Fighting for Vovchansk

Trump's Treachery Spurs Allies to Take Action

Vovchansk in mid-September 2024 (Ukrainian Armed Forces/AFP)

Look carefully. In 2022, this city in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region was home to nearly 20,000 people. On May 9, 2024 — the anniversary of Stalin’s brutal 1945 conquest that today’s Kremlin has turned into the high holiday of their cult — Russian forces launched an offensive into Kharkiv, but were beaten back. Today Vovchansk is a ruin, with a population of zero.

Moscow has left such trails of destruction all over Ukraine. In areas still occupied by Russian marauders, Ukrainians face looting, rape and torture on a daily basis – just as those overrun by the Red Army did in 1945. Then as now, Moscow’s policy is genocidal. They have kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and regularly execute prisoners of war.

This is the ‘Russian world’ Trump so eagerly champions. Long before he re-entered office in January, he and his team were eagerly engaging a Kremlin shunned by every other allied democracy. On February 12, he spoke with Putin, then again – for two and a half hours – on March 18. Out of office, Trump had at least seven calls with Putin. In his first term up to 2019, he spoke to Putin at least sixteen times.