When US Vice President JD Vance recently claimed that “nobody has done more for Ukraine than Trump,” it was not just political spin or campaign exaggeration.
It was a statement so detached from the actual timeline of events surrounding Russia’s war against Ukraine that it collapses under even basic scrutiny.
And as somebody who has lived through this war, fought in Mariupol, survived Russian captivity and continues reporting from Ukraine today, I find the statement remarkable not because it is controversial, but because the historical record points in almost the exact opposite direction.
Basically, it’s a damn right lie.
To understand why, you have to go back long before the full-scale invasion of February 2022.
During Donald Trump’s first presidency, Russia was already deeply entrenched inside Ukraine. Crimea had been illegally annexed in 2014. Russian-backed forces were operating across the Donbas. Moscow was openly issuing Russian passports in occupied territories while continuing to arm, finance and direct separatist formations.
Yet throughout that period, Trump repeatedly signalled ambiguity toward Vladimir Putin and NATO itself. He consistently questioned America’s commitments to European security while publicly praising Putin on numerous occasions.
At the 2018 summit in Brussels, he openly attacked alliance members over defence spending, reportedly even raising the possibility of the United States acting alone if allies failed to increase contributions.
To be fair, I actually agreed with parts of that argument at the time, and still do to an extent. European NATO countries should absolutely carry more of the burden for their own defence instead of relying almost entirely on Washington while criticising America from the sidelines. That debate was not invented by Trump though, and many defence analysts had been warning about it for years.
However, like so many things surrounding Trump, there always seems to be an ulterior motive or at the very least, rhetoric that drifts into something far more problematic. What began as a legitimate conversation about burden-sharing increasingly became laced with narratives that mirrored Kremlin talking points about NATO being weak, divided, exploitative or somehow responsible for provoking Russia itself.
Around the same period, following his summit with in Helsinki, Trump publicly stated he did not “see any reason why it would be” Russia that interfered in the 2016 U.S. election, appearing to side with Putin’s denials over the conclusions of American intelligence agencies.
That moment mattered because it reinforced a growing perception, both in Europe and inside Ukraine, that Trump’s instinct was often to publicly undermine allies and institutions while giving the Kremlin the benefit of the doubt.
Criticism of NATO spending is one thing.
Echoing rhetoric that ultimately benefits Russian strategic objectives is another entirely.
Of course, the Kremlin watched carefully.
That matters because deterrence is not simply about weapons, it is about perception, political consistency and whether hostile states believe there will be consequences for escalation, and that is something we are seeing play out now. In the years leading up to the full-scale invasion, the Kremlin increasingly appeared to believe there would not be.
But the blame for that cannot be placed solely on Trump. Barack Obama and David Cameron, the British Prime Minister during Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, also failed to impose enough pressure on the Kremlin to deter further escalation, so Trump was not unique in that respect.
JD Vance saying nobody has done more for Ukraine than Trump is absolute bollocks.
Trump froze military aid before he was even in office, his camp has pushed to cut support ever since, humanitarian aid was pulled costing thousands of jobs and shutting projects down, and sanctions… pic.twitter.com/8dOGpXqviT
— Shaun Pinner (@ShaunPinnerUA) May 20, 2026
But while Trump supporters often point toward the approval of Javelin anti-tank systems for Ukraine during his first term, that isolated decision does not outweigh the broader geopolitical reality that Putin ultimately escalated under an international environment increasingly fractured, divided and uncertain. Frankly, the Javelins themselves did not deter Russia from invading and were likely expended heavily during the opening phase of the war.
The idea that Trump somehow would have prevented the war simply does not survive contact with reality. During his campaign trail, he repeatedly claimed he could solve the war in “24 hours,” yet the conflict continues to escalate, with even sections of Russian state media now describing the situation as “the dark at the end of the tunnel.”
Since returning to office, Trump’s approach to Ukraine has been marked by pauses, reviews and political pressure rather than any decisive breakthrough toward peace. On March 3rd 2025, the Trump administration suspended all U.S. military aid to Ukraine following the now infamous Oval Office clash with President. The pause also affected weapons already approved under the Biden administration, including shipments already in transit through Europe. Intelligence sharing was temporarily halted shortly afterwards as well.
The reality is that most of the aid Ukraine has continued receiving during Trump’s presidency was not newly approved by Trump himself, but was aid already authorised, funded and allocated under Biden-era packages before leaving office.
Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) allows the U.S. President to transfer weapons directly from existing American military stockpiles during emergencies. In practical terms, it is the fastest way to arm Ukraine because equipment can be shipped almost immediately from existing inventories rather than manufactured years later. Under Biden, tens of billions of dollars worth of equipment were approved through PDA mechanisms before January 2025.
What Trump inherited therefore was largely a pipeline already in motion, not a new strategy of his own making.
By mid-2025, military deliveries resumed in stages after diplomatic pressure and NATO coordination, but even U.S. defence analysts described the policy as “on, off, partially on, then on again.”
