“Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine. They haven’t been doing much.”

Ignominious words from the President of the United States, Donald Trump.

I wonder what Angelina, if she had ever had the opportunity to grow up, would say to him.

She will never speak. She was murdered alongside her mother Inna, a school teacher by a Russian using a jet-powered drone in Kharkiv yesterday. She was barely one year old.

President Zelenskyy shared the image. The tool used to murder her, a derivation of the Iranian Shaheed drone, is nothing new, Ukrainian air defences can and do shoot them down with an efficiency and skill that makes US efforts to do the same in their illegal war with Iran seem amateurish.

Or, they could. Until on October 14th the US administration, or Elon Musk, crippled the Starlink systems that make it possible. As soon as Ukrainian drones using it reach operational speeds the signal cuts out. This most seriously effects interceptor drones, the kind which Ukraine uses to defend people like Angelina and Inna.

Neither side in this tragic debacle: the US or Mr. Musk, seems to want to take responsibility for the decision. That is really quite telling.

In a statement Mr Musk said: “Starshield [the military Starlink platform] systems are owned and controlled by the US government”

He added: “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately POTUS [Donald Trump]”

While on the 17th US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: “No one in the White House ordered anyone to slow down the internet or reduce connection speeds so that certain drones couldn’t use it. But as I understand it, the system is working again. At least that’s what I read and what we heard two days ago”

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy disputed this on October 19th, saying that Starlink terminals remain non-functional at speeds over 100mph. The type of drone used to murder Angelina and her mother, a Geran, has a top speed of around 260mph.

On October 20th the Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk ordered the sabotage of Ukrainian Starlink.

This betrayal, dubiously and pathetically denied by either of the men who could be guilty of it, is just another in the laundry list of knives in Ukraine’s back by the Trump administration and it’s sycophants.

In the past few days they have also suspended the bipartisan Russian sanctions law, struck a deal to buy a miniscule amount of Russian diesel, suspended intelligence warnings about Russian missile attacks – many of which target civilians, threatened to further cut intelligence to Ukraine unless they stop fighting back, demanded President Zelenskyy’s resignation, downplayed Russian and China’s assistance to Iran, proposed unfreezing Russian assets, chased business deals with Russia and suggested that Europe start buying more Russian gas as part of any peace deal.

Now, it has been confirmed that the United States is refusing to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine which Europe has bought through the PURL (Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List) scheme. These are defensive tools, the only thing that can reliably shoot down Russian ballistic missiles and, to add, they have been paid for by Europe. A theft on top of a betrayal.

Why?

Always one of the most important questions when investigating crimes.

The first is a matter of US politics and his administration’s failure to follow through on the primary thing that got him elected: reducing prices.

His illegal war against Iran (a vile regime in its own right) has opened a Pandora’s Box in the blockading of the Strait of Hormuz that even the Iranians would not have dared to touch until the US and Israeli bombs fell in late February.

As the US should have learned from Russia’s experience fighting Ukraine in the Black Sea, a coastal nation even without a Navy can effectively deny and protect its local waters.

Possibly buoyed by their success in Venezuela and confident in the invincibility of the US fleet, they attacked. Without stationing sufficient forces, without warning their allies in the region, without any attempt to build a coalition or seek legal justification. They chose the path of force and they failed to reckon with how Iran, a Theocracy built on the sacrifice of revolution and a cult of martyrdom from the brutal Iran-Iraq war would respond.

It’s been a disaster for Trump. An average of 25% of the world maritime oil trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz daily, around 20.3 million barrels. Now, that has been choked off, ships hit as they attempt to pass through with the US unable to effectively protect them from a combination of drones, missiles and sea mines.

The price of fuel in the US has spiked. According to analysis from NBC news average prices have increased more than a dollar since the war began. In six states average prices are now at least $5 a gallon and according to data from Brown University quoted by NBC, this increase has cost the US more than $70 billion.

There is an election on the 3rd of November. Trump’s team are looking to get a hammering. He defines this administration and his approval sits at an all-time low of 32% according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

So, in typical fashion for a desperate narcissist, Trump is looking for a scapegoat. That is President Zelenskyy, in particular, Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign against Russian oil.

He asserts that it is this, not his Iranian disaster that is causing prices to spike. This is nonsense and the data shows it. Oil prices began to spike in the US when the Straits were blocked, notably the US hasn’t been buying Russian oil until Trump started after his misadventure began.

Regardless, the lie is running around the world and Trump is hoping that it may save his Presidency from a Democratic majority. This seems dubious, regardless of the cause, the only thing that seems to get American voters really riled up isn’t the many wars or atrocities the country is currently involved in (Gaza, Iran and the betrayal of Ukraine being the major ones at the moment) but rather, how expensive fuel is for their gas guzzling, lifted pickup trucks.

That is the most obvious motive. The darker, more speculative one is two-fold and one must deal with it carefully without toeing into the world of tin-foil hats and conspiracy.

If a US president, constrained by the limits of power and public opinion, were to back Russia in their imperialist war, I can think of few other ways they would act than how Trump is acting now.

Many people believe Russia has something on him. Undermining information they hold as leverage, also known as Kompromat. This is the opinion of his former communications director Anthony Scaramucci, to whom I put the question late last year.

Trump’s well documented sexual proclivities (He is an adjudicated sexual assaulter) and his repeated mentions in the investigation documents of the dead paedophile Jeffry Epstein, which include allegations of rape and sexual assault against him (which he denies). Lead many to believe that Russia may hold something of that nature. He has visited multiple times including prior to the fall of the USSR.

One must be careful not to fall into the realm of conspiracy theory. What does appear apparent is that Trump quite likes Putin, as he admires all strong-men, authoritarian leaders despite the contempt which Putin shows him and the US through Russia’s propaganda machinery.

Given all of the above, if we take the likely motives as Trump’s desperation in the mid-terms and his admiration for Putin (while keeping the kompromat allegations as a matter to be proved, but watched) then it surely comes as unsurprising that he has increasingly turned against Ukraine and President Zelenskyy personally. A man who is everything Trump is not, who, while he has his faults and is of middling popularity in Ukraine, is undoubtedly brave. Who refused to lie to him over President Biden’s son in 2019, who defies the bullying and murderous appetites of Putin, a man Trump admires and finally (possibly most damningly) is much more popular in the West than he is.

Now, Trump claims that all he desires is peace and an end to the fighting and suffering. Yet despite Ukraine accepting every ceasefire offer while Russia refuses them. He pushes only Russia’s peace: capitulation. Which for Ukraine means only more death. In areas that Russia has occupied they have brought with them all that comes with their state: disappearances, mass murder, torture, sexual assault, depravation and slavery. These are things witnessed personally. Watching as rescue workers sift through the ruins of an apartment block, the friends of the teenager still inside waiting by me, standing over the shallow, little grave in Izyum, reading the names of the murdered at the memorial in Bucha.

It is no peace at all but the peace of the grave. I do not know if Trump believes his own rhetoric here, but what appears clear is that he has chosen to make a scapegoat of Ukraine for his own failure in Iran.

That is to say, he is making Angelina, her mother Inna and the four others murdered by Russia yesterday into his scapegoats.

All these deaths, as with those of the young women in school in Tehran, of the children of Gaza, are writ into the soul of this administration.