If you believe Russia’s apologists, then Ukraine, hot off bold strikes on military airfields spanning Russia and the Kerch Strait Bridge in Crimea, is recklessly risking giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a reason to go nuclear.
The notion is utter nonsense. Ukraine, by taking the war to Russia, is just embracing a U.S. Army saying: “Keep on keeping on.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not provoking World War III but defending his country by striking legitimate Russian targets and weapons systems.
In doing so, Zelensky is reminding the West that Ukraine remains resilient. They are not losing; they are very much still in the game.
As Clifford D. May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies described the situation, “Those who have been saying Putin is winning are wrong. The Ukrainians are holding their own, even though the support they’ve been receiving from the United States and other free nations has been woefully insufficient.”
Ukraine keeps on keeping on. Adversity brings that out of you. This was evident early in the war when Zelensky refused to be evacuated from Kyiv by the U.S., instead stating, “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”
Despite Vice President J.D. Vance and President Trump’s public chiding of Zelensky in February, telling him “you don’t have the cards,” he did have them. He had been holding them close to the vest for nearly a year.
On Sunday, Zelensky’s special operators delivered two stunning blows to the Kremlin. Ukrainian attack drones, concealed in Russian cargo trucks, destroyed 34 percent of the Russian strategic bomber fleet stationed at four airbases: Belaya, Olenya, Dyagilevo, and Ivanovo. All of these were launch sites for cruise missile attacks against Ukrainian cities.
Then on Tuesday, the Security Service of Ukraine announced it had struck the Russian Kerch Strait Bridge, which connects Crimea to Russia’s Krasnodar Krai region. “The underwater supports of the piers were severely damaged at the bottom level — 1,100 kg of explosives in TNT equivalent contributed to this,” the service announced. “In fact, the bridge is in a state of emergency.”
The bridge has since reopened, but the message was delivered and received. Zelensky has no intention of capitulating to the Kremlin. Nor is Ukraine going to allow Russia’s nuclear bluffing to deter it.
Team Trump needs to be sending the same message and not leaving Europe to go it alone. On Tuesday, the Pentagon abruptly announced that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would neither attend nor remotely participate in the 57-member Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting in Brussels. The group has collectively provided Ukraine with over $126 billion in weapons and military assistance, including $66.5 billion from the U.S.
Then later on Tuesday, retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. and Special Envoy Keith Kellogg fell back on familiar language and concerns of nuclear escalation stating, “I’m telling you the risk levels are going way up. When you attack an opponent’s part of their national survival system, which is their nuclear triad, that means your risk level goes up because you don’t know what the other side’s going to do.”
But Ukraine did not strike Russia’s nuclear triad or threaten their national survival. They struck a cruise missile delivery system that was deliberately targeting Ukrainian civilians from airfields deep within the Russian interior where Putin thought they were secure.
Why is it that when Russia attacks Ukraine’s ‘national survival system’ that Kyiv cannot strike back? Ukraine entrusted its ‘national survival system’ to the signatories of the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 when they gave up their nuclear weapons. Russia attacked their vulnerability, Ukraine responded in kind.
Russia found out “what the other side was going to do” and now the Kremlin is crying foul. Hopefully, Trump pushed back against Moscow’s nuclear bluffing during his Wednesday telephone call with Putin.
Russia continues to attack while Ukraine continues to defend their country. Innovation, ingenuity, and the guts to try are leveling the playing field much to Putin’s displeasure.
This war cannot be contained to just within the Ukrainian borders. The Biden administration already tried that with HIMARS munitions. Sanctuary only affords opportunity for the Kremlin despite Ukraine always finding a way to overcome adversity.
As the White House militarily distances itself from Ukraine and the European theater in favor of the Indo-Pacific theater, Europe is rallying to the Ukrainian cause under the leadership of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
London and Brussels understand Ukraine is only the tip of the iceberg and that more robust investment in their defense is critical to their security.
As Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cautioned, “My own view, having dealt with him and having spent most of my life working on Russia and the Soviet Union, is Putin feels that he has a destiny to recreate the Russian Empire… As my old mentor, Zbigniew Brzezinski once said, without Ukraine, there can be no Russian Empire.”
Last week, retired U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus warned that Putin will invade a NATO country if he is successful in Ukraine. He went on to say that Russia could launch an incursion into a Baltic state — Lithuania being most at risk — to test Western resolve or as a precursor to a wider Russian offensive.
Last month, Russian forces began to reoccupy and fortify military bases along the border with NATO member Finland.
The Zapad-2025 joint military exercise with Belarus and Russia is a potential rehearsal for an invasion scenario in the Suwałki Gap — a 40 mile wide stretch of border between Poland and Lithuania that separates Russian-controlled Kaliningrad from Belarus. If Russia were to occupy the gap, it would divide and isolate the Baltic States from NATO. Germany recognized the threat, and deployed a tank brigade to Lithuania in May.
Russia is not interested in a peaceful outcome in Ukraine. On Tuesday, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev wrote on Telegram that the point of holding peace talks with Ukraine was to ensure a swift and complete Russian victory. “Our Army is pushing forward and will continue to advance,” he wrote. “Everything that needs to be blown up will be blown up, and those who must be eliminated will be.”
Zelensky and his army are in the way of Putin’s desired destiny. Europe is finally coming around to recognizing that fact. No amount of Russian whining and bluffing about Ukraine provoking a nuclear war should stop London and Brussels from ensuring Zelensky soundly defeats Putin in Ukraine.
Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as an Army intelligence officer. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy.