We are at a line-in-the-sand moment for Ukraine and the democratic world.
On one side stand Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, who are openly aligned in selling out the people of Ukraine. On the other side are democratic leaders gathered in Johannesburg in defiance of Trump.
They must hold the line and step up for Ukraine. Otherwise, we face a very dark and uncertain geopolitical future.
Putin has not won a victory on the battlefield, but in terms of subterfuge and cynicism, he is king. Putin has activated an American traitor in full view of the world. He has reduced the United States to an isolated, hated and weakened regime.
American Traitor
Donald Trump is a traitor to his country. He always has been.
And the great unanswered political question of this century is why the American legal and political class let this happen. Even more pressing is why so many went along with the dismantling of American foreign policy.
It wasn’t just Trump who turned his nation into a snivelling vassal of the Kremlin gangster. There is so much guilt to go around. And it comes to a head with this so-called peace deal, which is little more than a shakedown.
The world is watching as the United States lines up behind Vladimir Putin in insisting the people of Ukraine capitulate, turn over their territory to Russia, cut their military defence capabilities and be abandoned by the West.
That is not a peace deal. It is about stripping an independent nation of its democracy and selling it off for scrap parts.
Marx wrote that history occurs the first time as tragedy and then as farce. The betrayal of Ukraine is similar in magnitude to the false peace cooked up by Hitler and Chamberlain in 1938. Peace, then, meant stripping Czechoslovakia of their formidable defence systems to appease Hitler. It left the Czech people defenceless to stop what became an easy invasion a year later.
This is Trump’s future for Ukraine. It means that Ukraine dies, partly today, and most definitely in the future. NATO ceases to be a credible force.
Any nation watching this farce knows that they could be next.
America’s word means nothing.
The Long Game
One can look back at Munich 1938 and blame Neville Chamberlain’s naivety for thinking that he could negotiate with the Nazis. But there is nothing naïve about Trump. He has been the Kremlin’s inside man for 40 years. His connections to dark Russian money and compromising connections to Russian spies, oligarchs and gangsters have been on full display.
Author Luke Harding writes that the Soviets have a dossier on Donald Trump going back to 1977. In the mid-1980s, they decided to pull Trump into their orbit. And why not? In 1984, the real estate tycoon made his first foray into politics by announcing his interest in negotiating with the Soviet Union. 1984 was also the year that Trump began to receive funding from some very dark Russian players.
Trump’s first deals with the Russians were low rent – like buying hundreds of televisions from a New York store that was reported to be a KGB front operation.¹
But then Russian mob money began to flow through his operations.
In 1984, Russian mobster David Bogotin purchased five units in Trump Tower for what was then the staggering price of six million dollars. Bogotin was tied to the Semion Mogilavich mob. Bogotin was the first of many Russian mobsters to run stolen money through Trump real estate deals.
Russian mobster Vyachelav Ivankov, who was tied to gambling, prostitution, and arms smuggling, set himself up at Trump Tower. In 2013, the FBI busted a massive Russian gambling and money laundering ring taking place in Trump Tower in the apartment just below Trump’s.
When Trump came to power, he fired the FBI agent who ran the investigation.
Felix Sater was another convicted felon with ties to the Mogalavich crime family. He moved into Trump Tower and began working with Trump on new real estate deals. Sater bragged in 2016 that he could get Vladimir Putin to get Trump elected.
The Russian Asset
In 1987, Trump was formally invited to the Soviet Union and treated to lavish hospitality by Intourist, a barely disguised KGB subsidiary. Former KGB agent Victor Suvorov described Intourist as an entrapment machine.
“Everything is free. There are good parties with nice girls. It could be a sauna and girls and who knows what else… [everything was under] 24-hour control [with] security cameras and so on… The interest is only one. To collect some information and keep that information about him for the future.”²
The Russians always play the long game. The “kompromat” (compromising evidence) might sit in a file folder for decades before it became useful. And when it was, it was put to use.
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Donal Trump returned from the Soviet Union talking about running for President. Did he come up with the idea himself or did someone suggest he would be an ideal candidate?
This is when Trump began wading into more international issues – particularly his belief in cutting a deal with the Russians. He accused various American allies of being deadbeats, a position that would eventually become official US policy following the Cleveland convention.
At the beginning of the 1990s, New York tycoons were the symbol of the new American success story. But not Trump. He was billions in debt. His business ventures were failing, and nobody would touch him.
He desperately needed a financial lifeline, and that lifeline would come from Moscow.
Russian banking interests began floating money to keep Trump afloat. As much as 30% of Trump’s real estate money has come from dark sources tied to Russian mobsters and oligarchs.
In 2016, Christopher Steele, the foremost Russian expert from MI6, put together a dossier on Russian connections to Donal Trump. It was a damning indictment. But when it was leaked to the media, the mainstream American press pooh-poohed the findings. They were more focused on Hilary Clinton’s emails.
In 2017, Trump fired FBI director James Comey for refusing to back off on investigations that his senior electoral team were tied to Russian agents. His advisors – Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, and George Papadopoulos were all later convicted but pardoned by Trump.
The day after Trump fired Comey, he met in the White House with senior Russian diplomats and foreign operatives and bragged about firing Comey. It was on display, and nobody in the political/media class seemed to notice.
Still, nobody in the media seemed to care.
In early 2025, Former KGB agent Alnur Mussayev stated that Trump was recruited back in the 1980s as an active agent under the code name Krasnov. It could have been scurrilous bragging, but like Trump’s connections to Epstein, nobody seemed all that interested in following up.
Trump’s Russia connections have remained there in plain sight for all to see.
Timothy Snyder, in his book Unfreedom, writes that Donald Trump is a construct of Russian influence and money.
“He [Trump] only had a platform because Americans associated with the successful businessman he played on television, a role which was only possible because Russians bailed him out. Fiction rested on fiction rested on fiction. From the Russian perspective, Trump was a failure who was rescued and an asset to be used to wreak havoc in American reality… Trump, the winner, was a fiction that would make his country lose.”³
The mob have an expression about calling in the “vig” – the debt that has to be paid. Putin has called in the vig, and Trump is trying to deliver. The implications of this for world security will be profound.
Ukraine was the front line for the West. And if Ukraine falls, the new global conflict that has been underway now for some time will move into a dangerous new phase, and all options will be on the table for the gangsters.
I am relieved that the West are meeting in Johannesburg in defiance of Trump’s threats against both South Africa and Ukraine. On this policy front, I support Prime Minister Mark Carney for representing Canada at this crucial moment on the international stage.
Canadians need to be ready for what comes next. There will be no easy road ahead.
Fact Check: Was Donald Trump Recruited by the KGB and Codenamed Krasnov? Euronews. March 13, 2025.
The Secret History of Trump’s First Trip to Moscow. Luke Harding. Politico. November 19, 2017.
Snyder, Timothy. The Road to Unfreedom. Crown. New York. 2018.
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