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THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD

St. Petersburg, Russia, is 655 miles – as the drone flies – from Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. It’s closer to Helsinki, Finland.

And yet, the home region of Vladimir Putin found itself under attack this week from drones launched by the Ukrainians.

If I had written that sentence four years ago, when Russia launched its war against Ukraine, expects would have said I was nuts. I would have thought I was nuts. There was no way Ukraine could outlast what was then perceived as one of the world’s two or three most powerful militaries.

Shame on the experts. Shame on me.

There are few things to feel good about in 2026. One of them is the valiancy of the Ukrainian people and their leader, the Winston Churchill of the 21st century, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. They have survived far longer than anyone believed possible when Russia started rolling tanks across their border.

In fact, there are many experts who believe Ukraine is winning this war. The drone attack on St. Petersburg, undeterred by Russia’s supposedly impenetrable air defense, is a prime example. Ukrainian drones have struck Moscow and other parts of the vast country as well. Their range is growing.

And Ukraine has become a leader in anti-drone defense, franchising its technology to other countries looking to fend off unwanted attacks.

According to the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies, Russia has paid an amazingly high price for its aggression. The estimated death toll is something in the area of 300,000. By contrast, the United States lost 58,000 people in the Vietnam War – and we thought that was a disaster. Counting those injured, Russia’s casualty count exceeds 1 million.

That’s got to reach the point that it affects every town, village and hovel. Where almost everyone knows someone who has suffered from this debacle.

Russia’s economy is shattered. Its reputation in the world is wrecked. But just like in Pete Seeger’s song about Vietnam, “The Big Muddy,” the big fool – in this case, Putin – says to push on.

Not that Ukraine hasn’t suffered. Far from it. Many of its cities are piles of rubbles, resulting from aerial bombardment, missile attacks and drones. Way too many civilians – and way, way too many children have been killed or maimed. The scars of this will take generations to heal.

Ukraine has been bolstered by the help from the world’s democracies. Particularly the European Union, Canada and Japan, with unflinching support from London to Warsaw to Ottawa to Berlin to Tokyo to Rome. The bad guys in World War II are the good guys this time.

We used to be among the good guys. President Joe Biden and many in Congress, on a bipartisan basis, stood up for Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians. They were treated like the world heroes they are – Biden traveling to Kyiv clandestinely to show his support, Zelenskyy speaking before a joint session of Congress.

Now it’s hard to tell which side the United States is on. Zelenskyy is probably still smarting from the humiliating treatment he received from Trump and Vance when he came to the White House last year.

And Republican talking points on social media include posts bragging – bragging! – that Ukraine is no longer getting generous funding from the U.S. When I saw one of these posts on my feed recently, I was tempted to ask the poster what the weather was like in Novosibirsk.

Of course, Trump has been too busy causing trouble in the rest of the world. There’s the idiotic war against Iran, the grab for oil in Venezuela and the saber rattling against Cuba and – and this is even more confounding than thinking Ukraine would stand up to Russia – Canada and Greenland.

Hopefully, the midterm elections will change some of this trajectory. But November seems like forever away. Five more months of death, destruction and Trump still seeing Putin as some kind of model for world leader conduct.

As frustrating as are all the domestic debacles perpetrated by the second Trump mishegas, the fact that we are the wrong side in plain battles of evil vs. good is pathetic. When Ukraine wins its war against Russia – and I’m among those now convinced that it’s Zelenskyy, not Putin, who holds the cards – we will not deserve the credit and the gratitude that others in the West will garner.

Not from the country that, in 2026, is becoming the leader of the free world.

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GRAB ‘IM BY THE PUSSFACE

When Vladimir Putin sets his blood-stained werewolf claws on U.S. soil Friday, a massive contingent of the world’s peacekeepers should grab him and his henchmen.

After putting Putin and the lot in handcuffs, they should board a nonstop flight to The Hague. That’s where he could stand trial at the International Court of Justice – credibly accused of crimes against humanity in his country, Ukraine and throughout Europe.

I’m sorry. That was just my imagination, running away with me.

Alas, what’s going to happen is that Putin will be greeted by perhaps his most ardent admirer, Donald John Trump. Who, unfortunately, holds the title of President of the United States.

Trump believes he can help facilitate a peace agreement after three and a-half years of Russian aggression against Ukraine. He’s doing this without any legitimate representative of Ukraine any closer than the nearest McDonald’s.