So when people claim Trump “saved Ukraine” or provided unprecedented support, the figures simply do not support that narrative. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the United States has committed roughly $66–67 billion in military assistance overall, but the overwhelming majority of that was legislated, approved and initiated before Trump returned to office.
Meanwhile, during Trump’s second term, aid freezes, delayed deliveries, reduced intelligence sharing and softer rhetoric toward Moscow have coincided with Russia escalating some of the largest missile and drone attacks of the war.
In many respects, he helped create the political environment that brought us to this point, so repeatedly attempting to rewrite that history while placing all blame on Joe Biden does not change the facts. Russia invaded Ukraine on a massive scale in 2022 because the Kremlin believed the West lacked the unity, resolve and political will to stop it. Moscow tested that assumption in 2014, saw only limited consequences, and ultimately believed it could do so again.
Ironically, much of Ukraine’s survival during those opening months came not from Trump-era policy, but from the emergency military, financial and intelligence support rapidly organised afterward by Western allies.
And now, years later, the rhetoric coming from the current Trump-Vance political movement has become even harder to reconcile with the claim that they are Ukraine’s greatest defenders.
In recent months, JD Vance himself openly praised the halting of direct American military support to Ukraine, describing it as one of the policies he was “proudest” of.
That is not support for Ukraine.
That is the deliberate reduction of Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russian missile attacks, drone strikes and frontline offensives. It is a conscious political decision made fully aware of the possible outcome: that, ultimately, Russia could succeed in conquering Ukraine or forcing it into collapse on Kremlin terms.
At the same time, the Trump administration has now repeatedly eased restrictions connected to Russian oil exports, despite public promises suggesting otherwise. Reports across multiple outlets show temporary waivers and sanctions relief measures being extended for Russian oil shipments for consecutive months amid concerns over global energy prices.
The consequences of that are obvious, under trumps watch, we are now in a global problem.
Russian oil revenue directly fuels the Kremlin’s war machine and every barrel sold helps finance missile production, drone procurement, mobilisation, occupation structures and the continued bombardment of Ukrainian cities.
You cannot simultaneously claim to be Ukraine’s greatest supporter while easing economic pressure on the very state invading it.
The paradox becomes even more striking when viewed alongside Russia’s growing alliance with Iran. Tehran has supplied Moscow with drones and military cooperation used extensively against Ukrainian cities, while Russia has reportedly provided intelligence, technical assistance and deeper strategic coordination in return.
In effect, pressure is being eased on a Russian economy that continues financing a wartime partnership with one of the West’s most hostile adversaries.
That means the same Russian revenues benefiting from sanctions relief help sustain not only the war against Ukraine, but also the broader Russia-Iran axis increasingly challenging Western interests across multiple regions, not to mention indirectly easing pressure on the very network accused of supporting attacks and operations targeting American personnel and assets across the Middle East.
Am i going nuts? Just stay with me.
The contradiction becomes even sharper when viewed alongside the increasingly dangerous military relationship between Russia and Belarus and the growing war rhetoric from Lukashenko.
Belarus is no longer simply a passive ally of Moscow. It has become an active military extension of Russian strategic pressure against Ukraine and NATO’s eastern flank. Joint Russian-Belarusian nuclear drills have intensified again in recent weeks, while analysts continue warning that Belarus increasingly functions as a logistical and military support base for Russia’s war effort.
For Ukrainians, this is not abstract geopolitics, it’s on their doorstep.
Belarusian territory was used as a launchpad during the initial assault on Kyiv in 2022. Missiles continue to threaten Ukraine from the north, while every renewed military integration between Minsk and Moscow forces Ukraine to stretch already limited resources across additional fronts and border regions.
Yet while Russia and Belarus deepen military coordination, Washington’s pressure on Moscow again appears increasingly inconsistent, with reports of sanctions relief and diplomatic concessions linked to high-profile political prisoner exchanges with Belarus even as Minsk continues functioning as a critical military partner in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
That inconsistency is precisely why so many Europeans, Ukrainians and frontline observers view the rhetoric from Trump and Vance with growing alarm. Because this is not simply about political slogans anymore, practically everybody can now see the clear and present danger.
Ukraine is still under daily attack. Children are still being killed in missile strikes, while cities like Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson continue absorbing relentless bombardment with remarkably little sustained international outrage.
And while Ukrainians are asked to endure blackouts, funerals and another summer of escalating Russian attacks, senior American political figures are publicly celebrating the reduction of aid while simultaneously easing economic pressure on the Kremlin, all while portraying themselves as Ukraine’s greatest supporters.
None of this means criticism of Ukraine’s government should be off limits. It should not. Ukraine remains a democracy during wartime, and democracies require scrutiny and accountability. But there is a profound difference between constructive criticism and actively undermining a state fighting for survival against a larger invading power. That is where the hypocrisy of the current Trump administration becomes impossible to ignore.
History will judge who actually stood with Ukraine during its darkest moments.
And if we are being honest about the chronology, the military support, the sanctions policy and the rhetoric itself, the claim that “nobody has done more for Ukraine than Trump” is not a serious assessment of reality.
It is a political narrative that falls apart the moment you place it against the actual record.
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