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Ukraine just executed a devastating blow to Vladimir Putin’s strategic air forces. Operation Spider Web, 18 months in the planning, deployed 117 drones near five military air fields deep inside Russian territory and destroyed over a dozen nuclear-capable long-range bombers. It also damaged two dozen Russian aircraft.
At a cost of millions, these Ukrainian drones caused billions of losses for Putin’s war machine.
President Donald Trump is known as a shrewd businessman and a tough negotiator. He famously proclaimed that Ukraine “doesn’t have the cards.”
But Ukraine does not in fact hold a weak hand. Our army is fighting doggedly, making the Russians pay dearly for every inch of our territory.
And Putin does not have a winning hand. He is, in fact, bluffing.
Operation Spider Web shows the game-changing potential of new technology and tactics, which Ukrainians have embraced with our post-Soviet entrepreneurial spirit.
Thanks to our fleet of airborne drones and the ingenuity of our engineers and pilots, Ukraine is leading in this new theater of combat.
At the front, Russian troops are bogged down in bloody trench warfare. Since the beginning of last year, they have managed to gain a mere 1,600 square miles of territory.
That’s an area smaller than Hamilton County in upstate New York. And this is mostly rural farmland, dotted with villages and small towns.
In war, high morale is a force multiplier. Low morale is a recipe for defeat. We are fighting for our homes, our families, and our country. Russian troops are fighting, and dying, for Vladimir Putin’s outsized ego and feral dreams of imperial conquest.
The Soviet Union suffered about 15,000 battlefield deaths before recognizing its war in Afghanistan was unsustainable. Now, Russia has lost almost 1 million dead and wounded.
The Kremlin can suppress open public dissent, but Putin’s “power vertical” knows that even the stoic Russian people will not tolerate forever the sacrifice of their sons for an offensive war of conquest.
The only way to end this war is to force Putin to come to the table and begin serious negotiations.
As long as he believes that the United States will ultimately abandon Ukraine, he’ll continue his tactic of endless stalling and unreasonable demands.
Trump surely knows the importance of careful due diligence. The first question in any negotiation is: Is your counterpart trustworthy?
Putin has shown again and again that his word is no good, and he has no regard for good-faith bargaining.
Trump himself holds two powerful cards: The first is new economic sanctions aimed at Russian energy exports.
With fewer petrodollars, Putin will have fewer rubles to finance his war. Such a measure has overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate.
The second card: continuing American arms shipments to Ukraine.
Ukrainian soldiers are willing to fight and die to stop the Russian aggressors. But they cannot stop them without bullets, artillery shells, and heavy equipment, as well as air-defense systems to shield our civilian population from Putin’s bombs.
These two steps are the surest way to call Putin’s bluff and to bring peace through strength, rather than craven capitulation.
As the song goes, “you’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.” Now is not the time to fold or to walk away. We understand that the United States does not want to underwrite a forever war; we only ask for the means to conduct genuine negotiations.
It’s time to show Vladimir Putin that the United States is a great power not to be trifled with, and to ensure an enduring peace in Ukraine.
Trump should step up, exercise the leverage he has, and help bring this horrible war to an end.
Oleksiy Haran is a professor of comparative politics at Kyiv Mohyla Academy, and research adviser to the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation.