Russia's Useful Idiots

Trump's inner circle sides with Putin -- again.

Ukraine’s daring “Operation Spider’s Web” earlier this week, which decimated one-third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, did not just make Ukraine safer. It made the United States and our NATO allies safer too.

Ukraine reportedly destroyed or damaged over 40 Russian aircraft, including strategic bombers that were capable of being outfitted with nuclear warheads. As the Associated Press reports:

The Tupolev Tu-95, which was code named Bear by NATO, is a four-engine turboprop plane designed in the 1950s to rival the U.S. B-52 bomber. The aircraft has an intercontinental range and carries eight long-range cruise missiles that can be equipped with conventional or nuclear warheads.

Before Sunday, Russia was estimated to have a fleet of about 60 such aircraft.

A senior Pentagon official conceded that Ukraine’s attack “represented a level of sophistication that Washington had not seen before.”

This is the kind of sophistication that can only come from a country that has been on a battlefield for several years, fighting the threat that NATO has only simulated fighting for eight decades. Ukraine is the one nation that has not only repelled the Kremlin’s attacks on its own soil but consistently taken the fight to Russia directly. A real argument can be made that it is not Ukraine that should be begging NATO for membership but NATO that should be begging Ukraine to show the alliance how it’s done.

The single biggest threat to NATO remains Russia, which is why our European allies (or whatever NATO member countries can be called in the Trump era) are preparing for war. The alliance was established nearly eighty years ago to counter Soviet military aggression. In the intervening decades, much has changed but not the threat from the Kremlin.

In its daring attack on Russia’s bombers, Ukraine has taken out a chunk of the Russian nuclear triad. Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin announced that he placed Russian nuclear forces on high alert, as a warning to NATO and the United States to refrain from intervening in the conflict. A few months later, Russian state television aired simulations depicting nuclear attacks on Western cities, including New York. Russian officials have consistently threatened to nuke western nations, including the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom if Russia were to lose its occupied territories in Ukraine. This saber rattling has gone on and on in the years since Putin launched his unprovoked, genocidal war.

Under normal circumstances, having another country do your dirty work for you by blowing up bombers that could deliver nuclear weapons to your soil would be considered a bonus. But not in Trump’s America and not in Trump’s inner circle.

Trump has, himself, remained silent on Ukraine’s drone attack, of which he had not been warned in advance. It appears that the Ukrainians may not have wanted their war plans disseminated on Signal by his national security team or discussed by Trump during his unsecured conversations on his personal phone.

Still, despite the silence from the president, his allies have made their displeasure clear.

Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, warned that the risk levels associated with Ukraine’s attack on Russia’s nuclear triad are “unacceptable.” He added that, "When you attack an opponent's part of their national survival system, which is their nuclear triad, that means your risk level goes up because you don't know what the other side's going to do."

Trump’s political cronies have been more explicit in condemning Ukraine for — checks notes — taking out weapons with which the Kremlin threatened the survival of the United States.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s whisperer, was outraged that the president did not receive a head’s up from Kiiv about the strike. In his War Room podcast on Monday, Bannon raged that, “The White House has to condemn this immediately and pull all support” from Ukraine. “If they did not give us a heads up on this, full stop, no minerals deal—walk away from all of it,” he added.

Bannon has had a checkered association with Russia going back more than a decade. He has consistently praised Putin’s “values.” A whistleblower testified that Bannon insisted on testing political “messaging around Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian expansion” more than a decade ago in order to disseminate it in the 2016 election.

Dan Caldwell, the former top Pentagon official who was purged by Pete Hegseth in the Signalgate controversy, tweeted that the "U.S. should not only distance itself from this attack but end any support that could directly or indirectly enable attacks against Russian strategic nuclear forces.”

Noted Hitler fanboy, conspiracy theorist and Trump ally Jack Posobiec speculated that the Biden White House helped Ukraine target the attacks and used Kremlin talking points on his show to claim that the Ukrainian drone attack was no big deal and that Russia was winning the war “by a lot.”

What possible reason could these Trump acolytes have for condemning an attack that took out the very weapons with which Russia has threatened to pulverize American cities?

Listen to them and you begin to understand why Ukraine did not give Trump any kind of warning about its drone attack. At best, he and his MAGA acolytes are Russia’s useful idiots. At worst, they are something much worse.

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Further Reading:

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The Associated Press: Ukraine’s drone attack on Russian warplanes was a serious blow to the Kremlin’s strategic arsenal

ABC Australia: Europe is preparing for possible war with Russia, without the US

Kiyiv Independent: Russia’s Medvedev threatens to nuke US, UK, Germany, Ukraine if Russia loses occupied territories

The Atlantic: The Secret History of Trump’s Private Cellphone

Kiyiv Independent: 'Risk level goes up' — Ukraine's strike on Russian bombers could escalate war, US envoy Kellogg says

Politico: Cambridge Analytica whistleblower: Bannon ordered Putin messaging tests