A must read.
Excerpt:
Day after day, then, thousands upon thousands of 155s earmarked for Ukraine had lain waiting on pallets at the ammunitions depot. The American commander in Europe, General Christopher G. Cavoli, had fired off email after email, pleading with the Pentagon to free them. The jam had been broken only after intervention from Jack Keane, a retired Army general and Fox News contributor who was friendly with the President.
But on July 2, as the train approached the Ukrainian border, a new order came in to the U.S. military’s European Command: “Divert everything. Immediately.”
Exactly why the liberated shells had been taken captive again was never explained. In the end, they waited for just 10 days, in a rail yard near Krakow. Yet to U.S. military officers who had spent the last three and a half years fighting to shore up the Ukrainian cause, the interrupted journey of the 18,000 shells seemed to encompass the entirety of America’s new, erratic and corrosive role in the war.
--
At stake, the argument went, was not just Ukraine’s sovereignty but the very fate of the post-World War II international order. Mr. Trump has presided over the partners’ separation.
The headlines are well known: Mr. Trump’s televised Oval Office humiliation of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in February. The August summit with Mr. Putin in Alaska. The furious flurry of diplomacy that led to the Mar-a-Lago meeting on Sunday with Mr. Zelensky, the latest high-stakes but inconclusive negotiation in which the fate of Ukraine has seemed to hang in the balance.
It is still unclear when, and if, a deal will be reached. This is the chaotic and previously untold story behind the past year of head-spinning headlines:
The Ukraine specialists at the Pentagon afraid to utter the word “Ukraine.” Mr. Trump telling his chosen envoy to Russia and Ukraine, “Russia is mine.” The secretary of state quoting from “The Godfather” in negotiations with the Russians. The Ukrainian defense minister pleading with the American defense secretary, “Just be honest with me.” A departing American commander’s “beginning of the end” memo. Mr. Zelensky’s Oval Office phone call, set up by the President, with a former Miss Ukraine.
--
Mr. Trump had scant ideological commitment. His pronouncements and determinations were often shaped by the last person he spoke to, by how much respect he felt the Ukrainian and Russian leaders had shown him, by what caught his eye on Fox News.
Policy was forged in the clash of bitterly warring camps.
Mr. Biden had left the Ukrainians a financial and weapons nest egg to cushion them for an uncertain future. Mr. Trump’s point man for peace negotiations presented him with a plan to maintain support for Ukraine and squeeze the Russian war machine.
But that strategy ran headlong into a phalanx of Ukraine skeptics led by the vice president, JD Vance, and like-minded officials he seeded at the Pentagon and elsewhere in the administration. In their view, instead of squandering America’s depleted military stocks on a sinking ship, they should be reapportioned to counter the greatest global threat: China.
A cold wind - what one senior military officer called “a de facto anti-Ukraine policy” - swept through the Pentagon. Time and again, Mr. Hegseth and his advisers undermined, sidelined or silenced front-line generals and administration officials sympathetic to Ukraine.
--
Yet on the battlefield and at the negotiating table, Mr. Trump kept pushing the Ukrainians deeper and deeper into a box. What he underestimated was the Russian leader’s refusal to budge from his demands.
The origin point of this story was the president’s belief in what he saw as his personal connection to Mr. Putin. On the campaign trail, he had promised to broker peace quickly, perhaps even before taking office.
--
And the man who very badly wanted to be at the center of those preparations was Keith Kellogg. A retired Army general and one of the president-elect’s most loyal longtime aides, Mr. Kellogg had served as Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser in the first Trump Presidency. He had definite ideas about the Russians and the war in Ukraine - and a conviction that if Mr. Trump didn’t manage negotiations well, it would be disastrous for America, for Europe and for his legacy.
--
Still, he argued, America needed to arm the Ukrainians sufficiently to convince Mr. Putin that his territorial ambitions had hit a wall.
Mr. Kellogg sent the paper to Mr. Trump, who sent it back with a note at the top that read, “Great job,” and beneath it his distinctively squiggly signature.
--
... he traveled to Mar-a-Lago to pitch himself for another job — special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. This time, Mr. Trump bit.
Almost immediately, the appointment ignited an early flaring of the ideological combat that would run through the administration’s handling of the war. To some of Mr. Vance’s allies, Mr. Kellogg, 80 at the time, was a Cold War relic with a cold warrior’s view of the conflict and the Russian threat. Mr. Putin, they suspected, would never work with him. What’s more, in their view, the sort of support Mr. Kellogg was advocating would only prolong the fighting; America needed to de-escalate.
--
Mr. Kellogg could talk to the Ukrainians and Europeans, Mr. Vance told aides, “but keep him away from the Russians.”
--
Follows: a descent into ignominy ...
https://archive.ph/4rXS1