So, basically, this is the excuse Trump needs to get face time with his dream boy, Vladdy P. 

Some people think he’s also looking for a diversion from the flap over the Jeffrey Epstein files. But if you’ve fallen for the idea that there’s something about the Epstein files that’s going to undo the Trump presidency, the Brooklyn Bridge is available for a small fee. 

We all know that Trump joined the debauchery of Epstein Island – we know because the girls, now young women, told us. It still hasn’t caused the MAGA pickup truck jockeys and frat boys to back away from the gold-plated demon.

As for Putin, it’s a chance to travel to another country and actually get welcomed.

This meeting is taking place at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, in part because Alaska doesn’t have a town named Munich. It’s also on the base, someplace you can’t imagine the leader of a world power going, because there’s no safe place in America for Putin other than where he can be protected by the U.S. military.

There are more than a million Americans of Ukrainian ancestry. And there’s more than a few, I imagine, who fantasize about doing something to Putin that would only partially make up for the horror he’s inflicted on extended family and friends.

Putin signed off on bombing hospitals. Housing projects. Water supplies. Electrical power grids.

He’s on board with kidnapping children. With torturing prisoners.

But despite overwhelming numbers and seemingly unlimited munitions, Putin hasn’t been able to take Ukraine – something he thought he’d do in three days. The Ukrainians lucked into one of the greatest leaders of my lifetime in Voldodymyr Zelenskyy and he has perservered.

So far.

Joe Biden recognized how important it was to support Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians. He did all he could, especially given the fact that the moronic Republicans controlled the House after the 2022 midterms.

Trump, on the other hand, clings to a bunch of fantasies.

One is that he is the equal to Putin. Another is that, if Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter could be Nobel laureates, so could he.

He’s bought into the smoke being blown up his massive ass from Benjamin Netanyahu and that Cambodian leader that he’s some sort of man of peace. As opposed to a demented tyrant who’s perfectly fine with kidnapping people off U.S. streets and hustling them to jungle jails outside the country or concentration camps inside.

(Note to those who cry foul when we call the places ICE takes its victims “concentration camps”: If you complain now, you’ll be considered complicit when history books call them concentration camps 50 years from now.)

And Trump’s idea of peace is that you have to let Russia have the land they’ve stolen from Ukraine in order for the fighting to stop. In other words, he’s the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century.

That’s why Zelenskyy is warning Europe that Putin is pushing to take as much land as possible ahead of the Alaska meeting. “Wait, Donny, don’t forget this town we took last night in your ‘peace’ offer,” or the Russian version of that.

Whatever happens Friday, it will be another pathetic day in American history perpetrated by Donald Trump. January 6, 2021 tops the list obviously, but the Helsinki meeting with Putin will have a new challenger for second place in total humiliation.

That is, unless Trump is smarter than we all think and has the zipties and orange jumpsuits ready for Putin and his gang.

Fat chance.

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HOLDING THE COURSE IN CHOPPY SEAS

If you have a casual familiarity with world history, you know that empire building is a key part of it. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans, the British.

And now us. Like it or not – and, trust me, a lot of people don’t – the United States is the world’s most powerful nation. It has a fearsome military force, has its thumb on just about everybody’s economy and is the cultural touchstone of the planet.

It’s a privilege and a burden. The world’s lesser powers will either accept American leadership or see it as something to throw rocks at. 

Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-Un, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. All of them can’t stand the idea that the United States stands in the way of their designs for dominance. At the same time, responsible leaders around the world seek our help in securing their way of life amid peace and prosperity.

No one seems to have understood this better than the 46th President of the United States: Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

Biden has always had a feel for global matters. He’s sought alliances and been a good partner throughout the world. He has led without dominating and reaffirmed American friendship.

He’s also stood up for what’s right.

Ukraine is the best example. Putin wanted this democracy nowhere near his turf. He did everything he could to undermine it. When it didn’t work – and the Ukrainians elected a comedian who turned out to be a real world leader – Putin launched a hideous war against people who just wanted to be left alone.

That Ukraine stands independent today – in what seemed like a considerable overmatch – is largely because of Volodymyr Zelinskyy’s leadership and the grit of its people. It also has a lot to do with Biden, the United States and the coalition of democratic powers that banded to give Ukraine the resources it needed to fight.

