AIBU to be utterly horrified that the US has cut off military aid to Ukraine?

[Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr]

I was hoping that it was mostly just bluster from Trump. But we've woken up to the news that he has actually done it. He's literally swapped sides in the war and is now standing with the aggressor, Russia, and abandoning the victim, Ukraine.

At least some Americans are speaking out against the decision:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c981p3dxnent?post=asset%3A09fa0e7f-6f1e-4770-9096-c5228d00635f#post

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c981p3dxnent?post=asset%3A8510a9e0-ea40-4895-835d-bb747d6b0339#post

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c981p3dxnent?post=asset%3A43d2db68-32ae-47f3-a550-8a5bd491beb9#post

Be fair though, it wasn't exactly hard for Putin was it? 😡

Do you have a reasoned argument.... or do you only throw childish insults?

Sadly debate is a long lost skill in this country. Please grow up.

Vance's comments about 'these random countries' that haven't fought a war in over 30 or 40 years are utterly sickening. When 9/11 happened Europe stepped up for the US and what ever you think of those wars our soldiers faught and died in Iraq and Afghanistan. To be dismissed in such a sneering, condescending way surely has to be the final straw. The US is no longer a reliable ally and we should stop treating them as such.

How has the US let these utterly garbage human beings rise to lead them. It is so depressing.

I don't recall the voting slip asking your ethnicity or age - certainly didn't in England, did they in Wales?

Or are you just desperate to believe that of course it must be the fault of the English......as always.......🙄🙄

It's a proxy war run for the benefit of a small number of very rich people.

Any move to stop a war has got to be better than perpetuating it. Ukraine are losing - all that prolonging the war will do, by giving it life support, is make those certain people richer and mean more lives lost.

Why am I going bust? Your post makes no sense to me.

While there are cultural differences between states it’s not like going from the UK to Spain or Poland, or Norway etc.

(and I have been to Texas many times).

This is like a surreal nightmare.

An ignorant, semi-literate, cognitively impaired vindictive convicted felon, rapist and grifter is being manipulated by henchmen to disrupt the entire world order. Ironically, greatly to the detriment of the United States citizens, but also to other innocent parties. Abandoning Ukraine is nothing short of intentional evil.

It's apparent the US congress and courts won't do anything. Can international courts/ the Hague / any other body hold trump to account? Anything going to detrail this apocolyptic train??

I agree totally about Devon and Cornwall but I hadn't seen anything about English retirees in Wales. Thanks for the link.

Australia has its own challenges and push/pull factors influencing travel. As commonwealth, there are work opportunities abroad and I’m guessing you are saying they travel because …. What’s your point? They are global thinkers? Seeking cultural experiences? Bored to death ?

Are they sending troops to Ukraine?

The pretence that US involvement in Europe has been for wafty philanthropic reasons is rather annoying.

The US made a concerted effort with Europe solely for the purposes of undermining Russian influence. It wasnt because they loved the architecture! Does nobody remember the Cold War?

Obviously Trump has reversed this policy and has been actively courting Russian interests.

Next up he'll cancel Russian sanctions so the oligarchs can get back to spanking some cash on his golf courses. And he'll withdraw troops from Europe and hang a welcome sign in Russian.

I read this recently and it sums up how I feel.

Thoughts from the US

"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
"These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.
"And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.
"The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.
"Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.
Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now."

• Charles Pierce

Goodness. Aren't you aggressive. Maybe if you didn't automatically take offence where none was intended, you could calm down?

I don't actually have any particular opinion on it. Although it's obviously difficult to attribute anything as nuanced as the vote to any one factor, I remember reading this a while back.

https://nation.cymru/news/wales-brexit-vote-caused-by-english-retirees-oxford-university/

Adding: there are obviously other ways to quantify voting behaviours than by having people check nationality on a form.

No, because all Americans share a common language whereas we don't in Europe. Being on the West Coast (e.g. LA) was an entirely different experience than living in Manhattan.

Not very bright is he,they dragged us into Iraq,and Afganistan,not to mention the Americans only joined Europe in WW11 after the Japanese bombed Pearl harbour..Exactly how many wars have they been in that didnt have our assistance.Its scary that the VP of America has no knowledge of its wartime history..

