Part II: Dear President Trump, It’s Time to Pull All US Personnel Out of Ukraine  – Armed Forces Press

In Part I, “What’s Wrong With the NATO-Made Ukrainian Military?”, we discussed the key reasons why the multibillion-dollar NATO effort to reform and reorganize the Ukrainian military had failed. Most of the shortcomings were identified and memorialized in an official report that was published in 2021. What follows are a few of the highlights: 

-The hardest thing for outside observers to accept is that much of what they read and hear about the Ukrainian military is an illusion created by the government and defense staffs, designed to convince their own countrymen, NATO allies, and probably even Russia, that reform is underway and that the forces are powerful and strong.

-Corruption is endemic. Promotion to senior positions is dominated by loyalty to military and political leaders, (personal, financial and material) or by bribe. 

-Seven years of NATO reorganization and indoctrination created a Ukrainian military culture of blind obedience and negative reinforcement. The consequences on the battlefield are devastating. Soldiers won’t act without orders for fear of punishment. Decisions, even for the purchase of socks, are always made at the highest level. Ukrainian army generals and politicians operating out of Kyiv micro-manage their battlefield forces down to platoon level. 

– NATO Generals (active and retired) along with Ukrainian Generals and President Zelensky prioritize the communication of their own propaganda over the reality of the situation on the ground. Perhaps the most devastating consequence of their propaganda priority is the ongoing underestimation of Russian military capabilities. What follows is a prima facie example:  

Propaganda Quotes:” Russian invaded unprovoked, their military has low morale and is poorly trained and equipped, the Ukraine military has better weapons, better leaders, better morale, and will defeat Russia in short order. 

Reality: Russian was provoked and has shown remarkable restraint, the Russian military has always been formidable, has always had cutting edge technology and combat capability, especially in electronic warfare (EW), Artillery, and light Infantry. As a result of three years of fighting against NATO’s most advanced weapons, technology, and top General officers, the Russian Army is now one of the most capable and well-trained combined arms Armies in the world. When you take into account Russia’s military capabilities and combine it with the on-going problems with NATO reform and reorganization, the Ukraine military never stood a chance.  

-Finally, all the problems listed above, have created a faulty Battlefield Command and Control Model that is built on disconnected hierarchies (An International coalition of General Officers located up to 1,400 miles from the front lines) that micro-manage the tactics and strategy of the Ukrainian forces, despite their inability to make sense of what’s happening on the battlefield, and sensible choices about what their forces should do next. 

Part II was going to show examples of how these same problems are still plaguing the Ukrainian military in 2025.However, as I was writing this paper, the New York Times published an article titled: The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine. This is the untold story of America’s hidden role in Ukrainian military operations against Russia’s invading armies.

Whenever I read or experience something new, I always say out loud and/or write down my first impression. In this case a single word: “Shocking.” Shocking how deeply involved the Biden Administration, President Zelensky, and US and NATO generals were in micro-managing the planning, targeting, and commanding and controlling of Ukrainian military operations. Shocking how incompetent they were in the way they planned, targeted, and commanded and controlled. And shocking how all three of these groups lied to the world while they were doing it. 

The New York Times article is over 10,000 words and 45 pages long. The sources for the article are all anonymous, however, most of what it says can be validated by actual outcomes on the battlefield, and by my own sources who were/are involved in the Ukraine War today. 

What follows are a few of the most shocking excerpts from the New York Times article, most of which reinforce the problems discussed above. Each excerpt is followed by my comments and explanations. 

Excerpts: The secret location where the NATO-Ukraine partnership commanded and controlled all combat operations was at the U.S. Army garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany. Located 1,400 miles from the front lines and known as the Fusion Center. Each morning, U.S. and Ukrainian military officers set targeting priorities — Russian units, pieces of equipment or infrastructure. American and coalition intelligence officers searched satellite imagery, radio emissions and intercepted communications to find Russian positions. Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives.

 A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field. It was also a grand experiment in war fighting, one that would not only help the Ukrainians but reward the Americans with lessons for any future war.

.: The lesson and historical takeaway from the Ukraine command and control model is one that the US military should have already learned after 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq: that hierarchical decision-making by disconnected chains of command never has, and never will, make sense in situations that entail any degree of complexity. The higher the degree of complexity, the more senseless a detached hierarchy gets. The logic of why is self-evident. The purpose of our nervous system is to make sense of what’s going on around us in order to make sensible choices about what to do next. The only way our nervous system can make sense of anything is by paying attention with our senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch). Detached hierarchies, by their very definition, are “not attached” to the location and situation they are trying to make sense of. When our senses are detached from any situation, we are senseless. 

Technology deludes the detached hierarchy into a false sense of omniscience. Eyes in the sky (satellites and surveillance aircraft) provide a narrow, one-dimensional view of reality. Satellite radio technology provides sound bites that may or may not reflect what the person speaking means, and laptop computers crunching numbers on technical variables, such as fuel levels and payloads, produce comments like, “We need to hurry up on the target or the helicopters are going to be running low on gas.” 

The higher an individual is in the hierarchy, the more detached they are from the reality of the situation on the ground. If a leader’s brain can’t make sense of what is happening, they have zero chance of making sensible choices about what to do next. 

Excerpts: When American generals offered assistance after the invasion (after Russia intervened in 2022), they ran into a wall of mistrust. “We’re fighting the Russians. You’re not. Why should we listen to you?” Ukraine’s ground forces commander, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, told the Americans the first time they met.

Further complicating matters was General Zaluzhny’s testy relationship with his American counterpart, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In phone conversations, General Milley might second-guess the Ukrainians’ equipment requests. He might dispense battlefield advice based on satellite intelligence on the screen in his Pentagon office. Next would come an awkward silence, before General Zaluzhny cut the conversation short. Sometimes he simply ignored the American’s calls.

.: First, these excerpts prove that the Biden Administration in Washington D.C was involved in the daily decision-making of the Ukraine War. Secondly, these excerpts take the definition of a “Disconnected Hierarchy” to an entirely new level. General Milley was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His job description is to advise the President. While the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff outranks all other commissioned officers, the chairman is prohibited by law from having operational command authority over the combatant commanders, much less over foreign military combatant commanders. Finally, instead of listening to the guys on ground (Ukraine soldiers), the Fusion Center Generals were listening to General Milley who was almost 5,000 miles away from the front lines. 

Excerpts: The defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, and General Milley had put the 18th Airborne (Corps Commander General Donahue) in charge of (running the Fusion Center) delivering weapons and advising the Ukrainians on how to use them. A Polish general became General Donahue’s deputy. A British general would manage the logistics hub …and A Canadian (General) would oversee training. 

Inside the U.S. European Command (Fusion Center), this process gave rise to a fine but fraught linguistic debate: Given the delicacy of the mission, was it unduly provocative to call targets “targets”? Some officers thought “targets” was appropriate. Others called them “intel tippers,” because the Russians were often moving and the information would need verification on the ground. The debate was settled by Maj. Gen. Timothy D. Brown, European Command’s intelligence chief: The locations of Russian forces would be “points of interest.” Intelligence on airborne threats would be “tracks of interest. If you ever get asked the question, ‘Did you pass a target to the Ukrainians?’ you can legitimately not be lying when you say, ‘No, I did not,’ one U.S. official explained.” 

.: I could describe the multi-national command arrangement as an example of the types of things that happens in a bureaucracy, and I could describe the “linguistic debate” as proof that the Officers in charge were aware that what they were doing was wrong, and they wanted to cover their arses in case they got caught. Both descriptions are accurate. However, I think the best way to describe them together is with a phrase: Woke at War. Wokism doesn’t make sense because its not based on what we experience through our senses. From the multi-national command structure and its built-in competing political agendas, to prohibiting people from using certain words that describe reality, these are both examples of the senselessness of wokism. And as you’re about to read, this woke infected arrangement was doomed to failure from day 1. 

Excerpts: The way the system worked; Task Force Dragon (Fusion Center) would tell the Ukrainians where Russians were positioned. But to protect intelligence sources and methods from Russian spies, it would not say how it knew what it knew. All the Ukrainians would see on a secure cloud were chains of coordinates, divided into baskets — Priority 1, Priority 2 and so on.”

The inaugural target would be a radar-equipped armored vehicle known as a Zoopark, which the Russians could use to find weapons systems like the Ukrainians’ M777s. The Fusion Center found a Zoopark near Russian-occupied Donetsk, in Ukraine’s east. On the appointed day, General Zabrodskyi recounted, General Donahue called the (Ukrainian) battalion commander with a pep talk: “You feel good?” he asked. “I feel real good,” the Ukrainian responded. General Donahue then checked the satellite imagery to make sure the target and M777 were properly positioned. Only then did the artilleryman open fire, destroying the Zoopark. “Everybody went, ‘We can do this!’” a U.S. official recalled. 

