

invaded in 2014 after Ukrainians threw out Russia-backed oligarch Viktor Yanukovych. Putin had been eyeing Ukraine's industrialized region since at least summer 2016, when Russian operatives told then-candid Donald J. Trump that they would help Trump win the White House if he would look the other way when Russia installed Yanukovych to govern a new autonomous republic there. Two days before he invaded in 2022, Putin recognized new republics in Ukraine, and then, in his announcement of his invasion, claimed that he had to protect the people there from persecution and genocide by the Kiev regime. He called for demilitarization of Ukraine, demanding that soldiers lay down their weapons and saying that any bloodshed would be on their hands. Putin called for the murder of

Ukrainian leaders in the executive branch and parliament and intended to seize or kill those involved in the 2014 Medan Revolution, which sought to turn the country away from Russia and toward a democratic government within Europe, and which itself prompted a Russian invasion. Putin planned for his troops to seize Ukraine's electric, heating, and financial systems so the people would have to do as he wished. The operation was intended to be lightning fast. But rather than collapsing, Ukrainians held firm, The day after Russia invaded, Zelensky and his cabinet recorded a video in Kiev. We are all here, he said. Our soldiers are here.

The citizens are here. And we are here. We will defend our independence. Glory to Ukraine. When the United States offered the next day to transport Zelensky outside the country, where he could lead a government in exile, he responded, the fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride. During his first term, Trump had weakened the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, that stood against Russian aggression. But once President

Joe Biden took office, he and Secretary of State Antony Blinken worked quietly to strengthen NATO and ties with other allies and partners. They rallied the G7, the world's seven wealthiest liberal democracies, the European Union, and others to supply Ukraine with weapons and humanitarian assistance. Under Biden, the U.S. led the international response, providing about $50 billion in military aid and about $53 billion in humanitarian aid, as well as coordinating aid from allies and partners. The U.S. and allies and partners also united behind extraordinary economic sanctions, including, on February 26, 2022, the exclusion of Russian banks from Swift, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. Swift is a Belgian-based network that enables

banks to transfer payments across international borders, and its ban on Russian banks isolated. Russia's economy. Over the next three years, Ukraine's stand against Russia boosted the morale of those defending their own countries against invaders and, in turn, captured the imagination of people around the world hoping to stem the rise of authoritarianism. Ukraine's society transformed to bring the power of civilians as well as soldiers behind the war effort. The Ukraine army grew to be the largest in Europe with a million people, even as Russian attacks killed civilians as well as soldiers and destroyed hospitals, infrastructure, and the energy sector. Ukraine became the global leader in drone technology, while Russia's economy faltered and its front lines dug in.

Last year, Foreign Affairs journalist Ann Applebaum wrote, the only way Putin wins now is by persuading Ukraine's allies to be sick of the war, by persuading Trump to cut off Ukraine, and by convincing Europeans that they can't win either. Indeed, while Americans supported Ukraine, Trump never wavered from his support for Russia. Although a bipartisan majority in Congress would have passed more funding for Ukraine, after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, Trump loyalist House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, refused to bring Ukraine funding to the floor for a vote.

Then, in December 2023, MAGA Republican lawmakers said they would not pass a new measure to fund Ukraine's assistance without measures strengthening the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Senators wrote the measure they demanded, only to have Trump urge his congressional supporters supporters to kill it in order to keep the issue of immigration alive for the 2024 election.

By the time Congress finally passed a measure appropriating $60 billion in aid for Ukraine in April 2024, the lack of funding for six months had helped shift the war in Russia's favor. Once Trump was back in the White House, the U.S. position changed dramatically. As a team from the Wall Street Journal later explained, even before Trump took the oath of office, Putin was reaching out to Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Whitkoff, a billionaire real estate developer with no experience in diplomacy, to negotiate over Ukraine. In February, Whitkoff went to Moscow to meet with Putin without a translator and without being briefed by the CIA. On February 12, 2025, the day after Whitkoff returned, Trump talked to Putin for nearly an hour and a half and came out from the

highly productive call parroting Putin's justification for invading Ukraine. Two days later, Vice President J.D. Vance used the Munich Security Conference to attack Europe and its democratic values, while declining to acknowledge the threat of Russian aggression, indicating that the U.S. would no longer stand with Ukraine. Days later, a readout of a call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that Russia was in dire need of relief from economic sanctions. Then, on February 28, 2025, Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance ambushed Ukraine President Zelensky in an Oval Office meeting that seemed designed to give the White House an excuse for siding with Russia.

The American leaders spouted Russian propaganda, trying to bully Zelensky into accepting a ceasefire on Russia's terms and signing over rights to Ukraine's rare earth minerals, while accusing him of being ungrateful for U.S. support. Zelensky didn't take the bait, and Trump ended up furiously defending Putin before walking out. Shortly after, Zohenka, Zelensky and his team were asked to leave the White House.

In August, Trump met Putin, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, on U.S. soil, greeting him in Alaska on a literal red carpet and clapping as Putin walked to greet him, before taking him alone into the presidential limousine to drive to the meeting site. Trump has placed a photograph from that meeting on display in the White House. House. Putin's attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine have increased dramatically since Trump took office, even as Whitkoff has been negotiating, officially for an end to the war, and quietly over deals on oil, gas, and perhaps minerals. In April, the U.S. appeared to back a plan that essentially gave Russia all it wanted, including the Ukrainian land it had invaded. Since then, since then,

the administration's ongoing negotiations with Russia resulted in demands of major concessions from Ukraine, but none from Russia. Those talks are ongoing, now with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner involved, although as recently as last week, Russia had not wavered from its demands for Ukraine's territory. Today, landmark buildings across the world that were lit up in blue and yellow to show support for Ukraine, included the Council of the European Union and European Commission buildings in Brussels, Belgium, Canada's Parliament and the Office of the Prime Minister in Ottawa,

the Freedom Monument in Riga, Latvia, the Colosseum in Rome, Italy, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, the Tower of Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen, Denmark, saved some in Seoul, South Korea, about the war's forced generation requirements and the Russian economy. The Ukrainians have suffered the most from America's distortion because we measure the transatlantic divorce in money and they in black bags. Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Ukrainian civilian deaths have increased by 31 percent compared to 2024 and by 70 percent

compared to 2023. That Russia is not winning the war, but said the war won't end until the Russians agree to stop fighting, and they haven't yet, nor have they ever said they wanted to. So the war can't end. The Ukrainians are defending their land

and can't stop, even if they wanted to. Ukrainians have changed the way they wage war. They no longer act. ask when it will end, but only how, Padutsi wrote. She concluded, Ukrainians are saving us all. And unlike us, they don't even ask us to say thank you. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.