What’s Next For Ukraine?

Happy Friday! It seems like Christmas tree decorations get more unconventional every year, but the Library of Congress is (accidentally) taking things to new heights. Instead of adorning the top of the tree with a historic “Liberty Cap”—a little hat—the contractors who decorated the Library of Congress’ Christmas tree plopped a … psychedelic “liberty cap” mushroom on top. 

Groovy. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Alexander Smirnov, a former FBI informant and key witness in special counsel David Weiss’ investigation of Hunter Biden, pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges of fabricating claims that President Joe Biden and his son each took $5 million bribes from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. The claims were at the center of the House GOP’s effort to impeach the elder Biden, but Smirmov admitted that it was “false derogatory information.” Smirnov faces 48 to 72 months in prison, as well as $675,502 in restitution charges after pleading guilty to creating a false record in a federal investigation, obstruction of justice, and failing to pay taxes and penalties on $2.1 million in income for 2020 through 2022.
• In an interview with Time Magazine published Thursday, President-elect Donald Trump said he is committed to ensuring access to the abortion pill mifepristone. Pressed on whether his administration would comply with the requests of pro-life allies to either change Food and Drug Administration guidelines expanding access to the pill or direct the Department of Justice to enforce the Comstock Act—a 19th-century law that could be interpreted to ban the mailing of abortion-related medical equipment across state lines—Trump initially hedged. When questioned on whether the FDA would keep access open, Trump said, “That would be my commitment.”
• The Department of Justice on Thursday asked a U.S. appeals court to reject an emergency motion filed by ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, asking the court to temporarily block legislation that threatens to ban the social media app in the United States. The DOJ cited national security concerns in its request that the court allow the law to go into effect. ByteDance and TikTok filed their motion on Monday, arguing that the pause would give President-elect Trump’s incoming administration time to “determine its policy.” Trump has waffled on his support for the divestment law, which would see TikTok banned in the U.S. on January 19, 2025, if ByteDance does not sell the app to a non-Chinese company.
• Mike Whitaker, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, announced Thursday that he will resign on Inauguration Day next year. Whitaker, who has served in the role since October 2023, would be leaving his position—normally a five-year appointment—early. Under his leadership, the air travel industry reversed an accelerating near-collision rate that had begun after the pandemic. However, it still faces significant challenges. It’s not clear whom President-elect Trump may select to fill the vacancy. 
• A man who identified himself as Travis Timmerman, a missing American, was found this week in Syria after apparently being released from prison by rebels who overthrew the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Timmerman was found on the main road outside a town east of Damascus on Thursday. He said he’d been imprisoned after illegally entering Syria via Lebanon seven months ago on what he described as a Christian pilgrimage. The State Department has said it was “seeking to provide support” for the man. 
• President Joe Biden on Thursday commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoned 39 others in what the White House claimed was the largest number of commutations by a president in a single day. Biden said he pardoned people who were found guilty of non-violent offenses, including drug offenses, and “have shown successful rehabilitation.” The commutations affected offenders who were placed in home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and those who would have received lighter sentences under current laws than those in effect when they were sentenced. 
• President-elect Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he intended to nominate former news anchor and failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake to lead Voice of America, a government-funded news outlet published and broadcast around the world in more than 40 languages. Lake has been a vocal proponent of 2020 election fraud conspiracies. 
• The Justice Department’s inspector general released a report on Thursday reviewing the FBI’s handling of intelligence-gathering before and during the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The report said there were 26 paid, confidential FBI informants in Washington that day, none of whom had permission or instructions from the FBI to engage in the illegal activity. There were no undercover FBI agents among the rioters, the report said, batting down an oft-made claim from President-elect Donald Trump and his allies. The report panned the agency for failing to canvass all of its field offices following the 2020 election for intelligence from informants on threats to the election’s certification.

As Winter Sets In, Ukraine Faces a Turning Point

French President Emmanuel Macron recently hosted both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President-elect Donald Trump to discuss how the incoming American leader will approach Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Coming out of the meeting, Zelensky sounded a conciliatory note commending Trump for “his strong resolve to bring this war to a fair end.” 

The flattery continued: “I told President Trump that Putin fears only him and, perhaps, China,” Zelensky tweeted. “And that’s the truth—only decisiveness can bring this war to a just end and ensure lasting peace.” 

But Zelensky’s warm words may be wishful thinking. 

Trump’s imminent ascension to the White House comes as Russia slowly but surely advances on increasingly outnumbered Ukrainian defenders, with both sides becoming more war-weary. As the current administration scrambles to rush aid to Ukraine, it increasingly looks like the returning president will be a pivotal player in deciding whether potential negotiations promise peace for Ukraine or merely a brief ceasefire.

With neither Russia nor Ukraine able to force a decisive breakthrough after nearly three years of war, the battlefronts in Eastern Ukraine and Russia’s Kursk region are slow-moving. Ukraine’s relatively small air force and limited air defense systems mean they cannot prevent all Russian strikes, making it difficult to concentrate forces for an offensive without being spotted and bombarded. But Russia hasn’t established air superiority either, preventing it from knocking out Ukraine’s Western-supplied long-range artillery.

