What did Donald Trump do today?
He actively joined the Putin regime in attacks on Ukrainian civilians.
Trump has spent much of the last week making what looks like a final break with Ukraine in favor of the Putin regime in Russia, to whom he is personally and financially beholden. Today, news broke on at least two fronts that he is attempting to force the United States government to switch sides mid-war, even as he tried to sell Americans on the Russian version of the war.
To be clear, Trump does not single-handedly set American foreign policy: Russia does not go from being a hostile nation under diplomatic and economic sanctions set by law to an ally simply because Trump wants, or needs, Putin's support. That's even more true when it comes to American public sentiment, which is overwhelmingly in favor of Ukraine.
But Trump does have the power to act as a saboteur inside the American intelligence and defense sector, and that is what he appears to have started doing this week, according to two reports that came out today.
The first has to do with Starlink, a satellite communications company owned by Elon Musk, Trump's political backer and the single wealthiest person on the planet. Ukraine reported today that Musk's company had abruptly limited its capabilities in Ukraine, crippling its functionality. Musk promptly shifted the blame to the Trump administration in a social media post, pointing out that Starlink does not make military decisions and that the relevant services were "owned and controlled" by the United States government.
The second report concerns American military intelligence sharing with Ukraine, which is an essential part of Ukrainian air defense. The Putin regime has increasingly targeted civilian residential areas for missile attacks. That information sharing stopped abruptly this week. Ukrainian officials are convinced this is a deliberate signal to both sides that Trump has, in effect, decided to stop thwarting those Russian attacks and start enabling them.
This was Trump's attempt to reframe the Putin regime's war on Ukraine today.
Trump makes clear that he has turned on Ukraine and Zelenskyy and want to help Russia destroy them. The technical term for this conduct in wartime is perfidy, an act of betrayal involving deceit.
— Scott Horton (@robertscotthorton.bsky.social) October 14, 2026 at 3:14 PM
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Virtually none of this is true, but it's hard to know what falsehoods Trump believes and what he simply thinks he can get other people to believe. Trump's version does not take note of the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in 2014, and in 2022 launched a massive and unprovoked attack intended to decapitate Ukraine's government and conquer the country outright. Targeting civilians and kidnapping children, which the Putin regime has done throughout the conflict, are war crimes.
Why does this matter?
- Betraying allies is a humiliating stain on the national conscience no matter how many times Trump does it.
- There is no reason for Trump to be acting like a bought and paid for Russian stooge, other than that he is one.