On Wednesday night, Vladimir Putin’s Russia blanketed Ukraine with missiles and drones in what was perhaps the largest-scale air attack on the country since 2022. One missile reportedly struck an apartment building in Kyiv, killing nine and wounding another 63.
This is a war zone.
Earlier in the day, the Trump administration rolled out its proposed outline for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine – a peace deal under which Ukraine would have been forced to accept Russian annexation of Crimea and control of Eastern Ukraine; been removed from NATO membership; provided little or nothing in the way of security guarantees for Ukraine; and ended sanctions on Russia.
Russia has not accepted a peace arrangement along these lines. Essentially, this proposal was the United States, Europe and Ukraine presumably negotiating against themselves. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky rejected handing over Crimea legally, since that would be making a major concession without actually receiving anything from Russia.
Zelensky has accepted the Trump proposal for a thirty-day ceasefire without any preconditions. Putin has not. Which is why last night, Russian missiles fell on Kyiv.
Putin has at no point actually given any sign he wants the war to end. Instead, he seems to be biding his time, waiting for the United States to pull out negotiations and out of funding Ukraine – a bet that may pay off, given the Trump administration’s repeated statements that if a deal cannot be found, the United States will walk away. Vice President JD Vance said just that on Wednesday.
The Trump administration’s pressure has been almost solely relegated to pressure on Ukraine to this point. President Trump unleashed a post on TruthSocial attacking Zelensky and blaming him for the continuation of the war. He stated:
Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is boasting on the front page of The Wall Street Journal that, “Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea. There’s nothing to talk about here.” This statement is very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia in that Crimea was lost years ago under the auspices of President Barack Hussein Obama, and is not even a point of discussion. Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory but, if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired? The area also houses, for many years before “the Obama handover,” major Russian submarine bases.
It’s inflammatory statements like Zelenskyy’s that makes it so difficult to settle this War. He has nothing to boast about! The situation for Ukraine is dire — He can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country. I have nothing to do with Russia, but have much to do with wanting to save, on average, five thousand Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week, who are dying for no reason whatsoever. The statement made by Zelenskyy today will do nothing but prolong the “killing field,” and nobody wants that! We are very close to a Deal, but the man with “no cards to play” should now, finally, GET IT DONE. I look forward to being able to help Ukraine, and Russia, get out of this Complete and Total MESS, that would have never started if I were President!”
President Trump’s frustration is clear and understandable. But for the conflict to end, Russia must come to the table. And the American people must understand just why it’s important for Ukraine not to collapse amidst the escalation of Russia’s invasion.
With the Russia-Ukraine war now in its third year, with tens of thousands of dead on each side and hundreds of thousands wounded, with Eastern Ukraine and Crimea in Russian hands – and with the Trump administration desperately trying to end the war through negotiations – we felt that now was a vital time to travel to Ukraine to discuss this crisis with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The American people have a right to know why they ought to care about this conflict in a far-away place – and to have their questions answered on matters ranging from how their tax dollars are being spent to the treatment of Christians in Ukraine, from the nature of Russia’s aspirations in Ukraine to the Ukrainian desire to remain free of Russian domination.
WATCH: Ben Shapiro’s interview with President Volodymyr Zelensky
The trip into Ukraine isn’t easy – it is, of course, a war zone. We traveled some 12 hours from Florida to Krakow, and then took a ten-hour car ride with security from Poland to Kyiv. The border crossing was nearly deserted – few people are trying to get into Ukraine at this point in time.
The country itself is beautiful – the breadbasket of the continent – and Western Ukraine is rolling farmland dotted with forest. My great-great-grandparents came originally from this general region – Belarus, Poland, Ukraine – so I tried to see it through their eyes. What it must have been like a hundred and fifty years ago, before the carnage of the Ukrainian Holodomor – the Stalinist-created genocidal starvation campaign against Ukrainian farmers and their families, and against those who opposed the evil of Soviet communism. Before the Nazi invasion in 1941 and the mass slaughter of Jews, with roving bands of SS mowing down tens of thousands of Jews over the open pits in Babi Yar, shipping Jews via train to death camps all over Europe.
