You can’t bomb Ukraine into submission

KYIV — It’s just after midnight, and I tried to call President Trump again. He didn’t answer.

If he had, I’d planned to ask whether he’s trying to scare Ukraine into surrender.

Yet again, Kyiv had no warning before a series of ballistic missiles slammed into the capital city. I counted about eight to 10 massive booms.

My Ukrainian sources confirmed they’d received no warning from U.S. intelligence that Russia had launched ballistic missiles toward Kyiv. This is at least the third or fourth time it’s happened in the past week.

The Americans reportedly cited a “weather issue” that prevented the U.S. from giving Ukraine advance warning, a source in Kyiv told me.

But it’s not the first time. According to my sources, this has happened repeatedly over the past week, with differing explanations.

I asked the Pentagon whether the US had withheld intelligence warning of the attack. Its duty officer replied within minutes that it “would refer to the President’s comments, where he said there was no pause in intelligence.” The Pentagon did not say whether Ukraine was warned. The White House did not respond by publication.

Still, Ukrainian officials suspect Washington could be using the intelligence disruptions to send Kyiv a message about just how bad things could get without American help.

At the moment, Trump wants Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries — one of the few ways Kyiv has managed to bring the economic consequences of Moscow’s war home to Russia.

Those strikes have put pressure on Russia’s ability to refine fuel, disrupted supplies and threatened an important source of revenue for the Kremlin.

And now, as Washington moves to ease restrictions on Russian diesel sales, Ukrainians are being asked to stop hitting the very infrastructure that helps finance the war against them.

It is a bitter pill to swallow in a country where people are still being killed as they sleep in their beds.

In graduate school, I studied defense and strategic studies. One lesson came up time and again throughout military history: You cannot simply bomb a population into submission.

It didn’t work for Nazi Germany during the Blitz, when German bombers pounded British cities in hopes of breaking civilian morale. It didn’t work for the Americans in Vietnam, despite years of devastating bombing campaigns.

In fact, bombing civilian populations has often had the opposite effect, hardening their resolve rather than destroying it.

I see that resolve here.

Every time I return to Ukraine, I meet people who are exhausted. They’re tired of the air raid sirens, the sleepless nights, the funerals and the constant uncertainty about whether their homes will still be standing in the morning.

They’re tired of watching their children grow up in bomb shelters.

They’re tired of wondering whether the next missile will hit their apartment building, their workplace or the café where they had coffee yesterday.

But exhaustion is not surrender.

The people here just want to live.

They want to go to work, raise their families, sleep through the night and make plans for a future that doesn’t revolve around the next Russian attack.

They want the same ordinary things Americans take for granted.

And they don’t understand why their survival should be a bargaining chip in negotiations with the country trying to kill them.

There is an important difference between pressuring two sides to negotiate peace and pressuring the country being invaded to accept whatever terms its invader demands.

One is diplomacy. The other risks rewarding aggression.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants to stop the killing. It’s a goal Ukrainians share, perhaps more desperately than anyone.

But if Washington is withholding warnings to make Kyiv more willing to negotiate, it would be an extraordinary way to pursue peace — one that puts civilians in the crosshairs to gain leverage over their government.

And if that’s not what’s happening, the administration should explain why these warnings have failed so often.

Tonight, I listened to the explosions roll across Kyiv and wondered how many people had made it to shelter in time.

How many parents had managed to grab their children? How many elderly residents had been able to get downstairs? How many people had simply stayed in bed because there was no time to do anything else?

Those are the stakes of an intelligence warning that never comes.

I don’t know whether Trump would have answered my question if he’d picked up the phone.

But I know what I would have asked him.

Mr. President, are you trying to end this war — or are you trying to make Ukraine too frightened to keep fighting?