Bogdan Frolov08:30, 25.10.26

Ukraine is feeling a real “moral blow” from Trump’s policies.

On the same day that US President Donald Trump said that Russia had “behaved normally towards Ukraine”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted a photo taken minutes after a Russian drone struck a Ukrainian playground.

The photo showed a dead one-year-old child – 14-month-old Angelina. These statements by the two leaders – made on the same day with a difference of several hours – clearly demonstrated one reality. Never before has the gap between Trump’s views on the war and the experience of Ukrainians themselves seemed so huge, writes The New York Times .

Trump reportedly continues to periodically lament the huge number of lives lost in this war, calling it a senseless loss. He is trying to resume peace talks, but at the same time he is starting to blame Ukraine for its own domestic political problems, while simultaneously turning to Russia for help.

Over the years, Ukrainians have become accustomed to Trump repeating Russian theses.

The Ukrainian government has indeed adapted after Trump stopped free supplies of American weapons. But for many, Trump still crossed the line of no return when he started buying Russian diesel fuel and suspended sanctions, the media writes.

Trump, who cut American aid to Ukraine by 99%, is now essentially sending American money to the Kremlin. And therefore to the Russian war machine, which, according to the UN, is killing Ukrainian civilians “at a new horrific level.”

With all this, Ukraine has been hit by a deep sense of moral shock. And this after almost five years of its military roller coaster ride with the US.

Not so long ago, under another US president, Joe Biden, the US told Ukraine that its struggle was the front line in the global battle for freedom. Biden then emphasized that “by holding this line, Ukrainians are defending the democratic world itself.”

Now Ukrainians feel betrayed. After all, Trump does not talk about the war as a question of good and evil. He talks about it purely in trade terms. “We gave a lot to Ukraine. And they gave us nothing. Remember that,” Trump recently said.

Trump is destroying the US-Ukraine partnership

Master Sergeant Pavlo Kazarin said that Ukrainians are “watching Trump destroy all the reputational capital that his predecessors have accumulated over decades. A time when the US supported democracy, when the US said it supported freedom – and when the US invested in ‘soft power’ to support its allies around the world.”

Trump, on the other hand, sometimes reduces this war to a conflict between two leaders who “don’t like each other” and who simply need to come to an agreement. He baselessly accused Zelensky of starting the war, the media writes. And recently he even hinted that the Ukrainian leader allegedly wants it to continue in order to get rich.

Kazarin added: “What Trump doesn’t understand is that Russia’s goal is to destroy Ukraine as a nation. Without this understanding, the Trump administration’s peace efforts are doomed to failure. For Ukrainians, this war is a war for existence.”

For many Ukrainians, the sense of an “upside down world” was particularly acute when Trump’s peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, traveled to St. Petersburg and praised the Kremlin dictator Putin as a “humanist” for releasing an American prisoner whom the U.S. government had deemed illegally detained.

Ukraine has no choice but to continue fighting.

While Trump accuses Zelensky of not wanting peace, Ukrainians say that the question “why are they still fighting” is as absurd as it is obvious.

Russia invaded Ukraine. Kyiv has agreed to the Trump administration’s proposals for reducing tensions, ranging from a full ceasefire to limited ceasefires on land, in the air, and at sea. Moscow has essentially agreed to none of them, the report says.

The Russian military is stockpiling hundreds of ballistic missiles, thousands of cruise missiles, and tens of thousands of drones for a winter campaign. Its goal, according to Ukrainian intelligence, is to make Ukrainian cities uninhabitable. The Russian economy remains focused on the war, and Putin has not wavered from his maximalist demands.

“Having seen with their own eyes the well-documented atrocities committed by Russian troops in Bucha, as well as excavating mass graves in Izyum and finding torture chambers in Kherson and other liberated cities and villages, Ukrainians know: surrender will not bring peace,” the media writes.

(C)UNIAN 2026