.: Everyone should have said, ‘we’re F’d’. An American General who is 1,400 miles away calls up a Battalion Commander on the front lines to make sure he’s ready. Then the General checks the target and the weapon system to ensure they are properly positioned, and only when satisfied, approves the weapon to open fire. This wouldn’t make sense if everyone involved was in the American military fighting in an actual congressionally approved war. It’s micro-management at its zenith, and as we learned over and over during Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s a sure-fire formula to miss opportunities, and to create catastrophes such as friendly fire and killing civilians

Excerpts: The M777s (advanced artillery) became workhorses of the Ukrainian army.But because theygenerally couldn’t launch their 155-millimeter shells more than 15 miles, they were no match for the Russians’ vast superiority in manpower and equipment. To give the Ukrainians compensatory advantages of precision, speed and range, Generals Cavoli and Donahue soon proposed a far bigger leap — providing High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, which used satellite-guided rockets to execute strikes up to 50 miles away. 

Pentagon officials were resistant, loath to deplete the Army’s limited HIMARS stocks. But in May, General Cavoli visited Washington and made the case that ultimately won them over. ”General Cavoli’s argument…was that “with HIMARS, they can fight like we can, and that’s how they will start to beat the Russians.”

And when the White House took that step forward, the official said, Task Force Dragon (the fusion center) was becoming “the entire back office of the war.” Wiesbaden would oversee each HIMARS strike. General Donahue and his aides would review the Ukrainians’ target lists and advise them on positioning their launchers and timing their strikes. The Ukrainians were supposed to only use coordinates the Americans provided. To fire a warhead, HIMARS operators needed a special electronic key card, which the Americans could deactivate anytime.” 

HIMARS strikes that resulted in 100 or more Russian dead or wounded came almost weekly. But new intelligence showed that the Russians had now moved critical installations beyond HIMARS’ reach. So, Generals Cavoli and Aguto (Cavoli was a US 4-Star General and Aguto was a US 3-Star General) recommended the next quantum leap, giving the Ukrainians Army Tactical Missile Systems — missiles, known as ATACMS, that can travel up to 190 miles — to make it harder for Russian forces in Crimea to help defend Melitopol.

.: The excerpts above provide two of the most jaw-dropping revelations of the war. It wasn’t Zelensky and the Ukrainian Generals constantly asking for more advanced and lethal weapons systems, instead it was the American Generals running the Fusion Center in Germany. Not only did the American Generals initiate the request, but they were also the ones explaining the logic of why it made sense to provide them. If the Ukrainians needed these weapon systems, they should have been the ones explaining the logic of why. In so doing, the American Generals were telling their bosses in the Biden administration that the Ukrainian military was not capable of fighting much less winning against the Russians without massive hand-holding and overarching control by US forces and their satellite intelligence technology. 

The second revelation is one that every American and European needs to come to grips with. The NATO General officers and their staffs that ran the Fusion Center in Germany were not just locating Russian forces and passing the locations to the Ukrainians. They were planning and directing Ukrainian forces on the battlefield, requesting and controlling their weapon systems, micromanaging the weapons operators, and giving the orders to fire them. The American and NATO Generals were fighting the Ukraine war. As such they were combatants, and if not for the 2024 election, they may have started WW III.

The Russians knew the war was commanded and controlled from the Fusion Center in Germany and according to International Law, had every right to destroy it with a hyper-sonic missile. Instead, Vladimir Putin chose restraint. Why would he do that if he knew they were responsible for killing over 100 Russian soldiers each week? It’s possible that the Russians decided to let the NATO Generals continue running the war from the Fusion Center because the Russians realized that the micro-managing NATO Generals couldn’t have done more damage to the Ukrainian military’s war effort if they had been on the Russian payroll. Regardless of the actual reason, every individual who fought the war and killed Russians from the Fusion Center owes their life to Russian restraint. 

Excerpts: The planning for 2023 began straightaway, at what in hindsight was a moment of irrational exuberance.Within the coalition, the prevailing wisdom was that the 2023 counteroffensive would be the war’s last: The Ukrainians would claim outright triumph, or Mr. Putin would be forced to sue for peace.  “We’re going to win this whole thing,” Mr. Zelensky told the coalition, a senior American official recalled.

To accomplish this…General Zaluzhny was once again insisting that the primary effort be an offensive toward Melitopol. The British, for their part, argued that if the Ukrainians were going to go anyway, the coalition needed to help them. They didn’t have to be as good as the British and Americans, General Cavoli would say; they just had to be better than the Russians. 