Instead, both sides have resorted to grinding infantry assaults supported by heavy artillery barrages and drone strikes. Attrition—both in men and supplies—is the fundamental dynamic now driving the conflict. With Russia’s massive advantage in manpower, the scales are tipped toward Putin. Ukraine is currently struggling to find enough men, a problem exacerbated by the fact that it doesn’t conscript anyone under the age of 25.

But Ukraine isn’t entirely on the back foot. President Joe Biden’s administration decided last month to allow Ukraine to strike targets within Russia’s borders with U.S.-provided long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS). Britain, which supplied long-range Storm Shadow missiles, followed suit. 

Armed with these weapons, Ukraine has begun a campaign targeting Russian logistics hubs and supply depots to reduce the Kremlin’s ability to supply its troops. Just Wednesday, Ukraine used ATACMS to hit a boiler plant in the city of Taganrog, and an oil plant close to the Belarusian border. The Russian Foreign Ministry vowed that the attacks would “not go unanswered, and appropriate measures will be taken.” 

But it’s not clear exactly what “appropriate measures” might mean, since Russia is already using long-range missiles and conducting attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. For years, Russia has targeted Ukrainian power-generation facilities as part of a deliberate campaign to freeze out civilians during the country’s brutal winter. Hundreds of missile strikes over the past several months have severely reduced Ukraine’s electrical capacity, leading experts to project that households will be limited to eight to 14 hours of power per day. 

Freezing winters in Ukraine’s cities and towns would be a blow to already-flagging morale. Gallup surveys conducted in August and October this year found that 52 percent of Ukrainians believed that their leadership should seek a negotiated end to the war as quickly as possible, compared to 38 percent who wanted to keep fighting until victory—down sharply from 73 percent in 2022 who said they wanted to fight on. 

Ukrainian politicians are aware of this dynamic. Zelensky, who used to maintain that Ukraine was seeking the complete expulsion of Russian troops from its territory, told a Japanese news outlet last week that he no longer believed that was possible. “Our army lacks the strength to do that,” he said. “We do have to find diplomatic solutions.” 

Increasingly, both Zelensky and Western leaders have come around to the idea of “territory for security”: trading at least temporary territorial concessions to Russia for a durable security guarantee, ideally NATO membership. 

Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, wrote this week that the U.S. could convince Zelensky to give up territory in exchange for an immediate invitation to NATO membership. Putin could claim victory, and Ukraine could take comfort in the protection of the NATO alliance, argued McFaul. “NATO membership could lead [Zelensky] to agree to a formula in which Kyiv accepts that it will seek the reunification of Ukraine only through peaceful means,” wrote McFaul.

The problem? Neither side has much incentive to negotiate. Russia is seeking more gains, and Ukraine is afraid of negotiating from a position of weakness. “If we’ll have [a] frozen conflict without any strong position for Ukraine, so Putin will come in two, three, or five years,” Zelensky said earlier this month. 

So, if some sort of deal is emerging, but neither side feels that coming to the table is an acceptable risk yet, is there anything the U.S. can do to force the issue? The Biden administration is certainly trying. White House and Defense Department officials rushed to get military aid out the door before the Trump administration takes over, on the assumption that the incoming president will make good on his campaign threats to reduce military aid. 

But much of the supplies will not be delivered for months, if not years. Aid to Ukraine comes from two separate sources: the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) and the presidential drawdown authority.

The former sees aid delivered in the form of contracts with defense manufacturers. The aid, then, is a promise of future production–and the most recent package was worth nearly a billion dollars. “On the [USAI], I think there is a fair chance we can get that committed,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noting that a future administration would have political difficulty canceling already-signed commitments. 

But the drawdown authority, a term for shipping Ukraine military supplies “off-the-shelf” from U.S. stockpiles, is a different story. Here, the U.S. is limited to already-existing materiel. A Trump administration could simply halt the shipments, and there is little that current White House officials can do to prepare for that possibility. 

Neither are there many more levers for the Biden administration to pull, having already approved the use of strikes inside of Russia and announced its intentions to commit as many aid dollars as possible. The only other option, said Cancian, was for the U.S. to start pulling supplies from non-essential military units, like the National Guard. That, of course, would potentially harm military preparedness, and it is therefore likely off the table. 

White House officials reportedly believe that they have done enough to keep Ukraine fighting for some time, and time is Kyiv’s biggest asset. The Russian economy is currently entering rapid inflation, as massive levels of military spending overheat the economy and sanctions bite. “If Ukraine’s problems are resolved and it is able to sustain its effort, the strain of the war on Russia will eventually put it in a position that forces it to negotiate,” wrote Robert Hamilton, head of research for the Eurasia program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, in an email to TMD.

But if Trump decided to suddenly withdraw support from Ukraine, all those desperate calculations would be upended. Trump, who said last week that he would call for an “immediate” ceasefire upon taking office, recently refused to tell Time Magazine whether he would cut aid to Ukraine if the country did not agree to an American-brokered peace deal. “I think I have a very good plan to help, but when I start exposing that plan, it becomes almost a worthless plan,” he said. 

There have been some hints, however, of how Trump might attempt to force Russia and Ukraine to negotiate. Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s choice for U.S. envoy to Ukraine and Russia, has co-authored a proposal for the America First Policy Institute that envisions cajoling Ukraine by threatening to withdraw support and Russia by threatening to give Ukraine even more arms.

But if a ceasefire is achieved, the Trump team seems to envision a deal friendlier to Putin than Ukrainians could likely accept. During the presidential campaign, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance told a podcast that a Trump peace deal would include freezing battle lines, the creation of a demilitarized zone, and Ukrainian neutrality, where Ukraine “doesn’t join NATO, it doesn’t join some of these sort of allied institutions.” 

Without robust treaty commitments to Ukrainian defense by Western powers—the “allied institutions” Vance referenced—it could be more of a pause than a cessation in the fighting. “Security guarantees for Ukraine are the only way to ensure Russia doesn’t resume the war once it has rebuilt its capacity to do so,” Hamilton wrote.

Trump, then, is entering office at a critical time for Ukraine: U.S. support, or the lack thereof, will determine exactly what kind of “peace” Ukraine faces. 

“It’s crazy what’s taking place,” Trump told Time. “But the level, the number of people dying is number one, not sustainable, and I’m talking on both sides. It’s really an advantage to both sides to get this thing done.”

In large part, it will be up to him to determine what “done” means. 

Worth Your Time

• China’s Xi Jinping is trying, and mostly failing, to crack down on gambling by his citizens—within China and without. “Overlooking the ocean atop Singapore’s glitzy Marina Bay Sands casino, the Chinese Communist Party is out of sight but, for at least a few patrons, probably not out of mind,” The Economist reported. “Earlier this year the Chinese embassy in the city-state sought to ‘solemnly remind’ its citizens that gambling while abroad, even in lawfully operated casinos, remains illegal. ‘Keep yourself clean’ and report fellow Chinese caught having a flutter, diplomats instructed. … Some state-owned firms have made staff sign a pledge to abstain from gambling. The navy has warned sailors that online betting will end in addiction, a fate akin to being ‘possessed by demons’. Yet China’s love of wagering endures. In Macau, the world’s casino capital, it is an economic necessity. Gambling provides 85% of state inflows and employs one in five workers. The former Portuguese colony, on China’s south coast, raked in $35bn in gaming revenue in 2019, about three times the amount in Las Vegas.”
• For his Substack Very Serious, Josh Barro reflected on the life of Jordan Neely, the homeless man who died in the New York subway last year after a bystander, Daniel Penny, put him in a chokehold. “One through-line in the story is the immense amount of government resources that were thrown at trying to keep Neely out of trouble,” he wrote. “Through police, courts, jails, homeless outreach, and treatment facilities, New York’s taxpayers spent lavishly on an effort to keep Neely alive, in mental health care, and not posing a danger to the public or himself. But it didn’t work because he was insane and he was not forced to accept the care he needed—except during a stint he spent in jail on Rikers Island, when he was successfully medicated. … I do think it would behoove progressives with pat takes about how what Neely really needed was housing and care to know that he was offered these things over and over again by that extremely well-funded apparatus. If you wanted him to have housing and care, you needed to be prepared to force them upon him; and if you weren’t, then you don’t have a solution to the problems of people like him.”

Presented Without Comment

CBS News: Trump Invites China’s Xi Jinping to Inauguration 

Ambassadors and other diplomats are typically invited to inaugurations, but State Department records dating back to 1874 show that a foreign leader has never attended a transfer-of-power ceremony.

Also Presented Without Comment

NBC News: Iranian ‘Mothership’ Isn’t Behind Drone Sightings Over New Jersey, Pentagon Says 

Also Also Presented Without Comment

The Hill: Meta Donated $1m to Trump Inaugural Fund After Zuckerberg Met With President-Elect 

In the Zeitgeist

Are your Morning Dispatchers perhaps slightly unconvinced by brutalism as an architectural style? Are we still probably going to see The Brutalist? Yes and yes. 

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Scott Lincicome demonstrated (🔒) that there aren’t actually millions of men “missing” from the workforce, and Nick Catoggio explored (🔒) why Christopher Wray resigned. 
• On the podcasts: Sarah Isgur is joined on The Dispatch Podcast by Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, and Megan McArdle to discuss what the praise of Luigi Mangione says about some corners of America.
• On the site: Kevin Williamson says so long to President Joe Biden, Charles Hilu reports from a No Labels event, and Shoshana Weissmann explains how easy it would be for Congress to save kids from child identity theft.

Let Us Know

What do you expect from Trump on Ukraine?