Made In America: The War In Ukraine

How Washington Engineered, Exploited, and Abandoned a War

(above, Victoria Nuland in Kiev 2014)

The dramatic fallout between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy wasn’t just a spat between leaders—it was the moment the façade of U.S. foreign policy came crashing down. For years, Ukraine was sold to the world as an independent actor, bravely standing against Russian aggression. But when Trump bluntly shut down Zelenskyy’s pleas for more U.S. support, it exposed the reality: Ukraine was never in control of its own fate—Washington was.

This war didn’t begin in 2022. It didn’t even start in 2014, when Crimea was annexed. The true ignition point was the Maidan Revolution, a so-called "pro-democracy uprising" that was, in reality, a Western-backed coup. And we don’t need conspiracy theories to prove it—we have names, dates, and direct involvement. Victoria Nuland and the late John McCain were physically in Kyiv during the protests, actively supporting the demonstrators, meeting with opposition leaders, and pushing for regime change. Imagine, for a moment, if senior Russian politicians had been standing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, shaking hands with insurrectionists and promising them Moscow’s support. The outrage would have been deafening. Yet, in Ukraine, this blatant foreign interference was repackaged as “democracy promotion.”

Nuland's infamous leaked call, where she handpicked the post-coup Ukrainian leadership, wasn’t just embarrassing—it was a confession. The U.S. didn’t just support the Maidan uprising; it orchestrated it. And from that moment on, Ukraine ceased to be a sovereign nation in any meaningful sense. It became a tool—one designed to drag Russia into a costly war, weaken Moscow’s influence, and serve as a testing ground for Western military strategy.

Fast forward to 2025. The war that Washington engineered has reached a dead end. U.S. policymakers know Ukraine can’t win—just as they knew South Vietnam couldn’t win in the 1970s. And just like Henry Kissinger whispered to James Schlesinger after that fateful White House meeting—"I agree with you, but you shouldn’t have told the President"—today’s U.S. establishment desperately wants to avoid saying the obvious: Ukraine has lost.

Trump, however, doesn’t do quiet diplomacy. His Oval Office confrontation with Zelenskyy, where he accused the Ukrainian leader of “gambling with World War III,” was the equivalent of ripping the mask off in public. With U.S. support wavering, European leaders are in full panic mode, scrambling to figure out how they can sustain the war without Washington’s backing. They can’t.

And in Moscow? Putin just won the day without having to fire a single additional shot. The U.S. played its game, expended its pawn, and now faces the humiliation of another failed war. Ukraine was never the protagonist in this story. It was a means to an end. And now that the endgame is here, the U.S. is doing what it always does—walking away and pretending it was never really in charge.