How dare he excuse Russian barbarism. Not the Kremlin’s blood-soaked dictator, Putin, but his pal, the US President Donald Trump, who blithely declared on Monday: ‘I was told they made a mistake.’
A mistake? Let’s consider what happened in Sumy on Palm Sunday.
On that sun-drenched start to Easter Week, a Russian Iskander-M ballistic missile slammed into the centre of the Ukrainian city, which has a population similar in size to that of Southampton or Cincinnati in the United States.
Result: carnage. Dozens of dead and wounded civilians, including children. Horrific images of pavements strewnwith casualties.
Minutes later, another Iskander-M missile landed on, or near, the same spot. Certainly in time to finish off survivors of the first impact and kill or maim the local emergency services’ responders who had reached the scene.
For the record, Iskander-Ms are accurate to within seven metres of their aiming point. Each carries a massive warhead, around 700kg of high explosive.
A Russian ‘mistake’ Mr Trump? If so, I’ve seen a few like it since the start of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
There was the ghastly kilometre of the E-40 highway west of Kyiv on April Fool’s Day 2022. As the mist lifted, it revealed to us a trail of bloated and burned corpses – of civilians who a month earlier had been gunned down by Russian forces as they tried to flee the Ukrainian capital in their cars.
A Russian Iskander-M slammed into the Ukrainian city of Sumy last week causing dozens of deaths (Pictured: Sumy on April 13)
Iskander-Ms are accurate to within seven metres of their aiming point. Each carries a massive warhead, around 700kg of high explosive (Pictured: Sumy on April 13)
A Ukrainian is pictured on April 13 in tears over the body of one of his relatives following the atrocity in Sumy last week
In nearby Bucha, I watched as the rotting bodies of executed residents were exhumed from a mass grave. More than 400 were murdered in the Kyiv satellite town during the brief Russian occupation.
I’d just arrived in Kyiv earlier this month when news came through of a hotel in Dnipro where I’ve often stayed on the way to the Donbas front line.
The Bartolomeo, next to the Dnieper River, had been hit in a Shahed drone attack on the city. I remember watching a joyous wedding take place there last summer. Now it was on fire.
A mistake – like the destruction of the pizza restaurants I once patronised in Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk or the turreted hotel in Sloviansk that was called ‘Camelot’. All reduced to rubble by Russian missiles, often with mass civilian casualties.
Mistake, after mistake, after mistake.
Of course what happened in Sumy was not a ‘mistake’ but yet another terror attack, designed to crush the morale of the Ukrainian population.
It is all of a piece with the nightly Shahed blitzes, the winter targeting of the energy infrastructure, the hunting of civilians by Russian FPV kamikaze drones in the streets of Kherson and the recent fatal strike on a children’s playground in President Zelensky’s home city of Kryvyi Rih.
In his desire to cut a self-aggrandising ‘peace’ deal with Russia – never mind what the Ukrainians think of the Putin-dictated terms – Trump has become an apologist for murder.
US President Donald Trump announced on Monday: ‘I was told they made a mistake’
An atrocity is likened by him to an error of judgment, a slip of the pen. A wrong answer. He is making excuses for Putin, writes Richard Pendlebury
An atrocity is likened by him to an error of judgment, a slip of the pen. A wrong answer. He is making excuses for Putin.
How do we categorise murder on an even greater scale? Was the Holocaust simply a ‘big mistake’?
This Holy Week, furious Ukrainians have taken to social media to make such comparisons and lambast Trump.
‘Maybe the September 11, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers by Al Qaeda extremists was also a mistake?’ asked one woman. ‘Not a terrorist act, but a mistake?’
Another wrote: ‘They were wrong. Twice. What unfortunate mistakes! God, how pathetic this is [that] people have entrusted the management of a great country to a pathetic slug. This is truly a mistake.’
Even before his Sumy utterances, Trump’s standing among Ukrainians was plunging fast.
There was shock when he opened ceasefire negotiations with Russia without Ukraine being at the table.
This turned to anger and disbelief following the extraordinary televised dressing down Trump and his Vice-President JD Vance gave Zelensky at the White House in February. Soon afterwards, Trump paused US military aid and intelligence sharing.
