Kyiv Stands Firm While the USA Wavers

As Kyiv Stands Firm, The USA Wavers: Why Resilience in Ukraine Is a Blueprint, and Trump’s Concessions Are a Warning To Europe

This week, our host Dominic Bowen recorded a video in Kyiv. Minutes before filming, two Russian missile were launched. The air raid sirens were hard to ignore, but life on the streets resumed almost immediately. Children returned to school. Coffee shops reopened. Public transport was back on schedule within the hour. Ukraine continues to adapt and innovate faster than we have seen anywhere else.

This isn’t bravado. It’s the result of deliberate crisis preparedness and a national commitment to resilience—across every layer of business and society. Ukraine has spent over a decade learning the hard way that resilience is not a buzzword. It’s a survival mechanism. And it’s working.

But while Ukraine holds the line, Donald Trump is doing what he does best: negotiating from a position of self-interest cloaked in imagined strength. His latest two-hour phone call with Vladimir Putin is a textbook example of diplomatic capitulation dressed up as statesmanship.

Let’s be clear about what happened.

After a symbolic ceasefire proposal was floated – a proposal that would have paused strikes on energy infrastructure – and Trump folded. President Trump hinted at new sanctions if Russia didn’t comply. But when Putin predictably refused to sign on, Trump backed down. No sanctions. No firm response. Just more talk.

Even Boris Johnson, usually a reliable Trump sympathizer, called it out: Putin is laughing at us.

Trump walked away with empty gestures. There’s some vague talk about placing nuclear power plants under American oversight and sourcing a few Patriot missiles for Ukraine. But nothing that shifts the balance. In contrast, Putin extracted a disturbing set of conditions: no more Western military aid to Ukraine, no conscription, and no more training for Ukrainian forces—while reserving full freedom of action for himself. It’s a classic Kremlin move: demand restraint from your enemy while imposing none on yourself.

And yet, the real danger isn’t this one phone call. It’s the broader direction Trump is signaling—one that suggests he is willing to sacrifice Ukraine’s sovereignty for a seat at Putin’s imaginary negotiating table.

Here’s what that trade-off looks like in practice:

• A fragmented NATO alliance.

• A destabilized Eastern Europe.

• A signal to China that aggression pays off.

• And a global perception that the US no longer backs its allies.

Putin is dangling illusions: that Russia could help in the Middle East, that it could lean on Iran, that it might distance itself from China. Nonsense. Russia’s economy is dwarfed by Italy’s. It’s handcuffed to China economically, and its leverage over Tehran is minimal. But these illusions are carefully tailored to appeal to Trump’s vanity and transactional mindset. And worst of all, there is increasing intelligence confirming that Russia is preparing for a larger war with Europe.

Meanwhile, in Kyiv, resilience is not theoretical. It’s operationalized at every level. From distributed energy systems to hardened cyber infrastructure, from trained citizen responders to agile business continuity plans—Ukraine is doing what too many Western governments only talk about.

And this is the contrast that should alarm us: while Ukraine, with limited resources, prepares for crisis and adapts in real time, the West’s most prominent populist is entertaining fantasies with a dictator whose goal is the eradication of Ukraine’s independence.

Europe cannot afford this delusion. Neither can the US.

There’s a lesson in the streets of Kyiv: resilience is built before the crisis, not during it. And it’s sustained through unity, not appeasement.

Trump may believe he’s playing 4D chess with Putin. The reality? He’s being played.

And if the West doesn’t wake up, it won’t be just Ukraine that pays the price. It will be all of us.