From Rolling Stone / Yahoo!News:
"Zelensky Urges Trump Not to Surrender to Russia
If the United States wants to break that fight up, it would be wise to do it wielding a pretty big stick. The White House has the ability to do this — to hit Putin where it hurts, economically and militarily, the only pressure points to which Russia will respond...
But Trump — in his eagerness to ally the world’s most powerful democracy with a tyrannical aggressor — continues to do nothing to stop Russia but stand on the sidelines uttering weak-kneed protestations, and even those sparingly.
How many times must it be explained that Ukraine is fighting for its existence, while Russia is fighting for conquest? Does anyone need to be told that asking Ukraine to surrender is equivalent to telling a neighbor he should let the armed intruder harm just a few of his kids, so that you can get back to your barbecue in peace, without all the screaming and commotion next door?
Ukraine’s dogged resistance mystifies those who are cowards at heart. Why would anyone want to keep fighting when — as Vice President J.D. Vance is always eager to point out — they are clearly losing?
Simple. Because fighting a losing battle is preferable to extinction. The average barista in Kyiv, awaiting mobilization orders as he messages with friends on the frontlines, has a clearer understanding of the desperate situation than do most American politicians. And yet 82 percent of Ukrainians believe they must continue to fight, even if the U.S. withdraws all support.
“Nations that went down fighting rose again, but those that surrendered tamely were finished,” Winston Churchill told his War Cabinet in May 1940. The modern history of Ukraine — the past 150 years of it, and more — is of a people struggling to define their national identity, amid an unenviable strategic position, crushed between great powers...
Trump... is so uninformed and convinced of his own genius that it is difficult even to engage with the views that drive his crackpot schemes.
Ukraine started the war? Hogwash. The war is a continuation of one that started in 2014, amid years of lies and broken promises by Putin.
Zelensky is the biggest obstacle to peace? Nonsense. Putin started the war; it is the Russian military that occupies Ukrainian lands and attacks Ukrainian cities.
Russia is a land of untapped economic opportunity, more important than Europe? Insanity. In 2021, before the war started, U.S. exports to Russia were $6.4 billion. That same year the U.S. exported $271.6 billion to the European Union alone.
What can a reasonable person say to such a parade of lies and fallacies? Why entertain such nonsense?
Oh, right. Because the American people elected this chaos monkey, this self-absorbed buffoon, knowing full well that he is all of those things and worse...
The “final offer” peace plan unveiled by Trump’s minions in Paris last week was shameful idiocy of the highest order, offering Russia nearly everything it wanted and giving Ukraine nothing...
The party line inside the Trump administration now is to portray support for Ukraine as warmongering, and friendship with Russia as the overriding priority for American foreign policy. Creating robust alliances, taking principled stands against tyranny and aggression, supplying military equipment through drawdowns — this is all woke nonsense, used by corrupt effete foreigners to take advantage of honest red-blooded Americans, or whatever.
It was obvious that the culture wars had come for the real war in Ukraine back in January 2024, when the U.S. Congress shirked its responsibilities as representatives of the American people to block approval of a funding bill under Biden for Ukraine.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) led the charge in kowtowing to Trump, the megalomaniac who holds a mesmerizing influence over his party, the man every Republican politician fears, knowing that if they act against his will, he will unleash the rage of his red-hatted cult with a poorly spelled social media post, rife with Teutonic capitalization of nouns.
There are no checks on Trump. So when he says, as he did last week, that if Russia and Ukraine don’t accede to the deal he has offered, “We’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,’ and we’re going to just take a pass,” there is every reason to believe him. Likely, he will once again cut off military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, moves that would effectively provide support to Russia...
With an eye on Ukraine, the world has already begun to re-arm, investing trillions of dollars on tools of death and destruction as the perceived threat of future conflict grows. Leaders who have previously eschewed nuclear programs have begun to rethink their position.
Will the world be a safer place if dictators are given free rein to pursue schemes of territorial expansion? Will the world be more stable if the only guarantee of survival for smaller nations is to acquire nuclear arsenals?...
The defeatists in the Trump administration believe Ukraine’s battle is lost, and want nothing further to do with helping to secure the peace. Ukrainians will continue to resist regardless. It isn’t just shameful for Trump to walk away from this fight against the tyranny and chaos that threatens to engulf us all.
It is a disastrous error which will have dire consequences."
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