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Short THREAD on Ukraine: 1/ Trump’s decision to hold back security assistance is a bad idea, but once again Washington is caught in this trap of acting like the best way to help Ukraine is to load them up with more weapons.
2/ Putin is in the process of testing the new Ukrainian president, seeing if he can be bullied. Zelesnky has stood tall so far. But now, at this critical moment, it’s a terrible time for us to suggest we are drawing back our support for this new, western oriented leader.
3/ At the same time, for years, the Washington establishment has acted like Russia is actually going to march on Kiev (they aren’t) and that our military assistance is saving Ukraine.
4/ Russia’s real goal is to economically and politically break Ukraine, leading Ukrainian voters to give up and install pro-Russian leaders again. Thus, the chief U.S. goal must be to support and protect Ukraine’s fragile democracy and economy.
5/ And so every time we get stuck talking (again) about military aid to Ukraine, we are missing the real game Russia is playing. We should keep up security funding, but we really should be arguing over how much MORE economic and democracy assistance we should be sending to Kiev.
