Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky addressing the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, September 25, 2024, at UN headquarters. On February 24, 2025, the United States sided with Russia and refused to condemn Russia’s actions against Ukraine. Photo via AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson

International Relations

United States Sides with Russia, Breaks with Europe, in Ukraine War Resolution

Pardee’s Igor Lukes says, “With a single vote, the highest authority of the country has allied itself with some of the most vile enemies of humanity”

Igor Lukes was busy on Monday, teaching his class at Boston University on international relations dating back to 1945 and attending a ceremony in downtown Boston for a ceremonial raising of the Japanese national flag, so he missed the breaking news.

The United States, under President Trump, had voted against a Ukrainian resolution to the United Nations that was supported by America’s closest allies, including the United Kingdom and most of Europe, demanding that Russia withdraw from Ukraine in its ongoing war. The resolution was passed, with a vote of 93 nations in favor, 18 against, and 65 abstaining. Of the countries voting against it and aligning with Russia, were Russia, along with some of its closest allies, including North Korea, Syria, Belarus, Israel, Haiti, Hungary, Nicaragua—and the United States.

“I don’t think I’ve said it many times in my life and meant it,” Lukes said in a conversation with BU Today, “but I’m at a loss for words. I have lost speech. I don’t have the words to express my emotion. It’s like attending the funeral of something you have loved your whole life, the United States of America. With a single vote, the highest authority of the country has allied itself with some of the most vile enemies of humanity.”

These strong words come from a position of experience in foreign affairs. Lukes is a professor of international relations and of history at BU’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and is a recipient of the respected Medal for Merit in Diplomacy from the Czech Republic’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, which is awarded for outstanding contributions to Czech diplomacy and foreign relations. His research on the Cold War has been widely praised and he has been recognized with the CIA’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Literature on Intelligence. He is also the recipient of numerous teaching honors, including a 1997 Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Pardee School’s 2020 Gitner Prize for Faculty Excellence.

International relations scholars say the United States vote aligning with Moscow marks a new day in American foreign policy. One expert at the United Nations called it the “the biggest split among Western powers at the U.N. since the Iraq War—and probably even more fundamental.”

Lukes goes further: “I think that’s an understatement. The Iraqi war could have been legitimately opposed and never should have happened.” 

The dramatic news unfolded on the third anniversary of the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing war that’s followed.

As proposed by Ukraine, the three-page resolution demanded Russian troops withdraw and called for a “comprehensive, lasting and just peace.” It also demanded that Russia be held accountable for its war crimes and said Russia’s invasion has persisted for three years “and continues to have devastating and long-lasting consequences not only for Ukraine, but also for other regions and global stability.”

Last week, Trump had foreshadowed the events that occurred Monday when he called Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator and falsely claimed that Ukraine, rather than Russia, had started the war.

Lukes says that as shocking as the United States decision was, it’s complicated by the fact that there is no longer a strong block of European countries in lockstep with one another. 

“Unfortunately they are not united,” he says. “There is not a block. There is Hungary. There is Slovakia, and then we have countries that are divided internally, such as Germany, which has a right wing extremist party and a left wing extremist party. Europe, despite decades of the European Union, is still divided enough to not have one reaction to this. And Trump will play up that division and cause them to get even deeper.”

Lukes suggests that even Russian President Vladimir Putin was likely surprised by having the support of the United States. “I heard someone say that Putin treated Trump as his asset and thought he was exaggerating, a figure of speech, to grab someone’s attention. But I have to say now, I don’t know how else to react to the news. I would bet this is beyond anything Mr. Putin could have imagined.”

And, he says, having the United States and Russia aligned against Ukraine will actually hurt the people in both countries—Russia and Ukraine.

“Trump has cemented Putin as a hero to the Russian people by suggesting [nothing is wrong] with his style of government, where he murders anybody who disagrees with him,” Lukes says. “I am a long-term optimist, and a short-term pessimist. But this is obviously very bad for Ukraine.”

The class Lukes taught on Monday covered some of the most volatile moments in recent American diplomacy, including the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and the current moment is a crisis just as fraught, he says.

“I think Putin will never defeat Ukraine because he has created it. He is the one who created a powerful nation that has suffered incredible losses.”