I recently returned from an incredible (and dangerous) trip to Ukraine. The people inspired me, showing amazing resilience in the face of Vladimir Putin's illegal war. I came away with one major takeaway:
They
deserve so much better from America.
Getting to Ukraine isn’t easy because you can’t just hop on a flight into an
active war zone. I ping ponged from Munich to Warsaw then a bus and a train.
Basically two whole days to just get to Kyiv. Then we took a convoy of twenty
vans running seven hours to Kharkiv before turning around and doing the reverse
all over again to get back home. So why, you might ask, would I go through all that? Well, buckle in, I've got a
long dispatch for you.
The trip was organized by an organization called With Honor, which exists to
fight polarization in Congress by supporting principled veterans of both
parties. They work alongside a bipartisan group in the House and the Senate to
move legislation on national security, national service, and veterans’ affairs
and care deeply about the future of Ukraine.
The centerpiece of the trip was the Yalta European Strategy conference, a
gathering of world leaders and thinkers. The truth is, it mattered that
Americans showed up. There’s a perception right now, pushed from the very top
of our own government, that America is done with Ukraine.
Going there in person
was a way of saying that millions of Americans still care about and stand with
Ukraine. There’s another reason too, and it’s more personal. I’ve been to war. But I
want to be honest with you: my war was a very different war than this one. You
cannot understand the battlefield picture of this conflict until you’ve seen it
all around you. What I saw in Ukraine confirms exactly where the future of
warfare is heading and that the US needs to get onboard immediately.
We met with leaders from Ukraine’s F-16 program. We toured a drone manufacturer
and got a rundown of what they’re building, and I’m telling you, the innovation
is staggering. Let me give you one example. They’ve developed a totally unique air defense with drones. A fighter drone
goes up, carries an interceptor drone toward an incoming threat, releases it
onto the target, and then a human operator takes over visually to finish the
intercept.
Instead of firing a multimillion-dollar Patriot interceptor at a cheap incoming
drone, you knock it down with something a fraction of the cost. This is the
exact kind of technology Ukraine offered to share with the United States before
our war with Iran, and we turned it down. If we’d listened, it would have saved
lives, and it would have meant we weren’t burning through our most precious
missiles to stop threats a drone could have handled.
This is the future of warfare, and the truth is that the United States and most
of the world are behind on it. Ukraine is ahead because they’ve had no choice
but to be.
I want you to really understand what daily life looks like there now. Until
fairly recently, Kyiv might absorb a few attacks in a night. Now it’s constant.
In the time I was there, I personally heard something like four impacts over
the course of a few hours outside, plus anti-aircraft fire going up to meet
what was coming down. A gas station was struck. Civilian targets, with no
military value at all, were hit over and over.
In Kharkiv we met with medical units and drone units, and I saw a demonstration
of the range of what these systems do, everything from carrying supplies to
carrying munitions. The medical side of their innovations truly stunned me.
In the American military we live by “the golden hour.” If you’re wounded, we
move heaven and earth to stabilize you and get you to a hospital, often in
under an hour by whatever means necessary. In Ukraine, on parts of that front,
a wounded soldier might have to hold on for a month before evacuation is even
possible. So, they’ve adapted. They fly drones out to wounded troops carrying medicine and supplies. They run
telemedicine, a doctor on a video call walking someone through what to do.
They’re using unmanned ground vehicles, some for offense, some to drive in and
carry a wounded person out so that a rescue doesn’t turn into multiple
casualties.
It’s hard for the American mind to comprehend the realities that Ukrainian
soldiers face on the front lines. A wounded soldier, stuck in a position for a
month, kept alive by a doctor’s face on a screen and a drone dropping supplies.
The physical toll is obvious. The mental toll of that month is almost
unimaginable. And they endure it, and they innovate through it, because the
alternative is losing their country.