The war games of January 2023 yielded a two-pronged plan. The secondary offensive, by General Syrsky’s forces in the east, would be focused on Bakhmut — where combat had been smoldering for months — with a feint toward the Luhansk region, an area annexed by Mr. Putin in 2022. That maneuver, the thinking went, would tie up Russian forces in the east and smooth the way for the main effort, in the south — the attack on Melitopol,

Key to threading that needle was beginning the counteroffensive on schedule, on May 1. But the drop-dead date came and went. Some promised deliveries of ammunition and equipment had been delayed, and despite General Aguto’s assurances that there was enough to start, the Ukrainians wouldn’t commit until they had it all.

“That’s not the plan!” General Cavoli cried. What had happened, according to Ukrainian officials, was this: After the Stavka meeting, Mr. Zelensky had ordered that the coalition’s ammunition be split evenly between General Syrsky and General Tarnavskyi. General Syrsky would also get five of the newly trained brigades, leaving seven for the Melitopol fight.

“It was like watching the demise of the Melitopol offensive even before it was launched,” one Ukrainian official remarked. Fifteen months into the war, it had all come to this tipping point. “We should have walked away,” said a senior American official.

But they would not. During the battle for Melitopol, the (Ukrainian ground forces) commander had insisted on using drones to validate every point of interest. Now, with far fewer rockets and shells, commanders along the front adopted the same protocol. 

This corrosive pattern, fueled, too, by caution and a deficit of trust, came to a head when, after weeks of grindingly slow progress across a hellscape of minefields and helicopter fire, Ukrainian forces approached the occupied village of Robotyne.

“Take the ground now,” US Commanding General Aguto (who was 1,400 miles from the front line), shouted over the radio to Ukrainian General Tarnavskyi (who was 300 miles from the frontlines.) But the Ukrainians had spotted a group of Russians on a hilltop.

From Aguto’s Fusion Center in Wiesbaden, satellite imagery showed what looked like a Russian platoon, between 20 and 50 soldiers — to General Aguto hardly justification to slow the march…So Wiesbaden sent the Russians’ coordinates and advised him (General Tarnavskyi) to simultaneously open fire and advance. Instead, to verify the intelligence, General Tarnavskyi flew reconnaissance drones over the hilltop.

General Aguto yelled (over the radio) at General Tarnavskyi: ‘Press on’. But the Ukrainians had to rotate troops from the front lines to the rear, and with only the seven brigades, they weren’t able to bring in new forces fast enough to keep going. The Ukrainians would not make it to Melitopol. They would have to scale back their ambitions.

.: And the rest is ongoing history. These final excerpts reveal many of the same problems discussed above. As mentioned, disconnected hierarchies can’t make sense because their senses are not connected to the environment. Thus, disconnected hierarchies are senseless. When a senseless hierarchy micro-manages their people, they prevent their people from making sense of what’s going on around them and sensible choices about what to do next. 

Unbeknownst to the American General, the satellite photo he was viewing from 1,400 miles away in the safety of his multimillion-dollar Fusion Center, was not conveying the reality of the situation on the ground. Russian forces had learned from their previous experiences with US satellite capabilities and had adapted accordingly. In order to avoid US satellite detection, the Russian special forces stayed hidden in the basements of villages along the route into Robotyne for weeks prior to the offensive beginning. The Ukrainian ground forces had already reported that enemy resistance in each village they entered was far more robust than NATO intelligence indicated. It made sense for the Ukrainian commander to recon the villages with drones before his soldiers entered (I too would have used drones to recon first). The disconnected hierarchy’s orders to “advance” and “Take the ground now,” made from 1,400 miles distant, was senseless.

This is the summary lesson for 25 years of American war. To my fellow Americans and veterans, we have a responsibility to future patriots and first responders to share this lesson and ensure the US military changes the way they think and speak about leading and organizing in combat. There is another way. It’s the “Common Sense Way.” 

Conclusion: 

Dear President Trump, The Ukraine War should have never happened and would not have happened if not for the actions of the global elitists in the US and EU. The war is based on one big propaganda lie about how the war started (see below) and countless smaller lies built on top to cover it up. What follows is an executive summary of the facts:

-The US and EU started the war in 2014 by using NGO’s and Neo-Nazi militia’s to violently overthrow the duly elected President of Ukraine (Victor Yanukovych).

