The Daily Fuckup

By Feb. 25, 2022, the war in Ukraine was no longer a looming crisis. It was an active Russian invasion that had begun the previous day, with the United Nations saying Russian military operations were taking place inside Ukraine’s sovereign territory and calling the assault wrong, unacceptable and a violation of the U.N. Charter. That chronology matters because it leaves little room for any claim that the fighting was somehow starting on Feb. 25 or that the central fact of the moment was anything other than Russia crossing into Ukraine on Feb. 24. ([un.org](https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2022-02-24/statement-the-secretary-general-%E2%80%93-ukraine?utm_source=openai))

Against that backdrop, Donald Trump’s instinct was to turn the war into a political weapon aimed at Joe Biden. The line was familiar: if Trump had still been in office, Vladimir Putin would not have invaded, or Biden’s weakness had somehow helped cause the attack. That argument may have been useful as a partisan talking point, but it did not change the underlying facts on the ground. Russian forces had already entered Ukraine, and civilians were already fleeing the fighting. ([un.org](https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2022-02-24/statement-the-secretary-general-%E2%80%93-ukraine?utm_source=openai))

That is the core problem with Trump’s approach to Ukraine. It asks voters to treat a military invasion like a debate over presidential branding. But wars do not care about slogans, and the basic sequence of events is hard to spin away: Russia sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, and the conflict was escalating by the next day. Any attempt to make the story about Biden first has to get past that fact, and it usually does not. ([un.org](https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2022-02-24/statement-the-secretary-general-%E2%80%93-ukraine?utm_source=openai))

The politics here are obvious, but so is the limit. Trump can use a foreign crisis to attack a domestic rival. He cannot make the invasion disappear, and he cannot erase who started it. On this one, the record is plain enough that even a hard turn to messaging cannot blur it: Russia launched the attack, Ukraine was the target, and Feb. 25 was the day after the invasion began, not the day it started. ([un.org](https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2022-02-24/statement-the-secretary-general-%E2%80%93-ukraine?utm_source=openai))