Joe Blank: My Whole Thing with Ukraine

By Joe Blank, Buy Me a Coffee, 9/13/25

As some of you who know me through social media might be aware, I have spent the past 3 1/2 years of the Ukraine war as someone who is extremely against the idea that America (or anyone, for that matter) support Ukraine in the current conflict with Russia. It’s a bit of a story, but I rarely get asked why I feel this way. Rather, most simply prefer to jump to the conclusion I’m MAGA or a Russian agent. I am neither. I’m an American, a Southerner, of Scots/Irish ancestry. I’m politically unaligned, as I value some ideas both traditionally held by the “left” AND the “right”. Heck, prior to 2022, the only Russians I spoke to were a nice married couple I used to work with and a fellow artist I met on Instagram. Definitely not on the Kremlin payroll.

No, I’m just – for this purpose, at least – your average American Joe.

And yet, I find myself coming to a point where I have the names of Azov commanders memorized. Stephan Bandera quotes. Specific amounts of aid provided and the dates the bills were passed by Congress. It’s a bit much. Until the other day, I really had been plunging back into history trying to remember HOW I became so invested in the subject in the first place. And then it hit me.

RT America. Russian news.

Now, before you jump the gun and use this as a “Gotcha, Putin puppet!”, do allow me to explain.

You see, I have always been someone who has deeply cared about our First Amendment rights. In 2013, if you’ll remember, there was a little bit of drama with a guy named Edward Snowden, who released information that I found deeply disturbing to say the least. Not necessarily surprising, but that didn’t matter. The basic premise was out. Your government watches you, sometimes for no specific reason.

It was at this point in my life I think I truly began to appreciate the information sphere that we live in as Americans, honestly. As far as the only two cable television news stations I had access to at the time, only Al-Jazeera and RT News were the ones reporting up-to-date information about his currently known location. They were the only ones actually highlighting the information Snowden had helped bring to light. It really taught me that, when looking for information critical of what your own government is doing, you have to look outside that bubble.

I continued to watch RT then, probably for the next year regularly. So when the Maidan began, initially, I got the Russian perspective. Did that color my initial impression of the Ukrainian state? Not really. Just as I understood that American media isn’t exactly putting out 100% of the story, I assumed the same with Russia and Ukraine. Cynic that I am. But by that time I had already developed a crush on Abby Martin so I kept RT going in the background while i did other things and it was by no means my exclusive venue for news. I have no complaints about it at all as a news organization, personally, but want to emphasize simply that it was one source of many I used to form an opinion.

At that time, too, I was lucky enough to be in a career where – as long as you could multitask on dual monitors and keep off NSFW sites – you could entertain yourself however you pleased. I was a trained researcher in my field. Learning about politics, propaganda, and general skullduggery by “the man” has always been a hobby. Put the two together, I began really looking into the country and the rhetoric coming out of the Obama administration in the aftermath. The “Red Line”, as it were. Why were we so involved and what purpose did it serve America to get involved in, what up until that point, I had considered a civil war in Ukraine?

At that point, I’d already seen the Obama administration doing horrific things abroad and at home. I had been in the brokerage industry during the bailouts and saw the American middle class gutted. And, as I said, was aghast at the privacy and free speech concerns raised by the Snowden leaks. Crimea came and went, thankfully, without escalating to a full blown war between nuclear superpowers. But still, what was driving this?

So, whenever I would come across some news item from Ukraine (wasn’t exactly as if I gave it that much attention) I’d look into it. I wanted to know whose story was more true – the Russian or the American version. And those, I would say, are my formative years becoming the would-be armchair advocate for not supporting this state.

You see, when Biden first admitted that he was withholding a billion dollar grant to Ukraine unless they fired a certain prosecutor, I found that curious as well. Why would our government be dictating who they’d appoint to a specific job like that? Why are we even giving them a billion dollars? It wasn’t hard at the time to verify that Ukraine had, since it left the USSR, been a notoriously underdeveloped and corrupt country. By this time as well, it wasn’t hard to find plenty of Western-sourced articles which would confirm this, among other nasty facts about the country. Azov, ethnic nationalism, and the glorification of WW2 German collaborators. A history of human trafficking. Cheap sex tourism. And for some reason the Vice President, whose unqualified son is working on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, is just handing over that kind of cash, with caveats.

Just seemed all a bit….odd….

There was probably a lull, I’d say, after Trump had his issues with Ukraine, that I really stopped paying attention. Whether Russia had invaded with “little green men” as they’re accused of, or not – it was just the Ukraine. Not exactly a big deal at that point. Sure, we’d thrown them a few weapons – but ultimately it was up to Ukraine and Russia to be sorted out. There were no overt signals from the American government that it would escalate this war further than it need be, and that was enough for me.

Well, that didn’t last long, did it? Biden was elected and, within a year, Russia’s “Special Military Operation” began. If you think America providing Ukraine a billion dollars of our taxpayer’s money in 2016 (when Americans were obviously already struggling and our social safety net was virtually nonexistent) then imagine my utter disgust when the first $13b was passed in Congress, or the $40.1b package passed a couple months later. Couldn’t this money, suddenly found for Ukraine, be used for a better purpose at home?

That’s a question that bothers me, and if you’re any kind of an American, should bother you. We live in a nation with an estimated one million homeless (which I believe is still a lowball number). and have spent over $200 billion combined between federal funding packages and loans financed through the IMF and World Bank (minimum, as no one seems to really know the exact figure). Simple math tells you that COULD have been $200 [billion] put toward housing and mental care, resources for our entire homeless population – every man, woman and child. Why is Ukraine worth that, but the needs of the American people – the least of us – are ignored?

And I think, what has this really gotten us, as a country? Certainly not like every move made should be dependent upon our profiting from a situation, necessarily, but since the war began. it’s done nothing but antagonize other world powers, cost us money, and uprooted any sense of American hegemony left. You look at anything in America today versus 2021, a year prior to the war. Rent costs more. Food costs more. Gas. Electricity. Why should we be consumed with what’s happening in a distant Eastern European former Soviet country that has no substantial cultural ties with us, we have no long-lived allegiance with, nor any major strategic interest in?

I think some things are fairly obvious. Given that the Nordstream pipeline, the pipeline from Russia that fed Slovakia and Poland has been destroyed, and the fact the news was released today that Trump will only increase sanctions on Russia if Europe foregoes all Russian oil and only purchases from America or our approved list of partner states, that this has been a war specifically to increase our gas exports and maintain leverage over Europe. Right now, Trump is making overtures to Russia that our relations could be normalized, potentially playing both sides to his advantage. Either way, our sales to Europe have drastically increased since 2022 and most European nations have spent the past 3 1/2 years doing nothing but threatening and sanctioning Russia. They aren’t likely to return to their supply quickly if the war were to end tomorrow, would they?

But, this is Trump. Whichever way he thinks the wind is blowing at any particular moment – whatever his Mar-a-Lago guests are telling him – it’s a question up in the air. It continues to vex the EU, NATO, Ukraine, everyone involved, because it could go one way or another.

Also, it almost goes without saying, this was used as an upwards transfer of wealth to the weapons manufacturers. Some will use the tired old line of “but it benefits American industry” which no, no it really doesn’t. Not as a whole. Just that one facet of it, and largely the people that receive the most benefit are the already-wealthy shareholders. I argue, wouldn’t it have been more beneficial to Americans and our economy to pay John Deere or an American farm equipment company to provide tractors and the like to struggling American farmers instead of buying tanks and sending them to Ukraine. So much we could’ve done. But, unfortunately, ever since – well – forever – the beast of American defense contractors must be fed. It’s been that way all my life, really, especially since 9/11. They pay our politicians of both parties through lobbyists and campaign contributions, and they expect their back scratched in return.

So that’s my story. That’s how I came to hold the position that I do. Roughly. I could regale you with so many tales of corruption, theft, moral depravity, and the absence of ethics when it comes to this subject, but I am going to [stop] here. I just want to leave you with the understanding of why I am against further aid as a solution to this conflict. Why I feel allowing Russia and Ukraine to sort their own problems out is the most beneficial thing we could do, as Americans and indeed as human beings.

Thanks for reading. If for some crazy reason you enjoy what I write, I do appreciate any tips that you might drop my way. Please do check out my art in the gallery here as well, and feel free to follow or reach out to me on Twitter at @therevjoeblank.