The Shatterbelt Brief is a weekly column by Brian Whitmore examining the shifting political and geopolitical dynamics of Eastern Europe and Eurasia. The views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of Independence Avenue Media.
The United States appears to have just effectively switched sides in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
This is not hyperbole, although I truly wish it were. And as painful and disturbing as it is to contemplate, a clear-eyed look at the events of the past week can really lead us to no other conclusion.
Let’s take a closer look at the timeline:
- Friday, Oct. 9 – U.S. President Donald Trump holds a 90-minute phone call with Kremlin autocrat Vladimir Putin and then announces that Washington will waive sanctions on Russian diesel exports to the United States. Trump also calls on Ukraine to halt its strikes on Russian oil refineries and, according to a report by CNN, threatens to cut off intelligence sharing and weapons purchases if Kyiv does not comply.
- Saturday, Oct. 10 – Trump blames Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for high global fuel costs, states that Kyiv “better damn well stop” striking the refineries, and remarks that it is “time for Ukraine to get a new president.”
- Sunday, Oct. 11 – Trump unilaterally declares that Russia and Ukraine have agreed to an “energy ceasefire” to completely halt attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure — an announcement that blindsides Ukrainian leadership. Hours after Trump’s announcement, Russia strikes Ukraine’s CHP-5 power plant in Kharkiv, as well as multiple residential buildings and grocery stores.
- Monday, Oct. 12 – Russia bombs six thermal plants, an electrical substation, and gas production facilities in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and the Zhytomyr region. The bombardment leaves over 600,000 Ukrainians without power and kills dozens of civilians.
- Tuesday, Oct. 13 – The first official reports emerge that Ukraine has lost access to critical, real-time U.S. satellite intelligence. Zelenskyy says Ukraine received zero advance warning from its Western partners before back-to-back waves of Russian ballistic missile strikes hit Kyiv and Kharkiv. Trump denies cutting off intelligence.
- Wednesday, Oct. 14 – Reports surface about a massive disruption to Ukraine’s access to a key military satellite network. Top Ukrainian presidential advisor Serhii Beskrestnov and defense officials say that SpaceX has unilaterally restricted the Pentagon-funded Starshield network for Ukraine overnight between Oct. 13-14. Elon Musk himself says any decisions on Starshield are “decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.”
Writing in his Substack newsletter, former CIA officer Michael Sellers is blunt and bleak in response to the past week’s developments.
“Is the United States still committed to ensuring that Ukraine can defend itself successfully against Russian aggression? Or has Washington begun treating Ukraine’s ability to resist as an obstacle to the economic and diplomatic arrangements Trump wants to make with Putin?” he writes.
“Increasingly that last question is reaching the point where it has become a statement, not a question: Trump is treating Ukraine’s ability to resist as an obstacle to what he wants.”
Likewise, Anne Applebaum writes in The Atlantic that the Trump administration’s actions are “an abrupt, Hail Mary attempt to force Ukraine to surrender and to save the Russian economy” and also “the multiple business deals that the Russians are known to have discussed with American negotiators and others in Trump’s orbit.”
The grim assessments of Sellers and Applebaum appear more than plausible given what was going on before the week that shook Ukraine.
Prior to Trump’s Oct. 9 phone call with Putin, Ukraine had managed, against the odds, to turn the tide of the war in its favor.
According to the International Energy Agency, Kyiv’s deep strikes had been able to take out between 25% and 40% of Russia’s refining capacity, reducing output by 20%-30% and hindering Putin’s ability to fund his war machine.
Days before the Trump-Putin phone call, Ukraine began targeting another part of Putin’s war-making capacity by taking out data centers run by Yandex, the Russian tech company, crippling Russia’s AI development and cloud infrastructure and disrupting the country’s internet.
And at the front, Ukraine had just completed Operation Vivaldi, in which its armed forces say it liberated a total of 277 square kilometers of territory and 16 settlements, pushing Russian forces back from the Lyman front in northern Donetsk region. The operation effectively secured the critical Kharkiv-Sloviansk highway and created a defensive buffer for the “fortress belt” cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk ahead of winter.
But while Ukraine was busy helping itself win its existential war of survival against Russia, its erstwhile allies in Washington had something else on their minds — figuring out how to get down to business with Moscow.
On Oct. 3, just six days before the Trump-Putin phone call, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration was in talks with Russia about “a multibillion-dollar oil deal that would benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.” According to the report, the deal involves “a sprawling set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies.”
As U.S. support withered and Russian missiles rained on Ukrainian cities, Zelenskyy travelled to London and Brussels to shore up support from the European allies. He also struck a defiant tone with Washington, telling The Financial Times that Ukraine would resume its strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. Ukrainian drones then struck a refinery in Ryazan. In a televised interview, Zelenskyy also said it was “a pity that we are losing a strong partner” and that the United States was on “the wrong side of history.” He added: “We can’t be weak. We’re not selling our country. Look, guys, it’s not about business for us. It’s our lives. It’s our country, our home, our children.”
So the real question now is whether the European allies, who are expressing strong support for Kyiv, can fill the gaping hole left by the withdrawal of U.S. support.
European efforts to replace U.S. satellite intelligence capacity with projects like IRIS² appear to be years away. In the area of missile defense, the Freyja Project, an effort launched by a coalition of European nations and Ukraine to develop a low-cost alternative to the U.S. Patriot system, could be operational by next year. I plan to take a deeper look at these and other European efforts in a future column.
But as Applebaum suggests, given the current U.S. posture, the future of Ukraine and European security may depend on them.
“For the past couple years, Europeans, Canadians, and the Pacific democracies have been building deeper commercial and security links with one another, as well as with India and Latin America,” she writes. “They’ve just been given another reason to make those links stronger.”
For now we need to adjust to this frightening new reality. The United States may have effectively switched sides and there is little reason to expect that to change under the current administration.
