We don’t always get to choose our friends or enemies. Sometimes they choose us.
Moscow shared military intelligence with Iran so it could target American bases, putting American lives at risk. Ukraine sent its cutting-edge interceptor drones and drone warfare experts to help defend those same bases and protect American lives.
For three decades, every American president assumed post-Soviet Russia would seek normalization, if not partnership. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and with it the belief that ideological struggle would define relations forever. Fanaticism and communism were out; the market economy and pragmatism were in. Finally, it seemed no one had to lose for everyone to win.
We were wrong. Self-centered in our assumptions and ignorant of how the Kremlin operates and what drives its policies.
Putin's Russia needs an enemy to survive. Not occasionally. Constantly. When corruption spreads, when the economy serves only Kremlin-connected oligarchs, when Moscow wages wars on its neighbors, the regime needs a scapegoat. The story is always the same: Russia is under siege, always the victim. And the villain is, you guessed it, Washington. Not by our choice, but by Moscow's.
Ukrainians, by contrast, draw inspiration from the same ideals that define these United States. Our ally’s bravest sons and daughters fight and die for a creed Americans know well: give me liberty or give me death.
Russia and Ukraine are not the same. Russia deliberately targets and murders civilians. Ukraine, categorically, does not. The UN has found that in 2025, for every three Russian civilians killed, ninety-seven Ukrainians were. As many as 20,000 Ukrainian children have been taken from homes, orphanages, and boarding schools to Russia since the February 2022 invasion by Moscow. Ukraine does not steal Russian kids.
Kyiv wants peace. It accepted the unconditional ceasefire that the Trump administration put on the table. Zelensky did not stall, hedge, or play games.
Putin did. The Kremlin treats negotiations with the United States as a joke. A joke at the expense of America’s credibility and Ukrainian lives. Diplomats talk, Russia bombs. While envoys shake hands, Russian-Iranian drones hit apartment blocks – murdering mothers and children in their sleep. Moscow mocks American mediation while demanding concessions from Washington and surrender from Ukraine.
Negotiating with Ukraine took twenty-four hours. Russia has had a year to accept the same unconditional ceasefire. Needless to say, it hasn’t yet. Moscow continues to choose war. Every. Day.
Ukraine produces heroes. Russia produces war criminals. Ukrainian soldiers defend their homes, their families, their right to exist. Russian forces defend nothing. They are the invaders who enter other people’s countries to deliver rape, torture chambers, and mass graves.
In Bucha alone, more than 450 civilians were found murdered after Russian troops retreated, many with their hands bound and signs of torture. Across Ukraine, authorities are investigating over 150,000 Russian war crimes.
Ukraine wants a future. Russia clings to the past. Ukrainians are building a modern democratic state accountable to the people. Like Americans, they believe citizens hire leaders to drive the bus of government, not dictate how they live.
The Kremlin, by contrast, tries to resurrect an empire – bloodthirsty and cruel – whipping Russians into patriotic frenzy every year on Victory Day, glorifying violence, while conveniently forgetting that WWII started with Nazi Germany invading Poland from the west and Soviet Russia from the east.
Kyiv invests in institutions, reforms, and a generation that wants to live normal lives in liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Moscow invests in tanks, stokes myths of imperial glory, and launches wars of aggression – criminal activity under international law. One country is trying to move forward. The other spreads chaos as far as it can reach, betting that if everything burns, Moscow’s failures will be harder for its people to see.
Ukraine’s victory would make America safer. Russia’s victory would endanger Americans everywhere. In 1994, America gave Ukraine security assurances in exchange for giving up nuclear weapons. Breaking that commitment now tells every ally that our promises are far from ironclad.
Washington demonstrated willingness to confront hostile regimes in places like Iran and Venezuela. But if Russia – the most reckless, revanchist power on earth, which does not wish the United States well – can invade its neighbor, commit unspeakable crimes, threaten nuclear escalation, and then get what it wants, American deterrence collapses.
If nuclear blackmail works against Ukraine, it will work everywhere. China, Iran, and North Korea are all taking notes. They shouldn’t learn that rattling the nuclear saber is the way to bend America to their will.
Ukraine is our friend. Russia is our enemy. One country fights for freedom, the other survives by inventing enemies and beating the war drum. The Kremlin turns America into a monster so it can pose as a savior – practicing politics of grievance to justify repression at home and atrocities abroad. Ukrainians refuse to be recolonized by Russia and are standing up for themselves. They should succeed in kicking the invaders out, and we must help.
Andrew Chakhoyan is an Academic Director at the University of Amsterdam and a former U.S. government official at the Millennium Challenge Corporation. A Ukrainian-American, he studied at Harvard Kennedy School and Donetsk State Technical University.
