Russian President Vladimir Putin had his troops invade its unprovoked neighbor Ukraine 3.5 years ago. The Russians are still carrying on a brutal war there to take over that country. It is the biggest war in Europe since WWII.
U.S. Republican President Donald Trump tried last week to end the war by meeting with Putin in a hailed summit in Alaska that came to naught. For quite some time now, Trump has blamed former Democratic President Joe Biden for this war. Trump has bragged that if he had remained president, instead of losing the presidential election in 2020, Russia would not have attacked Ukraine. He didn’t explain why except to imply that it would have been because he and Putin are such good friends. Yeah, sure!
The U.S. has provided most of Ukraine’s needed weapons to defend itself against Russia. Thursday, Trump added to these remarks by saying a nation cannot win a war unless it attacks the other country and that Biden had prevented Ukraine from doing this. Yes, but in Biden’s last year in office, he reversed that decision by permitting Ukraine to strike inside Russia with its Atacms, which have a range of 190 miles.
Trump Contradicts Himself about Ukraine War
Trump said more particularly that Ukraine couldn’t defeat Russia unless it could “play offense” in the war. He explained, “It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking” the invading country. Yet last December, before Trump regained office, he said in a Time interview about Biden’s change in allowing Ukraine to attack Russia with Atacms that Biden was “stupid” to allow that, adding, “We’re just escalating this war and making it worse.” As I say in my book, Bible Predicts Trump Fall, “You can’t believe a word this man says because he changes like the weather.”
In this Trump allegation against Biden, he was leaving out important information. Putin had been repeatedly doing some saber rattling by threatening to shoot nuclear weapons at Ukraine and any other country that got involved in seriously helping Ukraine. Thus, Mr. Biden was walking a tightrope, taking Mr. Putin seriously about this threat. He was restricting Ukraine from attacking Russia with missiles in order to not provoke Putin into using nuclear weapons.
Of course, one can argue that Biden should have ignored Putin’s nuclear threats, which Trump implies in his argument. But I’d like to have seen what Trump would have done in Biden’s place, especially since Trump constantly and strangely praises Putin and never criticizes him whereas he heavily criticizes the best of national allies of the U.S.
The U.S. Has Secretly Restrained Ukraine
In March this year, about seven weeks after Donald Trump had returned to the White House, former U.S. military attaché to both Ukraine and Russia, John Foreman, said on BFBS’s Sitrep podcast, “I may have said last year that Biden had been forcing the Ukrainians to fight with one hand tied behind their back.” Then Foreman added, “And Trump’s now put the manacles on and now blindfolded the Ukrainians and they’re very much on the military back foot.” He revealed that President Trump was withholding vital intelligence about the war from Ukraine.
Now it turns out that Trump has been withholding far more from Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia. Just minutes ago, the online Wall Street Journal published an article that begins, “The Pentagon has for months been blocking Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles to strike inside Russia, U.S. officials said, limiting Kyiv [capital of Ukraine] from employing a powerful weapon in its fight against Moscow’s invasion.”
The article explains, “A high-level Defense Department approval procedure, which hasn’t been announced, has prevented Ukraine from firing any U.S.-made long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, or Atacms, against targets in Russia since late spring, the officials said.
Trump Now Says He Wants to “Get to Heaven”
On Tuesday, in an interview on his favorite “Fox and Friends” TV broadcast, President Trump admitted to a health problem and then said something out-of-character for him when he said regarding the Ukraine war, “I wanna end it. You know, we’re not losing American lives … we’re losing Russian and Ukrainian mostly soldiers. I wanna try and get to heaven if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”
Trump has the cart before the horse. When asked during his first run for the presidency, in 2016, if he had ever confessed his sins to God, he answered in such a way that this was unnecessary and that he would just change that behavior. Of course, that is the wrong answer from the Christian viewpoint.
What Is the Christian Gospel?
The first principle of Christianity is to recognize that we frail human beings are sinners in need of God’s salvation and that this process begins by confessing our sins to God. The next step is to believe Jesus died on the cross for our sins that God may forgive us. And the third step is to confess Jesus as “Lord,” providing some evidence in our lives that we are keeping his commandments (John 13.21-24).
This was the sermon that Billy Graham preached to us PGA Tour pro golfers in the 1970s one evening at a banquet just for us. Billy called it “The ABC’s of the Gospel.” He said, “A stands for ‘acknowledge my sins to God;’ B stands for ‘believe Jesus died for my sins;’ and C stands for ‘confess Jesus as my Lord.'” I tell about this in a chapter about Billy Graham in my new book—to be released in a few days, available on amazon.com—entitled Christ on the PGA Tour.
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