Trudy Rubin

Donald Trump is helping Vladimir Putin defeat Ukraine. Right now, as you read this.

To stop that from happening, President Joe Biden must do an end run around Congress — where Trump and his MAGA clique have cowed House Speaker Mike Johnson into blocking a vote on vital military aid for Ukraine.

Biden still has the power to get some critical aid to Kyiv and prevent a MAGA sellout to Putin that will have ugly, long-term security consequences for America. But the White House can only counter the appeasers if Biden finally summons the political will to help Ukraine win.

Today, Trump and Putin hold the advantage.

With U.S. military funding cut off, Ukraine recently lost the town of Avdiivka to Russia because frontline soldiers ran out of artillery shells and bullets.

Our European allies — who already give twice as much aid to Ukraine as the U.S. does — are trying to rev up their military production capacity to compensate. They need to do much better, but they can’t do this fast enough or big enough to make up for the U.S. abdication. Meantime, Russia is boosting its military production with substantial help from Iran and North Korea.

Trump has long made his admiration of Putin clear, and his disdain for Ukraine clearer — he still resents Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for refusing to dig up fake dirt on Biden in 2019.

That makes urgent White House action even more imperative before the November elections. If Trump should win, he insists he will settle the Ukraine war in 24 hours in Moscow, which means pressing Kyiv to surrender to Putin’s........

© The Korea Times