Parts of the winter world are frozen. Europe, the U.S. Midwest, and even southern states are enduring the worst cold in years as the North Pole rapidly melts, pushing frigid Arctic air through a weakened polar vortex into non-Arctic regions. So far, in the U.S., power grids are holding. Although some states experienced significant power outages in late January, they were short-lived. Ukrainians are not so lucky.A monster tries to freeze a nationOn Feb. 13, more than half the residents of Ukraine woke up in one of the coldest winters on record with no heat, no electricity, and no water. Ukrainians are fighting both climate change and a Russian invasion, both driven by evil and greed.When he attacked Ukraine in 2022, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin began strategically targeting its power grid, bombing one facility more than 200 times. By December 2024, more than half of Ukraine’s energy-generating capacity had been knocked out. Now, roughly 60 percent of Ukraine’s families are living without heat during an extreme subzero winter, sleeping with pets and barn animals to share body heat and keep children alive.Putin has targeted high-voltage substations and power lines to break electricity connections within and between geographic regions. Ukraine’s Minister of Energy, Denys Shmyhal, acknowledged that there is “not a single power plant in Ukraine” that Putin hasn’t bombed. Putin’s “plan is instability through total blackout.” An American president celebrates a war criminalCutting off heat, electricity and water, deliberately freezing and starving non-combatant civilians to death, is a war crime. Kidnapping young Ukrainian children, stealing them to punish, torture or indoctrinate, is also a war crime. By credible counts, more than 19,000 Ukrainian children have been taken in Putin’s sick push to erase Ukraine’s national identity.Putin is not only committing high-visibility war crimes in Ukraine as he murders critics at home, he is also responsible for the deaths of more than 50,000 Ukrainians whose only offense was choosing democracy over dictatorship.In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest. As a result, he is now barred from entering more than 120 nations including nearly all of Europe, where border officials would immediately arrest him for crimes against humanity. Despite the ICC warrant, in August, 2025, Trump mocked the international rule of law and welcomed Putin on Alaskan soil.Putin is a notorious war criminal, an international pariah hated by leaders of the free world. So, on Jan. 28, when Trump installed a framed photo of Putin, standing side by side with Trump, in the White House, the collective response was disbelief.Leaders of the free world are aghast. As one European leader quipped, “The U.S. president considers it appropriate to hang on the White House wall a photo of the greatest war criminal of the 21st century.” Meanwhile, Trump is too compromised — financially, politically, or cognitively — to comprehend that honoring THE enemy of NATO in the White House spits in the face of our allies, not to mention our veterans.Get a roomJournalist Michael Andersen, who has written about Ukraine and the former U.S.S.R. for 15 years, asks whether Americans know, or even care, how this feels to people in Ukraine. He writes: Dear Americans, your president just put up a photo in the White House of himself and the biggest war criminal of the 21st century, the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. It is ‘perfectly’ timed to mark that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is about to enter its fifth year. Do you understand the feeling this provokes in Ukraine? In Europe? 10 million Ukrainians have been forced to run away from their homes, maybe 200,000 have been killed — and your country celebrates the monster responsible?It’s a fair question. Political analysts have long speculated that Trump owes Putin something considerable. The sooner main stream media stop sugarcoating the obvious, the better.A love that was never freeIn the late 1990s, after U.S. banks stopped lending money to the Trump Organization due to its repeated bankruptcies, Trump sought and obtained alternative financing from Russian sources. Since then, his financial ties to former Russian apparatchiks have only grown. Trump-branded condos in New York and Florida are owned by wealthy Russians, often purchased through shell companies. In 2019, Newsweek reported that “Crime Infested” Trump Tower was home to convicted Russian criminals and “mobster tenants.” Trump’s financial ties to Russia are beyond speculation: Eric Trump told a reporter that Trump’s businesses “have all the funding we need out of Russia.” KGB-trained Putin plays Trump like a cheap instrument: through flattery. In October, when Putin complimented Trump’s ability to “solve complex problems” and fix “crises that last for decades,” Trump ran to post a video of Putin’s praise, writing, “Thank you to President Putin!” That Trump has solved anything, complex or otherwise, comes as a surprise to Americans suffering under his asinine tariffs, unsolved inflation, climate denial, and massive civil rights violations. That he is too stupid or narcissistic to understand how honoring Putin hurts our allies, compromising America’s vital security interests in a real and material way, is dangerous.Michael Andersen finished his commentary on Putin’s new photograph in the White House by asking, “Where is your red line, Americans?” If a Putin photo in the White House is fine with Americans, “How about one of Adolf Hitler?” It’s another fair question.Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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