The Man in the Middle of Trump’s Deeply Conflicted Ukraine Policy
CIA Director John Ratcliffe leads an agency that’s at war with Russia, even as Trump makes nice with Putin.
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky have never enjoyed a warm relationship, or even a stable one. But last week, it hit a new low. Trump called on the Ukrainian people to elect a new president, describing Zelensky as “more difficult to deal with” than Vladimir Putin. He accused Zelensky of prolonging Ukraine’s war with Russia. “He says he wants to settle, but he doesn’t,” Trump told Newsmax, without mentioning that it was Putin who started the war nearly five years ago. “Zelensky is not a good guy for us to deal with.”
The two leaders may find themselves at a personal nadir, but all the while, the U.S. intelligence community has shown no letup in its fight to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression. Armed with information that the U.S. provides, Ukraine’s military has launched strikes deep inside Russia. And U.S. spy satellites provide early warning about incoming missiles and drones. Among U.S. personnel on the ground, “the CIA is in the lead,” a retired senior officer who travels frequently to Ukraine told me. If anything, the Ukrainians, with the CIA’s help, have gotten too good at hurting Russia for Trump’s taste.
