(The author served over twenty years on active duty in the US Marine Corps in conventional and irregular warfare roles. From 2020 to 2023 he worked and travelled throughout Ukraine while serving as a US Government contractor and with an independent non-profit working to improve the training and readiness of Ukrainian military units.)

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. … A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration.” —John Stuart Mill

As a Patriot and Ukraine supporter, the past few weeks have felt like getting kicked in the shins repeatedly. The Oval Office blowup was disconcerting, to put it mildly, and the continued coddling of Vladimir Putin is deeply disappointing. Putin is the only winner in all of this, and he’s undoubtedly happier than he has been since Hillary Clinton showed up with her “reset” button. Unfortunately, most of the attention has been on the theater surrounding the personalities rather than the substance of the issues. Three key points should drive the discussion: 1) “peace” is not the goal; 2) neither a Russian victory nor a Ukrainian defeat is inevitable; and 3) there is no moral equivalence between Russia and Ukraine — bringing them to some sort of status quo “middle ground” is not a worthy solution.

In his statements about Ukraine, President Donald Trump keeps repeating phrases to the effect of, “We all just want peace. We don’t want anyone else to die. It’s going to be very hard for you if you’re not careful.” That’s as if the last three 11 years of watching their families and friends lose life and limb and their cities be destroyed has been a pleasant experience for Ukrainians, and it’s as if they’re the ones who initiated hostilities. Putin is the only party who doesn’t seem to mind the death and destruction, and he won’t accept peace just because it’s a pleasant sentiment. We shouldn’t either.

The Ukrainians already accepted not one but two peace agreements after the initial Russian invasion — one in 2014 and another in 2015. Both were almost immediately (and repeatedly) violated by the Russians and their proxies, culminating with the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Ukrainians were pressured to accept both agreements with assurances that it was the last chance to prevent further losses of territory and personnel and the only opportunity for peace, only to see their soldiers murdered in cold blood and their cities shelled. Why does it surprise anyone that they are skeptical of new assurances that come with no accompanying security guarantees? Why is Volodymyr Zelensky, who has the support of an overwhelming majority of his people (by a much larger margin than DJT’s “mandate”), the bad guy — a “dictator” — for essentially saying, “We’re not falling for that one again”?

“A ceasefire without justice is not peace — it’s merely a pause before the next war.” —Sgt Sergii Gavryliuk, Ukrainian Army

If temporary peace — defined as an absence of fighting — is the highest and best outcome we can hope for, the Ukrainians should have just rolled over as soon as the Russians invaded. But peace is only a virtuous condition when underpinned by liberty and justice. It’s a byproduct, a benefit that can only be enjoyed in the context of its cousins. Injustice and suppression of liberty require action — opposition — just as it did for the American Patriots who pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to free the Colonies from their British oppressors two centuries ago.

There is already ample evidence of injustice and barbarism on display in the areas Russia has occupied: religious leaders — particularly evangelical Christians — have been imprisoned and tortured, and church facilities “repurposed” to serve the state; an estimated 20,000 children have been shipped off to Russia and “adopted” into Russians families; residents are jailed indefinitely for “crimes” of posting news from a Ukrainian source on social media or having a particular messaging app on their phone. A simple absence of large-scale fighting under those conditions does not constitute peace.

This “why I fight” explanation from a Ukrainian father and entrepreneur-turned-soldier lays out a rationale I’ve personally heard from many Ukrainians — one that I could easily see many Patriot Post readers using if the situations were reversed. (Side note: If you don’t read another word of my rambling, stop and read that article.)

One of Putin and his apologists’ main talking points is that it’s inevitable the Russians are going to win, particularly if the U.S. withdraws its support; the Ukrainians might as well save everyone the trouble of resisting. But the “experts” have been predicting Ukraine’s defeat for the last three years. Contrary to President Trump’s assertion that Ukraine “wouldn’t last two weeks” without U.S. support, it valiantly turned back Russian columns in early 2022 and held the lines for months before significant Western aid began trickling in. While Ukraine has lost ground over the past year, the losses have not been operationally significant and have come at a tremendous cost to the Russians (and North Koreans). Some estimates are as high as 100 Russian casualties sustained per square kilometer of Ukrainian territory gained, and Russia is spending more than 40% of its GDP on the war effort. Russia can’t continue to bear this human and financial cost indefinitely. The takeaway is not that Ukraine has lost 18% of its territory since 2014 but that it has successfully defended 82% of it against what was once believed to be the second-most powerful army in the world.

At the same time, the Ukrainians have enjoyed consistent and meaningful success attacking critical Russian infrastructure, particularly targets related to oil and gas production, Russia’s primary revenue generator. Notably, these attacks have been prosecuted by long-range unmanned aircraft designed and built by Ukrainians in Ukraine. Most so-called experts say time favors the Russians simply because they have a larger manpower pool to draw from. But the impact of continued precision attacks on their oil and gas facilities and stiffened sanctions could just as easily tip the scales in Ukraine’s favor. If the North Vietnamese and the Taliban could convince the U.S. to leave, the idea that Ukraine could do the same to Russia is not unreasonable.

While U.S. weapons and intelligence support are very much appreciated, their absence won’t mean the end of the fighting. If they are withheld, what it will mean is that the war will drag on longer, more Ukrainian property will be destroyed, and more Ukrainians will die. But they won’t quit fighting. They are also paying a tremendous cost in blood and treasure, but their desire to live free is a “secret sauce” the Russians can’t extinguish or match.

During my time working with Ukrainian military units in 2022 and ‘23 — before most of the U.S. military aid began arriving and while many pundits were predicting the imminent collapse of Ukrainian lines — some of the most frequent requests for training assistance were for sabotage, sniping, and skills associated with partisan warfare and resistance. The Ukrainians have endured several painful eras under the thumb of their larger neighbor, including a Soviet-induced famine that killed between five and 10 million Ukrainians in the 1930s. They will not passively accept another attempt by Moscow to rule them, particularly given the taste of democracy and capitalism they’ve experienced within the last generation. Even if Putin somehow does manage to occupy all of Ukraine, it will be a festering wound, host to a bloody insurgency. At least until Russia rearms — then it will be the entry point for a case of sepsis that could easily bring all of Europe to its knees. Appeasing Putin and allowing him to walk away from his “three-day special military operation” on his terms is a far bigger gamble on WWIII than anything we face today and would mirror the “peace in our time” agreement that carved up Czechoslovakia in 1938 and paved the way for Hitler’s subjugation of Continental Europe.

Finally, there is no moral equivalence between the two warring parties, and there should be no question where the U.S. stands. If you’ve heard the propaganda about how Ukraine is just a bunch of nasty oligarchs and Russia is an anti-woke defender of “traditional values,” and you aren’t sure who the good guys are, do an internet search for “Bucha 2022,” or “Bucha massacre.” Or read about how the Russians have deliberately targeted children’s hospitals, blown up camps where they were holding Ukrainian POWs, and have drone “safaris” that terrorize elderly civilians near the front lines.

Just this week we saw the Ukrainians execute an extremely successful attack against a Russian airfield while Russia targeted apartment complexes and another hospital. President Trump’s assertion — apparently intended as a jab at Zelensky— that Zelensky likes having the U.S. on the Ukrainian side of the table shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone and shouldn’t be up for debate. The idea that the U.S. is indifferent to who makes what concessions and will be fully satisfied as long as the active fighting stops is not consistent with Reagan’s vision of “peace through strength.” It would be peace through capitulation, and a very unsatisfying (and likely temporary) peace at that.

Barring a stronger and more tangible “gloves off” commitment from allies, it’s not likely that Ukraine will be able to reestablish its pre-2014 borders, but at the very least the West — including the U.S. — should be willing to guarantee that Russia will not be allowed to take any additional territory, that Ukraine maintains its sovereignty (i.e., Russia has no say in who leads or comprises the government in Kyiv or what policies it pursues), and that the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets will be used to rebuild the Ukrainian infrastructure Russia destroyed during the war. They don’t have to include U.S. or NATO-flagged troops on the ground in Ukraine, but those options should not be arbitrarily dismissed before real negotiations have even begun. Zelensky may not have a lot of cards to play, but Putin doesn’t either, and the determination and resourcefulness of the Ukrainians are a face card.

The West should be dictating the terms, not Russia. After all, war is not the ugliest thing, and, as Churchill observed after Chamberlain’s “peace for our time” pronouncement, “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”

Charles Paige has spent substantial time on the ground in Ukraine, writing about his experiences here, here, and here.