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The record
Section · 11 sourced stories

Ukraine, Putin and the allies we abandoned

He took Putin's word over US intelligence in 2018. In 2026 he is pressing Ukraine to surrender the Donbas while buying Russian diesel.

Read the storiesThe memesTimeline
9in-person Witkoff-Putin meetings by Oct. 21, 202628 daysfrom signing the Russia sanctions law to waiving it76%of Americans oppose Russia taking more of eastern Ukraine15%of Germans now call the US a trustworthy partner

Why this section exists

Ukraine is the clearest test of what Trump's foreign policy is for. A democracy was invaded by a dictator who is under an International Criminal Court arrest warrant. The United States had given that democracy written assurances in 1994, when it handed over its nuclear weapons. The record collected here shows what Trump did with that obligation: he cut off weapons and intelligence to extract concessions, hosted the invader on US soil, adopted the Kremlin's terms as the American peace plan, pressed Kyiv to give up territory Russia could not take by force, waived the sanctions law he had just signed, and let the alliance that won the Cold War wonder whether America would show up.

Ukraine in brief

Ukraine is a country of roughly 40 million people, independent since 1991, with a democratically elected government. In 1994 it gave up the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Russia broke those assurances in 2014, seizing Crimea and starting a war in the Donbas that killed about 14,000 people before 2022, and then launched the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022. Ukraine's resistance since then, largely with Western weapons and its own drone industry, has held Russia to about a fifth of the country at a cost the UN says made 2025 the deadliest year for civilians since the invasion began. For a longer primer drawn from primary sources, see the Helicon Defense Field Guide, whose Ukraine material this section borrows from with permission.

How to read the stories below

They run in order from the first week of the second term to this month. Each has its own sources, locators, the administration's response, and a note on what remains uncertain. The memes are kept separate from the evidence.

The stories

Oldest event first · every claim sourced

Timeline

What the evidence labels mean →
  1. Background Budapest Memorandum: Ukraine gives up the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for assurances from Russia, the US and the UK to respect its borders.
  2. Background Russia seizes Crimea and begins the war in the Donbas. The war did not start in 2022.
  3. In Helsinki he took Putin's word over US intelligence; in 2026 his envoy has met Putin nine times
  4. 'We fell in love' (Kim), 'genius' (Putin), 'my favorite dictator' (el-Sisi), 'I like him too much' (MBS)
  5. Background Russia launches its full-scale invasion. Two days earlier Trump called Putin's move 'genius.'
  6. Ukraine's Starlink and Starshield were throttled for over a week in October 2026; Musk admits the Starlink part
  7. Background The International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Putin over the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children.
  8. Post analysis: firms backed by Trump's sons won $3.2 billion in federal business after they invested
  9. 5,000 US troops ordered out of Germany after the chancellor criticized the Iran war
  10. US cut weapons and intelligence to Ukraine for a week after the Oval Office clash
  11. Only 15% of Germans now call the United States a trustworthy partner, the lowest ever recorded
  12. The 28-point plan asked Ukraine to give up Donetsk, cap its army at 600,000 and forgo NATO
  13. Russia oil sanctions: waived three times during the Iran war, Hungary exempted for a year, Lukoil's $22B sale still open
  14. Background The UN human rights monitoring mission reports 2025 was the deadliest year for Ukrainian civilians since 2022.
  15. 76% of Americans oppose Russia taking more of eastern Ukraine; the US plan asks Kyiv to hand it over
  16. Signed the Russia sanctions law Sept. 18; waived it Oct. 16, two days before it took effect

Memes on this topic

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Memes are opinion and humor. They are kept separate from the sourced stories above and are never cited as evidence.

Primary documents