Trump is a bully and a surrender monkey

From the Guardian:

"What if Ukraine falls? This is no longer a hypothetical question – and it must be answered urgently

Simon Tisdall

 

Europe offers platitudes, Trump dithers, and Ukraine and its extraordinary people stand on the brink. Nato must step up 

 

For 40 cruel and bloody months, Ukraine has fought the Russian invader. Since February 2022, when Moscow’s full-scale, countrywide onslaught began, its people have faced relentless, devastating attacks. Tens of thousands have been killed or wounded, millions have lost their homes. Ukraine’s industries, shops, schools, hospitals and power stations burn, its fertile farmlands are laid waste. Its children are orphaned, traumatised or abducted. Despite repeated appeals, the world has failed to stop the carnage. And yet Ukraine, outnumbered and outgunned, has continued to fight back.

Ukrainian heroism amid horror has become so familiar, it’s almost taken for granted. But as Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, escalates the war, raining nightly terror on Kyiv and other cities using record waves of armed drones, as US support and peace efforts falter, and as Ukraine’s overstretched frontline soldiers face exhaustion, such complacency looks increasingly misplaced. A no longer hypothetical question becomes ever more real and urgent: what if Ukraine falls?...

Increasingly, too, Ukraine is short of reliable friends, though maybe that has always been the case. Putin has assembled his own “coalition of the willing” – China, Iran, North Korea and others – to support his war machine. The west’s equivalent, led by Britain and France, is in limbo...

Speaking in London last week, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, regurgitated familiar pledges of unflinching support. That’s easy. Effective military assistance is harder...

Trump, the US’s surrender monkey, remains Kyiv’s biggest diplomatic headache. His lopsided 30-day ceasefire plan was rejected by Moscow, his proffered US-Russia commercial deals spurned. After months of slandering Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and sucking up to Putin, the “very stable genius” has concluded the Russian leader, an indicted war criminal, talks “bullshit” and cannot be trusted. Well, fancy that.

Trump now says he will resume limited supplies of defensive weapons to Kyiv and may back additional sanctions. But this is not about policy or principle. His ego is damaged. His feelings are hurt. One flattering word from his smirking Kremlin bro could turn him around in a flash. Like all bullies, Trump instinctively favours the stronger party. Little wonder Putin calculates he can wear down Ukraine, outlast the west and win the war.

All is not lost. With or without Trump, Nato could take a tougher line, as repeatedly urged here, by imposing air exclusion zones over unoccupied Ukraine and targeting incoming missiles and drones... Fence-straddlers such as India that refuse to sanction the Kremlin and profit from the war should be invited to read the European court of human rights’ shocking new report on Russian war crimes savagery – and told to pick a side... Putin, not Ukraine, must fall."