Notice How We Aren’t Talking About Ukraine? That’s Exactly What Trump and Putin Want
- john raymond
- Jun 24
- 3 min read
In the wake of the strikes on Iran—first by Israel, then by the United States under Donald Trump—we find ourselves drowning in coverage of escalated Middle East tensions, the risks of regional war, and the “decisive” actions of global leaders. But amid the media fog and diplomatic noise, one question goes unasked: what happened to Ukraine?
The answer is as simple as it is sinister: Trump and Putin want us to stop talking about Ukraine. They want the international press corps, the G7 leaders, the NATO defense councils, and the average informed citizen to take their eye off the real prize. Because while the world reacts to Trump’s strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, what’s not being examined are the strategic implications of Operation Spiderweb—the Ukrainian-led drone strike campaign that damaged or destroyed a significant portion of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. It was this unraveling of Moscow’s myth of invincibility that triggered the cascade of events we're seeing now.
Trump’s involvement in the Iran strikes was not a spontaneous outburst of presidential resolve, nor was it evidence of a commander seeking peace through strength. It was transactional and opportunistic. Once Israel—a longtime but not always obedient ally—made the first move against Iran, Putin had a problem. His primary Middle Eastern proxy was under threat, and his capacity to respond was weakened by Spiderweb. He needed the strike reframed, managed, and co-opted. And so he turned to his most effective and loyal tool: Donald Trump.
The "good conversation" between Trump and Putin, cryptically referenced by both men in recent days, was not about peace. It was a calculated coordination. Trump would launch a limited, symbolic strike on unmanned Iranian nuclear facilities. The targets would be carefully chosen—dramatic enough to seem bold, but soft enough to avoid real retaliation. The result? Western headlines would shift to Trump’s “toughness” on Iran. The Biden-era narrative of “Trump the appeaser” would be muddied. And most importantly, NATO’s unity would fray further as EU nations questioned whether the U.S. president was acting in coordination with allies or freelancing for another agenda entirely.
And it worked.
In the aftermath of the strikes, Ukraine fell off the front page. The narrative became about Iran, diplomacy, potential war, and Trump’s “peacemaker” posture. Meanwhile, the effects of Spiderweb—the cracks it revealed in Russian military capability and deterrence—were buried. The Kremlin regained a measure of narrative control not through strength, but through distraction.
What this reveals is the deeply transactional nature of Trump’s foreign policy—designed not for American interests, not for peace, and certainly not for justice, but for the benefit of his handlers and enablers. Trump attacked Iran not out of moral clarity or strategic necessity, but because it allowed Putin to redirect global attention and because it handed Trump a podium from which to masquerade as decisive.
We must ask ourselves why this pattern keeps recurring. Every time Russia suffers a setback, Trump seems to rise with a solution that protects Putin’s position. Whether it's tariffs, NATO fragmentation, or now the Middle East escalation, Trump has acted repeatedly to shore up the Kremlin’s standing on the global stage. And each time the media plays along, either willfully or out of habitual myopia, we are pulled further from the facts that matter.
So we return to the critical question: why are we not talking about Ukraine?
Because that’s exactly what Trump and Putin planned for.
Until we recognize that truth—that war, for them, is as much about information and narrative dominance as it is about bombs and missiles—we will continue to lose sight of what actually matters. Ukraine matters. Russian war crimes matter. Operation Spiderweb matters. And the fact that the U.S. president coordinated a strike to help Putin regain control of the narrative is not a footnote—it is the story.
And we must not look away.
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