23.02.2025 / As long as it takes

Feb 23, 2025

I came back to Kyiv on February 12. After a month abroad, the first thing I noticed was how dirty the air was. Overnight russia had attacked Ukraine with 123 Shahed drones + 6 ballistic missiles. Missile fragments had fallen in several Kyiv neighborhoods and killed a person. Each of the following 11 nights (except one), russia has sent over a hundred Shahed drones into regions across Ukraine, targeting critical infrastructure and killing civilians. Look:

12–13 February — 140 drones

13–14 February — 133 drones

14–15 February — 70 drones

15–16 February — 143 drones + 2 ballistic missiles

16–17 February — 147 drones

17–18 February — 176 drones

18–19 February — 167 drones + 2 ballistic missiles

19–20 February — 161 drones + 14 missiles

20–21 February — 160 drones + 2 ballistic missiles

21–22 February — 162 drones

22–23 February — 267 drones + 3 ballistic missiles

Last night I tried to drown out the rhythm of Kyiv’s anti-aircraft defense with cacophonous jazz music. There is no uglier sound than the whine of a Shahed drone.

Surely you’ve been following the news. As russia continues to ruthlessly bombard Ukraine, the current US president has decided to make a “peace deal” by partnering with the aggressor state. After three years of declaring to stand with Ukraine for “as long as it takes” the US has changed sides. This is dead serious.

Last week three US officials and two officials from the rf met in Saudi Arabia to begin talks about ending “the conflict in Ukraine,” as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has taken to calling russia’s unilateral invasion of its sovereign neighbor Ukraine. At the same time other US officials have visited Kyiv to pressure Ukraine president Zelensky to sign away $500 billion in the country’s resources to “repay” the US for $100 billion Ukraine received in grants approved by the US Congress and presidential administration over the past three years. From across the ocean, DJT is sputtering personal insults and untruths about Ukraine’s president, and the US threatens to cut off Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s Starlink system, which is vitally important for Ukraine to continue to defend itself in a highly technological war. This is nothing less than extortion.

The current US regime in partnership with the criminal regime of the rf is trying to impose a new world order. All of a sudden (though we’d be stupid to claim that it happened without warning) the US has abandoned the defense of democracy (at home as well as abroad) in hopes that its leaders will get richer in a world where might is right. Those men are trying to “change the conversation” around the war in Ukraine that russia launched with a full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, eight years after its undeclared invasion of Crimea (and subsequent illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula) and areas of eastern Ukraine in 2014. US president Trump is holding talks with the leader of the aggressor state while aggressively pressuring the leader of the invaded state to give up his people’s land, resources and sovereignty and calling it a “peace deal.”

Words matter. It matters that we don’t fall for this cheap ruse. It matters that we keep calling the war a war and distinguishing the aggressor russia from independent Ukraine whose borders russia has been violating for over 11 years.

The Trump regime is using words to overwhelm the space of media and public discourse with contradictory statements. Trump takes the Soviet–russian tradition of mixing facts with untruths until the listener no longer knows what to believe to a new level. The point is to confuse and disorient so you can’t tell which way is up or down, right or wrong. Donald Trump’s statements are so bogus and bombastic there is even a modicum of delight in the bluster — it’s not calculated but neither is it careless. The point is to keep changing the game.

We do not need to follow along with every remark. We need to remember what matters.

A journalist asked me what has changed in Ukraine over the past three years. The obvious response is how much we have lost: hundreds of thousands of people killed and maimed; millions who fled abroad and are less likely to return the longer russia is allowed to continue its ruthless and liberal assault; the children now growing up in other countries and those kidnapped by the rf being raised to despise their Ukrainian culture. How many buildings, homes, museums, churches, hospitals, entire villages and cities, have been leveled by russian bombs, missiles, drones and artillery?

At the same time, Ukraine’s position has remained consistent. To quote writer and soldier Artem Chekh: “Why do we fight? Because this is our country, and we have no other.” Neither the Ukrainian people nor Ukraine’s president want to give up their country. This has not changed.

Ukraine president Zelensky’s popularity ratings have gone up in the past week. I admire his courage and resolve in holding the line. He is in his element when the stakes are so high.

The future of the world is being decided in Ukraine right now. If Ukraine were to give in, the world as we know it would collapse in a moment. As long as Ukrainians keep fighting, there is a chance that the world where people can live freely as as individuals and together as a polity in states with defensible borders, respected by other states, will survive. War historian Philips O’Brien — an American who lives in Scotland and a clear-headed assessor of what is going on in the world — writes that “Ukraine can survive, and I would argue win the war, but it needs the full backing of most of Europe to do so.”

What the present US regime is doing — cozying up to the violator of international law and perpetrator of war crimes and genocide, while bullying the democratic nation under attack — is abominable. But the previous US government and administration, by refusing to respond forcefully to the rf’s violations of international law and thus uphold justice, paved the way for today’s predicament.

Now it’s up to European nations — individually and together — to defend humanity.

If Ukraine is quashed then you will have to witness the carnage, first in Ukraine, then in another European state, until the bloodthirsty russian bear has eaten its fill. Is that the “piece deal” you were waiting for?

PS We are still free to live in Ukraine because of the tireless efforts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the individual sacrifices of every servicemember. These most generous human beings are defending Ukraine, Europe and the future of the free world every day and night. Please show your support and gratitude by making a donation to help the Birds of Fury (my drone-building and -flying friends you’ve been aiding through the charitable foundation Hero of Ukraine) put the enemy in its place. Details here: birdsoffury.com.