Washington, DC, May 12, 2026 --  

Ukraine has survived its betrayal by America to become a world leader in making next generation battlefield hardware.

When Hamas attacked southern Israel in October of 2023, war clouds once again settled over the Middle East. Fighting spread first to Gaza, then to Lebanon, then Syria and eventually to Iran and the Gulf states.Almost overnight, news of the war in Ukraine disappeared from the headlines. America's Patriot missile batteries, once showcased defending Kiev from Russian missiles, started popping up instead in Israel and the Persian Gulf.

Meanwhile, Ukraine continued to suffer brutal human wave attacks from Russian soldiers slowly pushing the front line westward inch by inch until an unthinkable disaster happened: America betrayed Ukraine by electing a pro-Russian president who quickly cut off aid.

Ukraine's supporters around the world feared the worst as Ukraine's stocks of Ametican weapons began to decline. But thankfully, Russia failed to seize this opportunity to defeat its closest neighbor.

Amazingly, Ukraine not only managed to hold back the Russians and even launched a brief invasion of Russia's Kursk region as a negotiating tactic for peace talks meant to satisfy Donald Trump's promise to end the war. Ukraine was ultimately pushed out of Kursk with help from North Korean forces, but this Kursk negotiating gambit didn't end up being needed anyway -- Trump's negotiations to end the war went nowhere fast. Trump like others before him eventually learned that Russian President Vladimir Putin had little interest in ending the war, even on friendly terms.

Some American arms still reach Ukrainian forces, now purchased at full price by European donors in a nod to Trump's transactional mindset. But instead of focussing on shiny high profile NATO fighter jets, tanks, and missile systems designed for the Cold War, Ukraine has seen greater success building its own fleet of low-cost aerial, sea and land drones and some home-grown cruise missiles.

Those new weapons have helped protect the front line from Russia's overwhelming numerical supriority, and has forced Russia to pay dearly for every inch of new captured territory with a death count that would be unacceptable in almost any other country in the world. If Russia does press forward to take the "fortress belt" of Ukraine's northwestern Donetsk province, it will be at a horrifically high cost.

Ukraine's long range aerial drones now pummel Russian airfields and refineries, and famously forced Moscow to abandon the military hardware display at its annual victory parade. Moscow had to negotiate a temporary ceasefire to avoid the parade becoming an embarrassing spectacle as a demonsteration of the prowess of Ukrainian attack drones.

This is the same tough and scrappy Ukraine that successfully stood up to the enormous Russian bully in the days after its 2022 invasion. Ukraine's dream of a tank-driven counteroffensive to win back its lost territory died when its ground ofensive stalled in the months before the Gaza war in 2023. But that failure signaled a stalemate rather than a turn toward Russian victory. That's not great for holding the attention of observers in America who have been trained to expect Hollywood-style feel good stories whrer good clearly and quickly triumphs over evil.

Ukraine may have lost most Americans' interest, but it is still standing. When the war uultimately ends, Ukraine may not get its Russian-occupied land back. But it will be the world leader in building and exporting low-cost military drones and other military hardware battle-tested for modern conflicts. Europe and America will be two of its best customers. And Russia, having lost hundreds of thousands of deaths to capture a burnt-out industrial hellscape along its border, will have learned not to underestimate Ukraine again.

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Distant Casualties, December 12, 2023

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