Column cites waived sanctions, suspended missile aid, reported Starshield slowdown
Kenneth Roth, a Guardian US columnist, senior fellow at Yale University and former executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote Oct. 29 that President Trump is “abandoning Ukraine’s democracy” in a desperate effort to deny responsibility for worsening inflation as the midterms approach — and has now “openly sided with Russia.”
Roth, the author of “Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments,” pointed to “this past weekend’s dramatic elections in Brazil and Serbia” as evidence that voters can see through such subterfuge. “There is nothing like a political party’s corrupt indifference to the plight of ordinary people to galvanize voter turnout,” he wrote, adding that if US voters follow their Brazilian and Serbian counterparts, “a Democratic landslide is likely.”
Roth traced the administration’s fuel-price problem to what he called Trump’s “war of choice against Iran,” writing that Iran predictably responded by restricting shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the Middle East’s oil and gas flows. Trump, “never one to admit error,” needed a scapegoat — “Enter Volodymyr Zelenskyy,” Roth wrote.
He acknowledged that Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries have disrupted oil production and brought the war home to ordinary Russians in the form of long lines at gasoline stations, pressuring a major source of revenue for Putin’s invasion. But he argued the attacks’ effect on the global market is small compared with the diminished flow through the Strait of Hormuz, undercutting Trump’s attempt to blame the strikes for the inflationary surge in US gasoline and diesel prices.
With Russia making only limited progress in eastern Ukraine despite, in Roth’s account, losing hundreds of thousands of troops, he wrote that Putin has turned, “as is his wont,” to attacking Ukrainian civilians — bombing their cities and striking energy infrastructure to deprive them of heat this coming winter. Putin seems to hope that a freezing populace will pressure Zelensky to capitulate, Roth wrote, but many Ukrainians remain determined to defend their country’s democracy.
Putin’s “ace-in-the-hole,” in Roth’s telling, is Trump. “The naive American president, with his inattention to detail, craving for flattery, and disturbing admiration for autocrats, was easily won over,” he wrote. Roth said Trump has authorized the purchase of diesel fuel from Russia, financing Putin’s attacks on Ukrainian cities. The gesture “will not noticeably reduce market prices before the midterms,” he wrote, but it allows Trump to make a nod of acknowledgment toward the affordability crisis that he normally derides.
Roth also cited the Trump administration’s waiver of new sanctions on Russia — adopted by overwhelming Congressional majorities in the name of the late senator Lindsey Graham, “a purported friend of Trump” — and its suspension of delivery of defensive missiles to Ukraine and early-warning intelligence of Russian attacks just as Putin was intensifying his bombing of Ukrainian cities, “leaving civilian residents to their fate.” He wrote that the administration reportedly greenlit a decision by Elon Musk to slow Starshield, the version of the Starlink satellite internet service that Ukraine’s military depends on for its drones.
Trump’s call for an “energy ceasefire,” Roth wrote, effectively meant only an end to Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil refineries — Ukraine has only one badly damaged refinery, he noted — not an end to Putin’s efforts to force Ukrainians to freeze this winter. Ukraine is attacking what are “arguably legitimate military targets,” while Putin is “committing war crimes,” Roth wrote, and yet Trump condemned only Ukraine’s attacks. The Ukrainian government would have welcomed a real energy ceasefire, he said, but rejected the selective one.
Roth rejected Trump’s claim that the embrace of Putin is an effort to build a relationship so he will negotiate peace, writing that offering him enormous benefits in return for nothing will not force him to the bargaining table. He cited former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s belief that tying Russia to Europe economically would preserve peace, writing that instead “Putin acquired the means to invade Ukraine.” Roth described envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner as “Trump’s amateur diplomats,” noting that Witkoff “embarrassingly” dubbed Putin a “humanitarian” for releasing one elderly American held in prison on concocted charges. The envoys, he wrote, “still seem to think that Putin aspires for only a chunk of Ukrainian territory rather than the destruction of Ukraine’s democracy.”
If Democrats take the reins in January, Roth wrote, he would begin with sanctions on Russia, re-enacting the legislation without the national-interest waiver Trump invoked to ignore it — and possibly naming the bill again after Graham. If the legislation can secure a veto-proof two-thirds majority, “Trump would be stuck with it,” he wrote, which might also break “his aura of being beyond restraint.” That success, he argued, might be followed by bills limiting Trump’s tariff authority or curtailing the funds he needs to keep fighting Iran — a war he wrote Trump is considering extending after the midterms.
“There is nothing normal about the current Republican Congress’s abdication of its foreign policy role to Trump’s self-promoting priorities,” Roth wrote. He said Ukraine is “on the frontline of the global defense of democracy,” that the American people and Congress see that, and that under Democratic leadership, “Congress should take matters into its own hands.” Trump’s blame campaign, he concluded, should only reinforce voter sentiment “that he would rather deploy smoke and mirrors than alter his corrupt, self-serving reign.”