Loud Silence: While Washington Dithers, Ukrainians Wait for the Missiles

Jeff Robbins on Mar 17, 2026

For Olha Burdeina's fellow Ukrainians, beginning their fifth year under Russian assault, "the silence is loud." Burdeina, a Ukrainian student at Brown University, writes that "(i)t is the moment between the siren and the explosion that makes you listen closely. I've learned to live in this silence without anybody asking whether I want to know how to distinguish a ballistic missile from a cruise missile by sound alone. I just had to. If you hear a distinct whistle, you have seconds, not minutes. The Shahed (drone) buzzes differently than the S-300 (missile). I remember these sounds, reflexively, forever."

Since Vladimir Putin commenced his campaign of war crimes against Ukraine in 2022, we've had no more compelling moral responsibility abroad than helping Ukraine defend itself. It's a responsibility that, with our European allies, we met while former President Joe Biden was in office. It's a responsibility that, since President Donald Trump was inaugurated, we've shirked, to our shame.

During the 2024 campaign, the self-proclaimed Master Negotiator sounded more like a self-evident snake oil salesman, claiming that he would end Russia's war against Ukraine within days, if not hours, of resuming office. What he has instead done is strip Ukraine of crucial American support, while encouraging Putin at every turn to conclude that it was only a matter of time before we would sell Ukraine down the river.

In February 2025, Trump took the occasion to publicly berate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, blaming Ukraine for the war in which it is the obvious victim, leaving the Kremlin doubled over in laughter. Last August, Trump invited Putin to a ballyhooed "summit" in Alaska, touted by Trump as a great success. This was malarkey, politely speaking, a meaningless photo op that did nothing but burnish Putin on the world stage. While Putin played Trump like a Stradivarius, Ukrainians received nothing -- except the humiliation of watching as Trump reinforced Putin's incentive to intensify his attacks on their country.

That Ukraine has held its ground against Russia's numerically superior armies and clawed back territory seized from it is a testament to its people's courage and resilience, and to Europe's willingness to fill part of the gap left by the United States as part of Trump's pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian tilt.

Our current war against Iran has highlighted Ukraine's status as our ally and Russia's as our adversary. Iran has been supplying Russia with tens of thousands of those Shahed drones, used by Putin to murder Ukrainian civilians. Ukraine has been forced to develop interceptors to neutralize these drones, which Iran is using to attack American servicemen all over the Mideast. Ukraine is now sharing its technology with us. Meanwhile, Russia is helping Iran target Americans.

It isn't as though our national interest in helping Ukraine defeat Russian aggression was ever obscure, but these days it is crystal clear. Meanwhile, despite Trump's anti-Ukraine bias and plummeting support for foreign aid, a solid majority of Americans support military and economic assistance to Ukraine.

Languishing in Congress for the past year is the Ukraine Support Act, a comprehensive assistance package for Ukraine. It's a no-brainer of a bill. "The Ukrainian people are freezing and hungry," says Congressman Eugene Vindman, a key co-sponsor. "There has been a strategic campaign launched by Russia to bring them suffering. The United States didn't make its way out of the American Revolution without help. We were helped by others from overseas, and it was that assistance that allowed us to finally achieve victory."

The bill has been blocked by the White House from coming to the House floor. It needn't remain blocked any longer. Under House rules, if a majority of Congress -- 218 members -- sign a so-called Discharge Petition, they can force a vote on the bill, which will then pass. All the Democrats have signed. In all, 217 Congressmen are on board. If one more signs -- and it will have to be a Republican -- the Ukraine Support Act will be dislodged.

It will have to be someone prepared to buck the White House and do the right thing. "Our Ukrainian allies are fighting like hell for their freedom," Vindman says. We ought to stand with them.

Jeff Robbins? latest book,"Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.