During my recent visit, I noticed how disaffection was showing even on one of Kyiv’s most striking landmarks – a little green car on display in St Michael’s Square.
A bakery facility in Sumy was left ruined after the a Russian drone attack on Sumy on April 18
The surrounding area was left in tatters, with rubber and debris lying everywhere. A 51-year-old businessman was killed in the attack
It used to belong to the Samolylenko family from Bucha. The last journey they made in it was on March 14th, 2022, when they attempted to flee the killing zone, only to be stopped by a hail of Russian bullets.
One can still see the holes where at least seven rounds passed through the driver’s door, severely wounding Mr Samolyenko. Others penetrated the rear passenger compartment, almost killing a female relative.
After the invaders withdrew from the Kyiv region, the city fathers began to collect the wrecks of Putin’s failed armoured thrust. Two dozen burned-out tanks were arranged into a kind of atrocity exhibition on the cobbles of St Michael’s Square.
Incongruous among the otherwise military exhibits, was – and is – the Samolyenko’s lime green saloon.
At first, only bullet holes marred its paintwork. But over the years, passers-by began to decorate the bodywork in a different manner.
Doves of peace and blue and yellow flags appeared.
Mostly, though, the additions were graffiti which expressed civilian Ukraine’s defiance. The most common comment can be translated as ‘Putin is a ****head’.
The number of ruined tanks on display has steadily shrunk since 2022 – perhaps to be melted down into new ones. But the little car remains. And in recent weeks a new kind of graffiti has appeared on its now iconic bodywork.
A soldier stands in front of The Wall of Remembrance of the Fallen for Ukraine at St Michael’s Square, Kyiv
During a meeting at the Oval Office in February, President Trump and JD Vance asked President Zelensky of Ukraine to be more grateful
On the driver’s door, an unknown hand has scrawled in black marker pen: ‘Elon Musk Dumb Ass’.
Below that, and just above where the burst of bullets struck, someone else has written, in larger, capital letters, the unequivocal message: F*** TRUMP.
Such new emotions are expressed in a number of ways here. Recently, I took a Facetime call from a Ukrainian friend serving in a unit on the crucial Pokrovsk front. He was travelling in the back of a lurching military SUV.
After exchanging greetings, he asked me: ‘Notice anything about my appearance?’
I squinted at the phone screen and shrugged. He seemed to be wearing the same body armour and camouflage he always wore.
‘I’ve taken off the American flag,’ he said. And so he had.
A half Stars and Stripes-half Ukraine flag had been Velcroed to his body armour since I first met him in Donbas in spring 2023. Now it was gone.
He had loved America. No more.
‘Bring me a British flag when you come next time to replace it,’ he said. ‘I know we can still trust you guys.’
Others here don’t want to hear about Trump, even though he has their futures in his hands. It’s simply too frightening and depressing.
Donald Trump has repeatedly blamed Ukraine’s Zelensky for starting the ongoing conflict with
Richard Pendlebury (pictured) writes: Perhaps he should reassure them it’s all simply a ‘mistake’ rather than attempted murder. With friends like Trump, Putin can make as many mistakes as he likes
‘Honey, look what Trump…’ began my friend Oleks to his wife, as he scrolled through the latest presidential pronouncements on social media last week.
‘Stop right there!’ she shrieked. ‘I don’t want to know what that man’s just said.’
And so the conversation ended.
They have two daughters, one an early teenager, the other nine, and live on the eighth floor of a block of flats – far above the building’s basement air raid shelter.
Oleks says the nine-year-old spends, on average, four nights a week sleeping in their apartment’s enamel bath tub.
The bathroom doesn’t have windows so it’s the ‘safest’ place.
The girl is very scared. But the Russian blitz – the nightly mistakes according to Trump – has become an integral part of her young life.
‘One night she had a sleepover with some school friends and then there was an air raid alert,’ Oleks recalled.
‘We moved them out into the corridor. I could hear them talking amongst themselves.
‘They were looking at their smart phones and discussing what they were seeing on the official Ukraine air raid app.
‘They were assessing whether the raid was a ballistic missile or a Shahed drone attack. Imagine! These girls are nine years old.’
Perhaps he should reassure them it’s all simply a ‘mistake’ rather than attempted murder.
With friends like Trump, Putin can make as many mistakes as he likes.
