The war between Russia and Ukraine is the largest European conflict since World War II. It is also the most morally unambiguous war since WWII. Unless you are a victim of Russia’s extensive propaganda machine, it is absolutely clear that Russia unjustifiably invaded its neighbor to try to steal a sovereign nation, that its wartime strategy amounts to stringing together a series of ever-more-heinous war crimes, and that its leader is a brutal dictator who thinks murder is the best solution to any problem.
When it comes to this war, Ukraine is good, Russia is evil, period. So, it’s probably no surprise which side MAGA originally landed on.
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Donald Trump never forgave Volodymyr Zelenskyy for refusing to carry out the 2019 MAGA plot to force Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden for made-up nonsense in return for top Republicans releasing illegally withheld military aid that had already been Congressionally approved. In other words, Trump threw a years-long tantrum because Zelenskyy refused to be extorted into becoming an accessory to Trump’s crimes.
The most cringeworthy culmination of MAGA’s antipathy toward the righteous side in this war was the 2025 White House meeting in which Trump and JD Vance berated Zelenskyy in an unhinged (and televised) White House meet up. Though this reality TV moment served as a mouthwatering signal to the idiotic MAGA base, far more costly in lives, as well as in America’s interests in containing a belligerent Russia, have been the many times Trump has delayed, rescinded, or sequestered aid meant for Ukraine.
There are many reasons why Trump tried to undermine Ukraine at every turn. Russia helped him win the presidency. With roughly four times the population of Ukraine (and perhaps more than four times as much corruption), Russia represents a larger market for the kind of shady business deals the Trump empire thrives on. Most of all, though, I think Trump was simply in awe of Vladimir Putin’s grip on his country and his unapologetic brutality in the war. Trump saw him as a winner.
Four-and-a-half years into this war, however, Putin looks a lot less like a conqueror. At the outset, many analysts thought Russia would steamroll over Ukrainian resistance in three days. As recently as earlier this year, Ukraine’s situation still looked dire. Now, Ukraine is regaining more territory than it is losing, and striking deep inside Russia at Putin’s lifeblood oil infrastructure.
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Putin, impotent to prevent the strikes themselves, has turned to prohibiting Russians from filming the devastation wrought by Ukrainian drones and missiles. A winner does not desperately seek to silence talk of his failures.
It’s no coincidence that Trump has been warming to Ukraine’s cause of late. Zelenskyy attended Lindsey Graham’s funeral on July 28, and while he was in town he and Trump had a “good meeting” at the White House about “ideas that could help” Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Critically, Trump said in July that the U.S. would permit Ukraine to produce its own Patriot missile systems — powerful defensive weapons that the American military has itself run short of in the course of its war against Iran. Trump somewhat walked back that promise a matter of weeks after he made it, but he hasn’t taken licensing of Patriot technology to Ukraine off the table, and as long as Ukraine continues to look more and more like the winning side in this war, my money is on the deal going through.
Trump respects only power. He wants to stand next to people who he thinks make him look strong. He might invite only losers into his own administration so that he can better control them, but when it comes to foreign leaders, he likes winners.
In this case, if Trump wants to do the right thing for the wrong reason, we should not only let him: we should applaud him. Ukraine needs all the help it can get, and every penny the U.S. puts into helping Ukraine defend itself is a wise investment for the future. The only way Trump can actually have any impact on ending this war is to help Ukraine eject Russia from its borders. As long as Ukraine keeps winning, he just might.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].