For its part, the government in Kiev, whose mandate has expired, is focusing on drone strikes against oil refineries and shipping terminals in Russia. This fits into the overall strategy of the Western, NATO powers to deprive their economic competitors of oil supply in the struggle to maintain global hegemony. This can also be seen further in the continued, debilitating attacks and sanctions aimed against the peoples of Iran, the Middle East as a whole, and Venezuela and Cuba.

In late May, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy issued a five-page, open letter to US President Donald Trump dated May 26, requesting that more missiles be supplied as soon as possible. As noted by the Ukrainian analytical Telegram channel Rubicon on May 30, “While arms deliveries were previously discussed rather privately, now everything is taking the form of public appeals of ‘Donald, help us, and fast!’.

Rubicon writes, “The goal of this move by Zelensky is not only to needle Trump’s pride but also to elegantly shift blame onto the White House for recent missile and drone strikes by Russia on military sites in and around the Ukrainian capital. Washington has been slow to condemn these attacks and slow to continue its supply of missiles to Ukraine’s armed forces.”

A former lawmaker from Zelensky’s party-machine, Alexander Dubinsky, wrote on Telegram May 31 that overall, Zelensky’s letter amounts to an ode to himself, as in: ‘I allow you to touch my greatness and become part of it by allocating more money and missiles.’

The US government did not respond publicly to Zelensky’s letter. The Ukrainian opposition Telegram channel Kartel comments on May 31, referencing the high-profile corruption scandal involving Zelensky’s friend who has since fled to “Israel”: “Let us recall that Zelenskyy’s friend Timur Mindich stole over $1 billion allocated for weapons production, as uncovered by NABU [National Anticorruption Bureau] investigations. So it’s no surprise that after exposures of such corruption, the Americans would choose to ignore Zelensky’s outburst.”

Zelensky’s letter also demands that the US grant licenses for the production of Patriot missiles in Ukraine. But the US military has been proven unwilling to share production of its known and tested military technologies. It has shown willingness to share new weapons systems, evidently as part of ‘testing’ programs.

The letter by Zelensky criticizes the slow pace of Patriot missile production in the US itself, adding that this could lead to crises in various other parts of the world. According to the letter, Ukraine-produced weaponry could help protect US allies in the Middle East. In other words, the man is proposing that the US also continue selling or supplying missiles and other weapons to “Israel” and the United Arab Emirates for use against Iran.

Despite Trump’s various, so-called peace initiatives to end the war in Ukraine, voiced for several years now, Victoria Fedosova, deputy director of the Institute for Strategic Studies and Forecasting at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, believes that Trump is merely proposing a high-profile display of negotiations between Moscow and Kiev that would lead nowhere. In the meantime, Washington continues to supply Kiev with weapons and intelligence, some of which are being used against the civilian population of Russia. During the night of May 23 (Ukraine time), US-made Hornet drones struck a teacher college dormitory for women and girls in the town of Starobelsk in the Lugansk People’s Republic, which was annexed by Russia, killing 21 and wounding dozens more.

Despite all of Trump’s ostentatious rhetoric, there is no sign he intends to pressure Zelenskyy to end the proxy war against Russia. Moreover, Chinese media reported on June 2 that he has also asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to pressure the Russian president to end the war; that is, end Russia’s responses to the NATO proxy war on the West’s terms.

Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of War, has also stated that Washington will continue to find a way to help Ukraine ‘defend itself’ (code language for waging NATO’s proxy war). He made this remark at a meeting on Asian security issues in Singapore, according to Clash Report on Telegram on May 30. (Clash Report is an online news platform aligned with the views of the Turkish government.)

Hegseth also noted that the US continues to study and learn from Ukraine’s experience with the use of drones on the battlefield. He says it is vastly increasing its investments in this area. In other words, the continuation of the conflict in Ukraine benefits the US by serving as a laboratory to test new types of weapons and study the reactions by the Russian army, even though these often pose a threat to Ukrainians themselves.

As the Ukrainian Institute of Politics notes in this regard, Pete Hegset’s statements are particularly telling when viewed against the backdrop of earlier remarks by Donald Trump. In March of this year, following the escalation of the conflicts in West Asia, Trump claimed that the US had no need for Ukrainian expertise in the field of drones. However, “Judging by the current rhetoric of the U.S. Secretary of War, the situation has changed: Washington effectively recognizes the value of Ukrainian experience and is ready to scale it up in its own defense policy.

“This US approach fits directly into Trump’s business logic—war as a market where Washington ramps up production, sells weapons, and simultaneously strengthens its own technologies. In this model, Ukraine is already an asset that generates knowledge, tests technologies, and creates demand for the American defense industry,” writes the Ukrainian institute.