Timothy Snyder, historian and author of “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin,” writes:
During the years that both Stalin and Hitler were in power, more people were killed in Ukraine than anywhere else in the bloodlands, or in Europe, or in the world…For both Hitler and Stalin, Ukraine was more than a source of food. It was the place that would enable them to break the rules of traditional economics, rescue their countries from poverty and isolation, and remake the continent in their own image.
If you know history, the voices of all of our brothers’ blood cry out from the ground of Ukraine. And the history of Ukraine’s suffering doesn’t stop with World War II. After the war, Ukraine became a part of the Soviet Union; its history was steamrolled and homogenized to fit Soviet presumptions. In the aftermath of the Cold War, Ukraine broke free — it gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from the West.
Torn between the attraction of joining the post-Soviet West and Russian pressure from the East, the country was governed by a series of corruption-ridden governments, culminating in the rule of Viktor Yanukovych, whose pro-Russian swing led to the so-called Maidan Revolution of 2014. Yanukovych was ousted, and Vladimir Putin, dictator of Russia, seeing Ukraine slipping out of his grasp, launched invasions of the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea – both largely Russian-speaking areas that favored a closer relationship with Russia but not full rule by Russia. Citizens of those areas were brought under Russian control.
And then came 2022. Sensing weakness from the American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban, Putin launched a full-scale invasion of the rest of Ukraine. When the war began, few expected Ukraine to survive – indeed, the first Russian push into Ukraine came within mere kilometers of Kyiv, the capital city.
Screenshot: DailyWire+. Ben Shapiro and President Zelensky
But Ukraine fought back. Their forces pushed the Russians back toward the East and the South. After three years of war, that is where the lines remain.
Carnage continues in Kharkiv and Zaporizhiya; bombs continue to fall and drones continue to fly. The Russian government, since 2014, in an effort to Russify Ukrainian children, has abducted tens of thousands of them back into Russia.
As the New York Times reported in 2023, “Russian officials have made clear that their goal is to replace any childhood attachment to home with a love for Russia.” Hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers and contractors have died, according to the BBC; around 50,000 Ukrainians had been killed, according to Zelensky’s government, as of February.
President Trump’s entry into office provided the possibility of something new. Pledging to the end the war, the Trump administration insisted on negotiations – and to that end, put pressure on both Zelensky and Putin to come to the table. After a fraught conversation with Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office, Zelensky has agreed to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.
Putin has agreed to nothing.
The United States, under special envoy Steve Witkoff, continues to advocate for Ukrainian concessions ranging from recognition of Russian territorial annexation to abandonment of intent to join NATO. This week, the United States has threatened to walk away from the conflict and negotiations entirely. Putin, for his part, has mouthed words of interest but shown little willingness to make any concessions at all.
And that is where things stood as we traveled into Ukraine.
It grew dark as we traveled; as we neared the city, an app on our phones sounded a drone alert in Kyiv. Drone warfare has become one of the most highly-publicized aspects of the war in Ukraine – Ukrainian forces, at a material disadvantage in the early days of the war, engaged in technological creativity to counter Russian advances; Russia has responded by building new drones with Chinese help, as well as importing drones from Iran. By the time we reached Kyiv, the drone sirens had stopped.
After a short night in the center of Kyiv, we visited the site of the Babi Yar massacre, just across the street from a television tower struck by a Russian missile in the early days of the war; a blown-out building hit multiple times in a variety of Russian attacks; a memorial to the victims of the Holodomor. The city was beautiful but feels empty: approximately seven million Ukrainians have left the country during the war, out of a total population of perhaps 44 million in 2021.
I attended a meeting of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, with representatives of fifteen different religious sects attending to discuss religious freedom and traditional values with Zelensky. A member of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was joined by a member of the Catholic Church to ask for a Ministry of Family to foster higher birth rates and support for more children in Ukraine; other members of the council asked Zelensky about military deferment for members of the clergy.
And then it was time to sit with President Zelensky in the shadow of the St. Sophia Cathedral, the first foundations of which were laid in 1011 – centuries before the tsardom of Russia.
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