Sen. Mark Kelly exposes the truth: Everyone is lying about Ukraine | Opinion

Here’s what we know about the war in Ukraine.

Everyone is lying.

On Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona leaned into Stephen Feinberg, President Trump’s pick to be deputy secretary of Defense, and challenged him to defend Donald Trump’s lie.

“Mr. Feinberg, did Russia invade Ukraine?”

Feinberg could not answer the question with a yes.

That was a lie.

Feinberg and everyone in that conference room knows Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago this week.

Mark Kelly answered a lie with propaganda

Within hours, Kelly put out a video clip on X, formerly Twitter, that was its own small distortion, an artfully edited piece of propaganda that pales in comparison to Feinberg’s lie, but nonetheless is one.

It made Feinberg look like a blubbering fool, and more to the point, made Kelly look even more the stern prosecutor.

What Kelly left out was Feinberg’s explanation — that he could not definitively answer Kelly’s question because it could frustrate President Trump’s talks to end the Ukraine war.

“There’s a very tense negotiation going on now,” Feinberg told Kelly, as reported by The Hill.

“I don’t think some person who’s not informed on this, not involved in discussions, should make statements public that could undermine what the president and the secretary’s intent is.”

That’s more than mere blubbering.

But it also underscores the lies of Donald Trump, who has maneuvered himself to a place where he blames Ukraine for the war, calls its leader a “dictator” and soft pedals Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin, the monster, lies to President Trump

Putin is, in fact, a monster who started a war that has killed anywhere from 110,000 to 500,000 people and maybe more. We just don’t know.

Such is the fog of war.

Putin’s soldiers have summarily murdered Ukrainian civilians, kidnapped Ukrainian children and leveled entire cities.

The monster also lies.

He pretends to be the friend of the United States. He endearingly calls our president “Donald.” This may fool Trump. It should fool no one.

Meanwhile, the leaders of Europe and Canada preformed their own theater of the absurd this week by winging to Kiev and swearing undying support for Ukraine and its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

What nonsense.

Europe lies about its support for Ukraine

For three years, Ukraine has been in the maw of the Russian bear while Europe and Canada (and the Biden White House and GOP-led Congress, for that matter) nattered on about Ukrainian courage while refusing to provide adequate material and financial support to defeat the Russians.

The Europeans have spent more than the Americans, for sure, but even the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the German research institute that tracks such funding, notes that the donor countries, and in particular the Europeans, have provided “low” support for Ukraine.

The institute also slams Europeans for putting “small domestic priorities” ahead of a war that is central to Europe’s defense.

Germans pay three times more per year for tax subsidies for diesel fuel than they do for military aid for Ukraine, the institute’s Christoph Trebesch said.

“When looking at the government budgets in most European donor countries, Ukraine aid over the last 3 years looks more like a minor political ‘pet project’ rather than a major fiscal effort.”

Worse yet, the governments of Europe have been dropping their guard for decades, underfunding their defense budgets and leaving it to the United States to protect them against the authoritarian and historic enemies to the east.

Europe hardly even funds its own defense

So, when Donald Trump bilaterally begins peace negotiations with the Russians, there’s a realpolitik logic to it. If the Europeans are unwilling to defend their own nations, why should the U.S. include them in peace talks?

After Trump’s election and authoritarian-like bluster about America taking control of Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, the Europeans began to imagine their continent without an American defense umbrella.

Some pulled the alarm and said it is time to raise defense budgets as high as 5% of GDP.

This panic was too much for Benjamin Tallis, one of the heavy hitters in European security and the director of the Democratic Strategy Initiative, a political think tank in Berlin.

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“I find it interesting and a little regretful that some people have spoken since Trump’s remarks about a wake-up call or about plunging Europe into chaos with these calls for 5% defense spending,” he told Deutsche Welle TV.

“If this is what it took to plunge you into chaos, you haven’t been paying attention for the last three years.”

“… (We) made ourselves considerably dependent upon the United States for our security. There’s nothing wrong with being good allies, but that means really paying your way and doing your share, and that’s where Europeans and Canadians have been rather delinquent. So, we’ve left ourselves without the true capabilities to stand up for ourselves.”

Then there’s Trump, the biggest liar of them all

Meanwhile, Ukraine has turned into a meatgrinder, tearing up the young men of the two warring states.

“(Casualty) estimates suggest Russia has lost over 700,000 killed or injured, while Ukraine has lost around 400,000, with tens of thousands missing,” said Konstantin Sonin, a Russian exile, Putin critic and professor of public policy at the University Chicago.

“Yet the front lines remain largely static, resembling a war of attrition reminiscent of World War I trench warfare.”

Now, Donald Trump has reframed the global discussion about Ukraine from war to peace with this observation:

“We’re losing all those soldiers. And they’re not American soldiers, they’re Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, but when you’re talking about a million-and-a-half, I think you’ve got to bring that one to an end.”

A peace that rewards Russia for its bloody theft and cruelty will only provoke future wars. So, I’m glad to see Mark Kelly lean hard into would-be Trump defense advisers.

But if the United States manages to shepherd this mess to a lasting and just peace, then the biggest liar of them all, Donald Trump, will have landed on the conflict’s most cogent truth:

“We’ve got to stop that war.”

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Ukraine peace deal exposes a hard truth: Everyone is lying | Opinion

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