Ukrainians ask why Trump contemplates war vs. Iran while refusing to help Kyiv vs. Russia

ODESA, Ukraine — You get a very different perspective on the Iran-Israel war when you are viewing it from Ukraine.

On June 13, the date Israel began bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, I watched Ukrainian volunteers help elderly residents remove wreckage from a Russian strike with deadly Shahed drones - provided by Iran.

In this lovely old neighborhood of small homes and three-story apartment buildings, acrid smoke hung in the air, as neighbors clustered round to commiserate over the family that had been incinerated down the street.

“Why?” 52-year-old Natalya Dubchek sobbed in front of her ruined bungalow on Yelizabet Haradske Lane. She had barely escaped as her two rooms burned down to their walls, after a drone exploded a minibus parked near her doorstep. Her daughter, Kataryna, was trying to patch a hole in one wall with a battery powered electric drill and a sheet of metal. “Why do the Russians hit children and babushkas [grandmas]?” Dubchek demanded.

My own question is broader: Why is President Donald Trump mulling bombing Iran, even as he retreats from defending Ukraine against Russian aggression?

Yes, Trump has paused for two weeks his threat to bomb the deep underground Fordow enrichment plant with U.S. bunker buster bombs to help Israel destroy Iran’s nuclear program. But why provide defensive - and possibly offensive - help to Israel while denying even the former to Ukraine?

I believe the president has U.S. security priorities backward. A nuclear armed Russia whose president openly detests the West poses a vastly greater and more urgent threat to the U.S. homeland than do the ayatollahs. Especially when Putin is allied with China, North Korea — and Iran.

So, the question remains: Why?

Before the Israel-Iran war began, Trump was already backpedaling from any U.S. support to Ukraine. He had allowed Moscow to blow off one deadline after another that he had set for Russia to agree to a 30-day ceasefire.

Trump’s most recent Ukraine deadline gave Vladimir Putin two weeks to agree to the ceasefire or face increased U.S. sanctions. The deadline was up June 12, the day before Israel first struck Iranian targets, but Trump once again gave Putin a pass.

Makes you wonder how firm is Trump’s two week deadline to Tehran.

Every time Trump bows to Putin, the Russian leader increases air attacks on Ukrainian cities. While Iran hit one Israeli hospital, Russia has targeted civilian medical facilities in almost every Ukrainian city and town - even the country’s largest children’s cancer center.

Yet Trump left a recent G7 meeting of key allies in Canada early, before a planned discussion of new sanctions on Russia. He also blew off a scheduled meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Not only does Trump let Putin run wild, but he is weakening Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.

Tehran has provided Putin with the technology to manufacture tens of thousands more Shaheds inside Russia. Despite Ukraine’s brilliance at technological innovation, Kyiv is still working on better methods of shooting down those Iranian drones.

Late last month, however, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon canceled a shipment of 20,000 components for anti-drone rockets that had been earmarked for Ukraine.

It’s no surprise, then, that my cell phone, which is set to the Ukraine Air alert site that warns citizens when to “proceed to the shelter” -keeps buzzing. And my phone is only set to receive alerts for threats to Kyiv, Odesa and Kharkiv, not the rest of Ukraine.

No matter how many times Putin fools him, Trump refuses to relinquish his ego-driven belief that he can make peace (and do business) deals with the ex-KGB colonel.

After speaking with Putin recently, Trump actually proposed that the Kremlin tsar mediate between Jerusalem and Tehran!

Never mind that Putin benefits from having the Israel-Iran war continue since it distracts attention from his war on Ukraine. The war also holds the promise of driving oil prices up, thus helping Russia’s flagging war economy.

So how to explain the president’s incoherent approach to Iran and Ukraine?

My theory is simple. Trump knows too little and understands even less about Putin, Israel, Iran and Ukraine. And he won’t listen to anyone who knows more than him.

The president believed he could arm twist Iran to give up its nuclear enrichment program. But as has happened every time Trump tries to effect “brilliant” peace negotiations — whether with Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Gaza, or North Korea — he was failing.

So Trump bowed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on using force, believing it would push Tehran to the table. When Israel’s initial strikes were hugely successful, Trump was tempted to join in and take credit for eliminating Iran’s drive toward nuclear breakout capacity.

Yet it has quickly become clear that such a strike could suck the White House into Netanyahu’s efforts to conduct “regime change” in Tehran. Neither Netanyahu nor Trump has any plan for the day after a U.S. strike on the Fordow complex, or the day after that.

If the wars in Iraq and Libya taught America anything, it is that such wars of choice must be avoided - unless the threat is immediate and urgent. Regime change must be effected internally, not by blundering outsiders.

Israel has the right to preempt an Iranian move toward nuclear breakout by a country whose leaders constantly threaten its existence, irrespective of Netanyahu’s ongoing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. But military responsibility for waging that war lies with Israel’s forces, not those of the United States.

As for Trump’s helping Israel defensively, fine, but the contrast with his brush-off of Ukraine’s defensive needs is mind bending. The threat to U.S. security interests from the Russian invader is far more immediate. Kremlin officials have used nuclear bluster to intimidate three U.S. presidents, including Trump. And Putin has broken the basic foundation of postwar European peace by invading and threatening to destroy a sovereign neighbor.

If Russia can annex chunks of Ukraine with impunity, why not try and take back parts of Baltics? Or the Aleutian Islands? Moreover, Moscow is now trying to militarily dominate Artic waters, the seas around Europe, and space - and is conducting sabotage and assassinations in NATO countries. It is allied with China, North Korea, and Iran in hostility to the West.

Ukraine, a brave country without nuclear arms, has held off a Russian military power four times its size for more than three years — without any U.S. pilots flying U.S. planes or dropping U.S. bombs.

If Washington had, from the beginning, given Kyiv the defensive support it has given Israel — helping Ukrainians close their skies to Russian missiles and drones — Russia would have been forced to end its war by now. If Trump had kept his own pledge to impose additional sanctions on Moscow, and had continued military aid to Kyiv, he might have forced Putin to negotiate seriously.

It is bitter for Ukrainians to watch as Trump undermines their battle against a common enemy, whom the president persistently mistakes for a friend. By so doing, Trump is putting America last.

It is impossible for those same Ukrainians to comprehend how Trump can be considering direct involvement in a Mideast war with an enemy that doesn’t directly threaten the United States.

Their message, which I heard in cafés, churches, hospitals, drone factories, government offices and military testing grounds, is this: We can defang Russia with our technological skills and battlefield smarts if you help us close our skies — and give us access to critical defensive weapons that Europe doesn’t produce.

I frequently heard Ukrainians call the U.S. president “TACO Trump,” an acronym for “Trump always chickens out.” They referred, of course, to the president’s constant refusals to impose new sanctions on Russia. Many said they also expected him to chicken out of his “two week” deadline to Tehran.

Unlike with Ukraine, this would be for the best.