Day: February 25, 2025

Two days before Christmas, retired U.S. Army Lt. General Doug Lute, penned an open letter to then President-elect Trump about how he could bring Russia to the negotiating table and end the war in Ukraine.

A former high ranking national security official in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, including a tour as U.S. ambassador to NATO, Lute argued the U.S. needed to end the “incremental” aid policy of the Biden administration and immediately give Ukraine the full panoply of weapons— most significantly, long range Army tactical missiles—that could actually make a difference on the battlefield. 

“It is not too late to do the right thing and give Ukraine what it needs,” Lute wrote in a piece for The Cipher Brief. 

To put it mildly, Trump didn’t take his advice. Perhaps that’s not a surprise given Trump’s claim on the campaign trail that he would magically end the war in a day.  But what Lute never expected, and can now scarcely believe, is that in a few short weeks, Trump would reverse 75 years of U.S. foreign policy, cozy up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, deride Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator,” and pressure him to accept a deal for the dismemberment of his country on Moscow’s terms, not to mention turning over half its mineral wealth to the U.S. as “payback” for military support.  

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Moscow could soon struggle to finance the war, and fiscal breathing room may well be what the Russian leader’s looking for.

The FBI is starting an investigation into the agency’s plan to infiltrate President Donald Trump’s first campaign using two female undercover agents as a honeypot.