The situation in Gaza is a bit more complicated.

The United States has a long-standing and honorable commitment to the security of Israel. We recognized its independence in 1948 within minutes of its declaration. There are ancestral, social, economic and religious ties with the nation.

When Hamas launched the horrific terrorist attack on October 7 of last year, the Biden administration was obligated and inclined to support the Israelis. It has, for the most part, kept that commitment.

It’s kept that despite the fact that Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is probably more spiritually aligned with Putin than Biden. Keeping a nation at war – and putting the burden on non-combatants – is an evil in itself. What Netanyahu has done in Gaza is unforgivable.

Biden has needed to balance all his responsibilities in this crisis. And very few in the United States were going to be happy with whatever he did. That he owned up to the responsibility is a credit to his administration – amazingly, this crisis would be worse if he weren’t president.

It is hoped that Kamala Harris, who didn’t have particular international experience when she became vice president, has learned from Biden. And, because she’s learned for the professionals in this administration, she can be counted on to guide American foreign policy in a moral and protective direction.

She’ll have some freedom to change up a few things – dealing with Netanyahu, who is trying to stay one step ahead of the law in Israel. But she’s clear about her unbridled support for Zelinskyy and Ukraine, and will deal with bad actors directly and firmly.

What she won’t do is back down from American responsibility. She will not threaten NATO, or our partners in East Asia. She won’t talk tough about China before caving like a sandcastle in a tsunami. She’ll deal firmly and fairly with crises throughout the world.

She will not isolate us. She won’t bend under the weight of the power we wield on this planet and beyond.

You can’t say that about her opposition.

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38 – мужність

The mortal enemy of the United States on the day I was born was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

We were in an arms race with the Soviet Union. We were petrified that some nutty leader would attempt to nuke us into oblivion. 

In a few years, there was a space race to go with it. And the Soviets seemed determined to spread their influence around the globe.

But that nutty leader wouldn’t be Joseph Stalin, who died in 1953, the year before I was born. By April 1954, Nikita Khrushchev had assumed the important job of Communist Party Chairman. 

Any hope that Khrushchev would be a kindler, gentler Soviet leader were crushed in 1956, when he sent troops to end an anti-Communist uprising in Hungary, and vanished in 1961 when the Berlin Wall divided the occupied former German capital.

Every U.S. President from Truman to George H.W. Bush stood fast against the Soviets. In the case of John F. Kennedy, that meant taking us to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 when Khrushchev placed nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from this country.

It was during Bush’s presidency that the USSR crumbled. The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet bloc states shed their totalitarian ways and there was a sense that the threat had abated. Now, we could focus on nut cases in the Middle East.

A former KGB agent – someone who was a toddler in Leningrad in 1954 – wended his way to power in Moscow. Vladimir Putin was a required to be a member of the Communist Party when he was serving the Soviets from New Zealand and East Germany. 

But, magically, he foreswore Communism for a form of Russian nationalism that included helping oligarchic capitalists and reclaiming territory that the Soviets controlled up until 1991.

And, from 2017 to 2021, it was no longer the United States standing up to the Russians. Putin had a buddy in President Donald Trump and laid the groundwork for further mischief.

There was however, one leader who was determined to stop him. A former comedian who ascended to the presidency of Ukraine – which had been the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy took office in 2019 – a year in which he had a very uncomfortable meeting with Trump, who was seeking dirt on potential presidential rival Joe Biden. The meeting led to Trump’s first impeachment, in which he was acquitted.

When Putin sought to expand his Russian empire by retaking Ukraine in 2022, Zelenskyy and the bulk of the Ukrainian people weren’t having it. Expected by the world to capitulate in days, the Ukrainians are still standing. Their courage – мужність in Ukrainian – should be an inspiration to all who believe in democracy and freedom.

It would have surprised my parents if you told them, in 1954, that a place supposedly part of the Soviet Union would stand up to the attempt to recreate something like it in the 21st century.

Here’s the part that would have stunned and saddened them – and most other adult Americans: With Ukraine fighting for its life, politicians in the United States – mostly Republicans following the Putin-apologist Trump – would work to stop providing aid to keep Kyiv fighting.

It goes to show that the Cold War was about fighting Communism, not the historically aggressive stance of the land mass that is Russia. When Russia turned to oligarchic capitalism, too many Americans were happy to support it.

My parents would be as angry as I am.

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