Opinion: The US’s Despicable Betrayal: Forcing Ukraine to Its Knees Amid Russian Onslaught (2025)

The United States has sunk to a new low in its treatment of Ukraine, a nation bleeding to defend not just itself but the very principles the West claims to cherish. Reports from Bloomberg expose the administration’s latest maneuver: a begrudging retreat from its absurd demand that Ukraine repay $300 billion in aid through a predatory minerals deal, now pegging the figure at a still inflated $100 billion.

This isn’t magnanimity – it’s the White House colliding with reality after months of peddling lies to justify its extortionate diplomacy. The irony cuts like a blade: as Russia pummels Dnipro with missiles, the US refuses to sell Ukraine a $50 billion Patriot air defense system, leaving civilians to die under a sky Washington could help protect. This is not statecraft; it’s a moral abdication, a betrayal draped in the rhetoric of “deals.”

The softened minerals demand reveals the administration’s true colors. For months, Washington inflated US aid figures to $300 billion, a number so divorced from Ukraine’s own $90 billion estimate that it is frankly embarrassing.

The shift to $100 billion isn’t a correction – it’s a grudging admission that the original figure was a cudgel to force Kyiv into a Faustian bargain: surrender your lithium, titanium, and uranium deposits, or we’ll let Russia grind you to dust. Zelensky, standing firm in the face of this protection racketeering, has refused to trade Ukraine’s sovereignty for survival. His defiance shames a White House that sees allies as marks to be fleeced, not partners to be supported.

While Washington haggles over imaginary debts, Dnipro suffers. Russian Iskander-M missiles have torn through the city, killing dozens and reducing homes to rubble. Dnipro, a hub of Ukrainian resilience, stands defiant but exposed.

The US, with its unmatched arsenal, could provide the Patriot systems Ukraine begs to purchase – $50 billion to shield schools, hospitals, and families. The world, and the United States’ remaining allied are drawing an inevitable conclusion: this administration, apparently obsessed with profiteering, refuses realize that Ukraine’s fight is the West’s fight. Washington is apparently willing to abandon Kyiv to Putin’s imperialist rampage.

The administration’s pivot from overt extortion to softer coercion doesn’t mask its endgame: to force Ukraine into a “peace” that smells like surrender. The minerals deal, even in its revised form, is a colonialist fantasy, demanding Ukraine’s natural wealth as collateral for aid that’s already been spent to counter Russia’s aggression.

This is not leadership; it’s a protection racket. The US, under a dealmaker’s delusion, dangles aid like a loan shark, demanding Ukraine’s mineral wealth as collateral for survival.

Let’s call a spade a spade; Washington’s demands on Ukraine are not about creating a just and equitable peace – they’re about subjugation. Throughout this “peace process” Washington has been mute as Russia attacks Ukrainian cities, reinforces occupation forces, and continues to ship thousands of Ukrainian children to Siberia and the Russian Arctic.

The US knows Ukraine can’t afford to divert resources from the front lines, where every dollar buys another day of resistance. By dangling aid and withholding critical defenses, Washington is effectively tying Ukraine’s hands, pushing it toward a negotiated capitulation that would cede territory and dignity to Moscow.

This policy is as untenable as it is shameful. Ukraine’s soldiers, outnumbered but unbowed, hold the line against a Russian war machine that threatens Europe’s eastern flank.

The US, by contrast, plays accountant, tallying fictional debts while civilians die. The refusal to provide Patriot systems isn’t just strategic malpractice –it’s a choice to let Ukraine bleed. History will not forgive this cowardice. As Dnipro mourns its dead, the world watches a superpower betray its ally for the sake of a deal that never should have been on the table. Ukraine deserves better. The free world demands it.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.