Russia-Ukraine: The End of the Beginning

Following Hitler’s blitzkrieg into France and the almost miraculous evacuation of the British and French armies at Dunkirk in June 1940, it took the Allies two years to launch their first real offensive against Nazi Germany.

Those were dark days. But bolstered with U.S. weapons and U.S. troops, British General Montgomery’s 8th Army mounted a victorious assault against Rommel in Alamein, Egypt, in July 1942, and went on to a series of victories in North Africa that fall.

Churchill was asked whether the end of the war was in sight.

“This is not the end,” he said famously. “It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

That is where we are today with the Russia-Ukraine war — except that it isn’t going our way.

It is the end of the beginning, a beginning that was full of lies and deceit, full of false hopes, full of vainglorious claims by President Biden that valiant Ukraine could utterly defeat Hitler — sorry, Putin — if we in the West just gave them enough weapons and cash.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio threw a pail of cold water over those “dishonest” claims in an interview with former Foxnews anchor Megyn Kelly on Thursday.

Sure, Putin had done “horrible things” and had committed “atrocities.” But it would be foolish to maintain the illusions of a total Ukrainian victory, “not just to defeat Russia but to destroy [Putin], push him all the way back to what the world looked like in 2012 or 2014 before the Russians took Crimea,” Rubio said.

I can’t wait to see the faces of Generals Lyndsay Graham and Mitch McConnell and the other war hawks in Congress when they hear that. They were ready to fight Russia to the blood of the last Ukrainian.

President Trump has said clearly he wants the war to end.

And it’s quite likely Putin thinks that means Trump is willing to make wild concessions in exchange for an end to the fighting.

One Putin surrogate this week suggested that Russia could simply “purchase” Ukraine with the $300 billion of Russian assets currently frozen in Europe.

And the Ukrainians? They could emigrate to Poland, Hungary, Romania, or “whatever.” Some have called this “genocide by negotiation.”

The Russians are making significant gains on the battlefield, tightening the noose around Pokrovsk, a logistical hub that controls rail and road lines deep into the industrial heartland of eastern Ukraine.

Donald Trump and his Russia-Ukraine envoy, Lieutenant General (ret.) Keith Kellogg, will have to do more than just bluster to get Putin to stop fighting.

My guess is the president wants General Kellogg to meet with Putin face to face to get some ground truth before he advances an actual ceasefire plan.

I also suspect the president wants to get a better idea from his new secretary of defense and his intelligence chiefs of what leverage the US can ultimately bring to bear to get Putin to the negotiating table.

In the meantime, everyone is jockeying for position — not a good time to be a Russian or a Ukrainian soldier.

I discuss this, as well as the divisions inside Europe regarding an end to the war, and a new jihadi attack in Sweden, on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend.

As always, you can listen live in the Jacksonville, Florida, area, at 1 PM on Saturday on 104.9 FM or 550 AM, or listen later to the podcast here.

Yours in freedom.

©2025 . All rights reserved.


Ken Timmerman’s 14th book of non-fiction, THE IRAN HOUSE: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue, can be ordered by clicking here or by viewing my author’s page, here. 

Raising Olives in Provence, can be ordered by clicking here.

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