Berating our president, and now pausing arms – the US has shown itself to be an unreliable partner. But it still has a role to play

A few days before the Munich Security Conference, one of the Ukrainian military officers fighting on the eastern Ukrainian border told me about intercepts of the Russian army talks their unit had obtained. Russian middle-level commanders were instructing their subordinates to hold on for a bit as “with Donald Trump in the office”, their “goals would finally be met, and the fight would be over soon”. The Ukrainians pointed out that it was not a unique intercept, and the idea that the new American president was good for Moscow troops was being widely expressed by the Russians.

Recently, I asked Ukrainian frontline soldiers what they thought about the negotiations. Those in action are too busy fighting to follow everyday news from Munich, Riyadh, Washington and Kyiv. Yet they generally feel that “Donald Trump is heading in the wrong direction”. Today, as Trump “pauses” all military aid, they will know those instincts were right.

Nataliya Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian journalist and CEO of the Public Interest Journalism Lab

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