Interesting timeline here https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/ukraine-nuclear-weapons-and-security-assurances-glance

I’m not enough of an historian to comment but Ukraine was once well armed with nuclear weapons and surrendered them to Russia as part of the international nuclear de proliferation of the 90’s. In return for assurances. Of course.

Cost of travel to Greece from Kansas City vs Easyjet from Luton.

Sure many from Kansas would go to Greece if the flight wasn’t 12 hrs and £2,000

The MAGA hats are obviously too tight and are causing brain damage.Its the only explanation for such utter shite..

Maybe if they were better travelled they would be less likely to believe the BS Trump dished out.

or maybe the racism and misogyny would still have been irresistible

A rich democratic country has voted for a thieving Psychopath, and they are well and truly finding out. Idiots

Very well said, Ablondiebutagoodie
Certainly it's devastating for Ukraine, whose ordinary citizens don't deserve this, but while the almost competitive hating on Trump's doubtless very enjoyable for some, the cries of Europe having to take up the cudgels are getting a bit silly considering they don't have the wherewithal to do it without US backing

FWIW I don't like the man either and it's worth remembering that it's mainly Russia at fault for invading in the first place, but as you rightly said the sponging hasn't helped and neither has the way some "leaders" convinced themselves it would continue for ever

Trump is actively dismantling US security now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/us/politics/hegseth-cyber-russia-trump-putin.html

Why are you showing me a chart about abortion??!

Try a little fact finding. You can't seriously believe the USA is the only contributer to global defence.

The fundamental reason that there is a combined effort to maintain world peace is to ensure there is shared intelligence and defence if required should a dictator like Putin/KimJung Un/ Xi Jingpin attack militarily or engage in nuclear warfare.

Eg 9/11 is a case in point ...Europe stepped up when it was America that were the primary target. This is still a recent memory for most but it seems to have been conveniently forgotten, as in the case of the vice president Vance. Despite his Yale education, and apparently serving in the Marine Corps.

The US and Russia have the same motivation and objectives. Increasing their vast wealth. This whole war was about Putin getting the areas of Ukraine richest in priceless minerals. So it makes sense that a 'deal' involves the two 'parents' divvying up the spoils. And the spin-off benefit for the people of Ukraine is that Putin stops mercilessly killing and terrifying them 24/7.

This is a dirty deal. Trump and Putin are very dirty. Zelensky is not. He is a man of extreme principle and, ultimately, love for his country, his people, and others, which is evidenced in all of his behaviour.

This is genuinely a fight between good and evil.

So, Trump removing aid will delight Russia. This gets Russia even more likely to be receptive to a deal seemingly forged between the two of them, disgracing and bypassing Zelensky, Putin additiionally cock-a-hoop that killing innocents has got him what he wants.

But

Europe is not full of kids. There are genuine stateswomen and men, plus our own Starmer, who are the real grown ups. They are trying to rally and step up. Let's see.

However, it is true, unfortunately, that in terms of resolution for Ukraine, Zelensky would be better off cowtowing to Trump, heaping praise on him in his 'peace'-brokering role, and getting down to the detail of it. He would be better off with a safe Ukraine, protected by an international buffer zone and army, with a massive injection of rebuilding capital, in a deal with the US where effectively he is paying them for protection.

YES it is a racket.
YES it is scandalous.

But at the moment, Ukraine is held to ransom. It is like a situation of extreme domestic abuse. Sometimes you have to do a deal with the devil, sell your soul and whatever else you can, give up all you would never have dreamed of relinquishing, just to gain the one thing most precious, without which you will have no life:

Freedom.

Zelensky needs to deal for freedom, and pay whatever the price. His job is not to walk off. It is to get the best deal he can. Or rather, the least costly to Ukraine. But yes, it will hurt. That he is even having to do a deal is beyond disgraceful.

But this, unfortunately, is our planet. Ruled by money and force.

So in order to survive, Zelensky needs to deliver that deal.

...

You're not surprised that the man America elected as their president is prepared to wreck America financially and support the invasion of sovereign countries and the slaughter of civilians because "some people have been nasty to him"? You don't have a very high opinion of Trump yourself, clearly.