Pumping Up Putin: Moscow's Little Helper Lends a Hand

Jeff Robbins on Oct 13, 2026

America has been disgraced by the Oval Office's current occupant in ways so numerous as to bring sands on the seashore to mind, but warranting special recognition is his relentless effort to sell Ukraine down the river. Since it invaded Crimea in 2014 and then with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has killed or wounded over 80,000 civilians (For anyone keeping score, neither the UN nor the human rights organizations have called this a "genocide." Go figure.). This is not a "plenty-of-blame-to-go-around" situation; there's no more moral ambiguity here than there was when Hitler invaded Poland.

Former President Joe Biden will get the credit from historians he's due for mobilizing much of the world to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia's invasion machine, and for putting American resources where our mouths were. President Donald Trump, incapable of masking his support for the aggressor over its victim, began doing his best to sell Ukraine out immediately upon resuming office. Fortunately, Europe stepped in to do what America under Trump stopped doing, providing the aid with which Ukraine has battled Moscow to a draw. For their part, the brave, even indomitable Ukrainians have sacrificed and bled, holding off the vastly superior Russian military for nearly five years now.

Trump's pronouncements about who's to blame for Russia's war have been just as truthful as everything else he says, i.e., not very. "He should never have let that war start," Trump prattled idiotically in October 2024. "You should never have started it," he lectured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February 2025, booting Zelensky out of the White House, humiliating us more than Zelensky.

Last week, with Russia hemorrhaging cash trying to sustain its aggression, Trump found a new way to boost Russia and bash Ukraine. Just months after Congress enacted legislation named after the late Lindsey Graham that authorized the president to sanction third parties that bought Russian oil -- legislation that Trump had long blocked -- Trump thumbed his nose at Congress, Ukraine and Graham's memory. He announced he was suspending energy-related sanctions on Russia, and authorizing Russia to sell millions of barrels of diesel fuel on the open market.

Forget about making it harder for Russia to generate funds by selling oil. Forget about increasing the pressure on Russia to negotiate a peace deal. As the European Union's foreign policy chief put it, Trump's diesel deal "provides Russia with the revenue to wage war," removing inducements that might have led Russia to stop its deadly attacks on Ukraine's civilians.

It was Trump to a T.

Faced with the real possibility of losing GOP Senate seats in the midterms in deep red farm states like Kansas, Iowa and Ohio, Trump spied the opportunity to blame the bad economy that is putting these seats in play on ... Zelenskyy, whose army's strikes against Russian refineries are defensive, aimed at repelling Russia's attempt to conquer Ukraine. As usual, the President's mendacity was shameless. "He wants to make problems for the world, for our farmers, with diesel," yammered Trump, as though Zelenskyy's moves to save his countrymen from Russian aggression were responsible for high oil prices. "Zelensky could have settled this war many, many times but he chose not to," claimed Putin's Poodle, whose recurrent demands that Zelensky surrender generate loud snickers and applause in the Kremlin's war rooms. "I think it's time for Ukraine to get a new president."

According to polls that place Trump's approval ratings at a subterranean 30%, most Americans think it's time for Americans to get a new president. In the light most favorable to Trump, statements like those he made last week, encouraging the invader and demoralizing the invaded, are merely stupid. But you've got to be awfully credulous to let Trump off the hook with merely stupid.

"We count on America's fair support for our defense of life, for our defense of people in Ukraine," said Zelenskyy last week, words that one hopes touched America's heart and conscience, "and on the United States having a correspondingly strong conversation with Russia. A strong one, not a weak one."

Problem is, we have a weakling in the White House. Whose weakness for totalitarianism is costing the country dearly.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States Attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.