WASHINGTON, February 24. /TASS/. The US is maintaining its course of providing Ukraine with military assistance and is not giving up on its attempts to drain Russia, US analyst and blogger Andrew Napolitano told TASS in an interview.
"The Americans seem notwithstanding what [Donald] Trump promised when he ran for [the presidential] office, determined to support Ukraine militarily – directly or indirectly – in an effort to drain the Russians of their military assets," said the analyst, who also hosts the Judging Freedom podcast.
According to his assessment, Vice President JD Vance and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard are among those in the US leader’s circle who urge him not to help Vladimir Zelensky or use force against Iran. "Donald Trump often listens to <…> the last voice to whisper in his ear. That last voice is undoubtedly going to be Russophobic and neocon. It won't be Vance or Gabbard," Napolitano pointed out. According to him, "it will be somebody like [Homeland Security Advisor] Stephen Miller or [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] General [Dan] Caine or [War] Secretary Pete Hegseth or Senator [Lindsey] Graham (listed as a terrorist and extremist in Russia - TASS), one of those more obviously and notoriously neocon types."
On chances of normalization
Napolitano had difficulty answering the question of whether there is a chance of warmer relations between Russia and the US under a second Trump administration. "If you had asked me a couple of months ago, I would have said it is likely, because I know that [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin would like to normalize relations, particularly economic and commercial relations," the analyst noted. "And I believe that President Trump would like to do the same," he added.
"However, since then, American intelligence services participated in an attack on President Putin's residence. If they thought he was there, it was an assassination attempt. If they knew he wasn't, that was, at the very least, like attacking Mar-a-Lago while Trump is in Washington <…>," Napolitano stressed.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reported that, in the early morning hours of December 29, 2025, Kiev attempted to launch 91 drones at Putin’s state residence in the Novgorod Region. All the drones were destroyed. According to the top diplomat, there were no casualties or damage as a result of the attack.