Trump Administration Votes With Russia, North Korea, And Belarus At UN On Third Anniversary Of Russian Invasion, Resolves Long-Standing Concern That United States Was Voting Differently From The Authoritarian Bloc

The Filing

UNITED NATIONS. On the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States voted against a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning that invasion and demanding that Russia withdraw from Ukrainian territory, resolving long-standing concern at the highest levels of the Trump administration that the United States and the Russian Federation had been casting votes on opposite sides at the United Nations.

The Ukrainian-drafted resolution, cosponsored by some 50 European nations, passed by a margin of 93 to 18 in the 193-member chamber. The United States cast its "no" alongside Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Nicaragua, Hungary, and a small bloc of nations that historians had not previously associated with American foreign policy. Standing apart from every NATO ally that voted, the U.S. delegation explained that the resolution was "not constructive" because it identified by name the country that had invaded the other country.

Hours later, an alternate U.S. resolution that called for an end to the conflict without identifying who had started it failed to attract the support of the European allies who had drafted the original. The American draft was then amended over U.S. objection to add the words "Russian aggression," at which point the United States abstained on its own resolution.

Administration officials defended the vote as a return to first principles. A senior State Department official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said the new American posture reflected a clear-eyed recognition that "the war started somewhere, and someone is invading someone, but that is not for us to determine on the third anniversary of when it started." The President himself had addressed the broader question six days earlier at a Florida press conference, where he said of Ukraine, "You should have never started it."

The vote arrived six days after senior U.S. and Russian officials opened bilateral talks in Riyadh that excluded Ukrainian and European representatives, five days after the President began publicly referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a dictator on Truth Social, and four days before the same President welcomed Mr. Zelensky to the White House for a meeting that would conclude with the suspension of American military aid. State Department career staff who had drafted the original European-aligned U.S. position were reassigned.

At press time, the President was congratulating the Russian delegation for what he characterized as a very strong showing at the United Nations and had begun drafting a personal letter to Mr. Putin proposing that the two leaders meet to discuss what, if anything, had happened in Ukraine.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump personally, who has spent a decade speaking warmly of Vladimir Putin in public and has invested the prestige of his second term in delivering Ukraine to terms favorable to Moscow.
§Vladimir Putin, who received the unprecedented gift of American cover at the United Nations on the anniversary of his invasion, an outcome no Russian diplomatic corps could have achieved through its own efforts.
§The Russian Federation, whose war economy and global standing require precisely the kind of legitimacy a "no" vote from the United States supplies.
§Belarus and North Korea, whose presence on the same side of a UN vote as the United States represents the most significant diplomatic rehabilitation either regime has received in three decades.
§Viktor Orbán's Hungary, which finds its long-standing UN voting bloc unexpectedly enlarged by the world's largest economy.
§Authoritarian governments globally, who learn from the vote that the United States can be relied upon to reframe acts of aggression as complicated once the aggressor offers the right inducements.
§Trump Organization business interests in Russia-aligned markets, which over decades of attempted deals have benefited from American policy positions favorable to the Kremlin.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment