Commentary: What Ronald Reagan would do today for the people of Ukraine

Bob Kustra, Chicago Tribune on Jul 14, 2026

Published in Op Eds

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If we want to consider what’s possible for Ukraine, the people of Poland are living proof. They gained freedom from communist rule at the end of the Cold War with President Ronald Reagan playing what he called a supporting role in bringing down the Soviet Union.

A virulent anti-communist, Reagan found his way into the history books by telling Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. A considerable contrast to a fawning Donald Trump at the feet of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Reagan came to the rescue of the Polish Solidarity movement in the 1980s. He used a CIA covert action to fund a $20 million campaign, in 1980 dollars, to bring the Solidarity message of democracy and freedom to the Polish people living under communist rule. One of the most successful stunts used broadcast break-ins to bring Solidarity messages to TV screens in Polish living rooms. Using black market smuggling networks, Poland was inundated with leaflets, posters, magazines, newspapers and radio break-ins to offer hope for a democratic Poland.

Reagan’s support of CIA strategies bringing messages of hope and freedom to the Poles living under communist rule in the ’80s is documented by Seth Jones in his book “A Covert Action: Reagan, the CIA and the Cold War Struggle in Poland.” It serves as a reminder to Republicans today that Trump’s reluctance to deliver the weaponry to Ukraine it needs to defend its citizens against Russian aggression is a sorry example of a party gone soft in support of its European allies.

Russia’s latest ballistic missile attack on the people of Ukraine prompted President Volodymyr Zelenskyy once again to claim Ukraine had an “insufficient supply of interceptor missiles” needed to shoot down those missiles. Zelenskyy wrote in a social media post that “as long as Patriot missiles remain in our allies’ stockpiles, Russia is only encouraged to keep ‘vanquishing’ residential buildings.”

Ukraine’s request for additional American Tomahawk missiles and Patriot interceptors has fallen on deaf ears as of this writing. Trump’s Department of Defense expresses concern for America’s own stockpiles of weapons, but it’s hard to believe that Reagan would have hesitated to deliver the weapons needed to protect innocent Ukrainian lives. Instead, he would have ordered emergency production of weapons for America’s stockpiles, and he would have proclaimed his support of a free Ukrainian people.

Instead, Trump fiddles while Ukraine innocents are killed by Putin’s missiles and drones.

Reagan’s imperative to Gorbachev backed by the uncompromising authority of America’s commitment to a free Europe reminds us how the Republican Party of Reagan is gone and long forgotten. A new playbook seems to distance America from helping freedom-loving people fight off the terror of a Russian dictator intent on extending the Russian empire as far as his missiles will travel.

What Putin has in store for democratic Ukraine standing in his way of rebuilding the Russian empire can best be understood by how Putin regards his Russian subjects today. In his recent book “The Closing of the Russian Mind: How Putin’s Ideology Took the Nation Hostage,” Andrei Kolesnikov, a Russian journalist writing from Russia, quotes Putin’s minister of defense, Andrei Belousov, whose description of life under Putin sounds eerily like the days of czarist Russia.

Belousov defends Putin’s Russia today by claiming that “the state will feed me and teach me how to think about the world around me. In exchange for food, I will not demand that the government should change and become non-corrupt and transparent … and I will think the way it asks me to think.”

“I will not demand that the government should change”? Apart from how that describes Republicans who overlook Trump’s corruption in office, it’s a considerable contrast to the individual freedoms Poles and other Eastern Europeans now enjoy thanks to Reagan.

This insight into how Putin sees the role of government dictating the daily lives of his Russian subjects is evidence of how Putin would govern the people of Ukraine and any other Western democracy next in line for his murderous wrath. Trump will continue to berate Europeans for their failure to build up defense budgets, but significant progress has been made in that regard. But America’s arsenal of weapons is second to none and must also play a role in confronting Putin’s aggression across Europe.

Putin’s minister of defense lays bare the difference between life in a dictatorship and life in a democracy. It reveals what side of this historic battle for freedom and democracy Trump and his Republican loyalists have chosen. It is one of the failed measures of the Republican Party today and why it must be rebuilt after Trump.

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Bob Kustra served two terms as an Illinois Republican lieutenant governor and 10 years as a state legislator. He now hosts the “Reader’s Corner” podcast, an author interview program that also airs on Boise State Public Radio, an NPR affiliate.

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