Remember, this was the moment when Trump was supposedly pivoting to help Ukraine—to be a good NATO ally and all that.
All of this happened after August 1.
And yesterday what happened? Well, yesterday the Russians did what they have been doing ever since Trump became president—and attacked Ukraine with long range air power. The Russians used 85 Shahed type drones and 1 Iskander missile against Ukraine last night, and the Ukrainian air force stated that "Hits by 24 (Russian) UAVs were recorded in 12 locations."
At the same time the war raged on the front line, the Russian military did what it always does (get severely overrated by the analytic community while suffering heavy losses) and the Russians continued to avoid US sanctions while building war machinery.
And yet while everything remained the same—everything was really different. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in a very friendly summit, pledged to work together closely now and in the future, talked about getting back to business—and put all the onus on Ukraine to agree to territorial concessions. The idea that Trump might sanction Russia, might militarily threaten Russia, might provide strong support for Ukrainians, was gone in a blink of an eye.
And people were weirdly claiming nothing had changed.
The US and Russia were normalizing relations in front of our eyes, Ukraine was being told in no uncertain terms it is up to them to cede territory, and the idea of US sanctions on Russia (which were supposed to be imposed by now) have disappeared like a fart in the wind.