-During the power vacuum that ensued the Neo-Nazi’s ran the interim government and immediately started a civil war against the ethnic Russians of eastern Ukraine. The civil war quickly turned into an ethnic war and Neo-Nazi tactic of choice was ethnic cleansing, which they committed in Odessa, Mariupol, and all across the Donbas region.

-The people of Donbas and Crimea who had watched the violent overthrow of their President, as well as the horrific incidents in Odessa and Mariupol, responded by voting for autonomy and independence from the unelected Ukrainian government that was trying to kill them. 

-During this period the CIA, MI6, and NATO, went to work building the new Ukrainian Army and used the Neo-Nazi’s as the foundation to build it upon. Over the next eight years the US/NATO resourced Ukrainian military killed over 14k ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine. 

-The Minsk agreement was the last best hope for staving off a full-scale war, however, after the Russian government and the President of Ukraine had agreed on a peace deal, the US and Great Britain told Zelensky not to sign, and don’t worry, “we will support you and you can defeat the Russians.”

-On Feb. 24, 2022 President Putin announced the Special Military Operation:“The purpose of the Special Military Operation is to protect the people who for eight years now have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev Government.” 

-From 2022 until the present (2025) the Biden Administration may have violated the War Powers Act by allowing American General Officers and their staffs to plan, coordinate, call for fire, and command and control combat operations that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers and civilians. In an earlier tell-all article by the NYT, they revealed that the CIA built and still operates 12 intelligence collection bases on the Ukraine-Russia border. Additionally, the CIA and US Navy were also engaged in maritime combat operations. In 2022, the Biden administration authorized the CIA and U.S. Navy to share targeting information for Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian warships just beyond the territorial waters of Russian-annexed Crimea. 

On January 21, 2025 you became President and immediately went to work in an effort to end the war and normalize relations with Russia. Freedom-loving people across the planet applaud you for your efforts, however there is still work to be done.

We must end this war and the killing of Ukraine’s and Russia’s most valuable resource (their patriots) as quickly as possible. Given that some of the individuals mentioned in this article are still in positions that control US and NATO involvement in the war, the most sensible course of action to ensure we stop the bloodshed and insanity, is to pull all American government and NGO personnel out of Ukraine. If someone tries to tell you that you are abandoning Ukraine and that they can’t survive without the US, tell them that the US and NATO have been in Ukraine for 11 years and have pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the country. If the Ukrainians can’t operate on their own now, then the US/NATO effort failed, and a few more years, a few more billions, and a few more thousand deaths won’t change a thing. Also tell them that most Ukrainian citizens and soldiers want peace. Yet they have no voice, thanks to the EU’s and US deep state stranglehold over International Media.  

As the shocking truth continues to leak out about the senseless decisions and activities of the Biden Administration and the EU, we must confront the truth and not allow it to dissuade us from doing the right thing.

Thank you for reading this.

¹ https://open.substack.com/pub/peteblaber/p/whats-wrong-with-the-nato-made-ukrainian?r=18bnrf&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

² https://jamestown.org/program/why-the-ukrainian-defense-system-fails-to-reform-why-us-support-is-less-than-optimal-and-what-can-we-do-better/

³ https://open.substack.com/pub/peteblaber/p/whats-wrong-with-the-nato-made-

⁴https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/29/world/europe/us-ukraine-military-war-wiesbaden.html

⁵ https://www.jcs.mil/

⁶ https://www.peteblaber.com/items/the-common-sense-way

⁷Propaganda is communication that aims to manipulate/influence or persuade an audience for a specific agenda, often using fabrications, falsehoods, selective facts, and  emotional language. In short, spreading lies to influence peoples beliefs and/or persuade them to do something they otherwise wouldn’t.

⁸ https://peteblaber.substack.com/p/how-to-make-sense-of-the-ukraine?r=18bnrf

⁹The Minsk agreements are a series of international accords aimed at resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists. The first agreement, known as Minsk I, was signed in September 2014, followed by a more comprehensive deal, Minsk II, in February 2015,

¹0The War Powers Act, officially known as the War Powers Resolution of 1973, is a federal law that limits the U.S. president’s ability to engage military forces without congressional approval. It requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of military action and restricts armed forces from remaining in action for more than 60 days without congressional authorization.

¹1 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html

¹2 https://armedforces.press/general-cavoli-general-langley-oppose-potus-policies-support-empire-building-at-senate-armed-services-hearing/