The numbers are the same they’ve always been. Ukraine is badly outnumbered on
personnel compared to Russia. So they win with innovation and grit. They invent
something new, and for five or six months it devastates the Russians. Then
Russia studies it, adapts, and counters, which we’re now seeing especially in
air defense and in faster jet-powered Shahed drones. It’s a brutal, relentless
cycle of adaptation, and the Ukrainians are extraordinary at it. But you cannot
out-invent a much larger enemy forever without help.
And that brings me home, to us.
There was a time, not that long ago, when standing with Ukraine was a
bipartisan issue. I think of the leaders in my old party who understood, in
their bones, that American strength meant standing against Russian aggression.
That consensus has been deliberately blown up.
This administration has stepped
back from the fight, treated our support as a favor to be bargained away rather
than a strategic necessity, and left the Ukrainians guessing about whether the
arsenal of democracy still has their back. When we don’t send what we’ve
promised, people die.
Leaving Kharkiv, because I was in a van convoy, I took the road. Others from
the conference took the train back out, a train we could have been on. That
train was hit by a strike that landed about ten minutes before it crossed the
border. I could have been on that train. Everyone made it, thank God.
But I’ll be straight with you. I wasn’t personally afraid in the moment, but it
was the most real danger I’ve been in since I was at war in Iraq and
Afghanistan. And the difference is, I got to come home to my own bed.
The
people of Ukraine wake up to that every single day, and they have for four and
a half years, with the air raid sirens going off hour after hour without safe
harbor.
Now let me tell you what makes my blood boil, and why I can’t write about
Ukrainian courage without being perfectly honest about the stark contrast with
the Trump family. While Ukrainians are keeping wounded soldiers alive by drone and this
administration slow-walks the weapons that would keep Ukrainian children from
being pulled out of bed by sirens, we learned this week that a Russian oligarch
close to Vladimir Putin secretly bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding.
According to ProPublica, a man named Umar Kremlev, whom Putin personally
recognized with a state honor, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for Trump
Jr.’s lavish Bahamas celebration. He rented one of the private islands. He paid
for the fireworks. His team helped plan it. And a large group of fellow
Russians attended the intimate, roughly fifty-person wedding that Trump Jr.
said, “was really small, like, just really close friends.”
A retired FBI counterintelligence official put it plainly: “if I’m paying for
your wedding, at some point you’re going to owe me something.” This should be
unthinkable for the son of a president, especially when Kremlev is connected to
an organization facing sanctions for its alleged role in abducting Ukrainian
children from occupied territory.
This is who Putin is. A man who bombs gas stations and apartment blocks, who
steals children, and a man who sends the same drones I heard overhead to
terrorize civilians night after night. And rather than stand against him, Trump
and his allies are stepping back from Ukraine while a member of Putin’s circle
picks up the tab for a Trump family party. The corruption is staggering.
So, I travelled halfway around the world into an active war zone. Now what?
Great question. I think it’s clear we as Americans owe a debt of gratitude to Ukraine for their
steadfast defense of freedom and the fight they’ve taken directly to Russia.
The isolationist crowd would have you believe that America has no business
intervening in overseas conflicts. But we know what happens in Ukraine will
have effects around the world for decades to come. It is not just the right
thing to do; it is in America’s interest to support Ukraine.
So, beyond what we can do as individuals, here’s my ask of our leaders in
Washington:
First, recommit to Ukraine! Send what we promised. America’s word means
something. And people die when we don’t follow through.
Second, protect the idea that free nations stand together against tyrants,
because that alliance is the only thing that has ever reliably kept the tyrants
in check.
Finally, reject Putin, plainly and without hedging, and reject the leaders here
at home who keep making excuses for him.
That’s the least we can do.
I saw spirit in Ukraine that I won’t forget. I saw resolve in people living
under a sky that poses a threat every night. And I saw a level of military
readiness and invention that, frankly, we should have humility to learn from.
The Ukrainians are holding the line for all of us. The least we can do is
refuse to drop our end of the agreement.
Slava Ukraini!
— Adam Kinzinger
