As you all know, the button directing you to an English version of a text is usually the British flag.
However, when I created my site decades ago, I preferred the American flag. I was a citizen of the free world grateful for the protection of Pax Americana, and I deeply felt for the USA after Sept. 11. So until quite recently, the top part of my home page looked like this:
However, in the last fifteen years or so, the USA has progressively disappointed me with its adoption of the totalitarian far-left DEI ideology, and with its betrayal first of Georgia and then of Ukraine. Back in 1994, the USA had pressured Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal, promising to defend it in return with the Budapest Memorandum. And now, when Russia was attacking Ukraine, grabbing its land, killing its people and destroying its cities, Obama cynically said: “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.” Things became only worse after Obama, culminating with the current US president Trump openly siding with Russia and joining its effort to destroy Ukraine.
I wouldn't blame any US voter who has cast a ballot for Trump. The alternative looked like an empty-headed puppet who would continue Biden's policy of supporting Ukraine in words while bleeding it to death. However, when Trump showed his true colors as Putin's puppet, Americans should have taken to the streets to riot. Nothing of this sort happened. The same citizens who had rioted over the death of one suspect at the hands of the police, now hardly made a beep. To them, Ukraine is apparently just some far-away place, with a population too white to be of any value.
To me, as to many other Eastern Europeans born in the years of communism, America was a shining city upon a hill, a pillar both of the world I lived in and of my inner world. Now that the city upon the hill has fallen to evil, not only has my hope for a better future diminished, but parts of my inner world are crumbling. And I am asking myself, has the better future even the slimmest chance to come if it is self-destructive? I had excused bad people as products of bad societies, and had hoped that by making the society better, we would pave the way for better and happier people. For I had believed that freedom and prosperity make people flourish and allow them to unfold their best talents. However, this optimistic worldview crashed into the facts, as freedom and prosperity bred evil losers in front of my eyes. Of course, not all Americans are evil losers, maybe even not the majority (yet); but they are apparently enough to determine the course of America's policy.
So I decided to remove the American flag from my site. I wasn't in a hurry because I had more urgent things to do. But most of these urgent tasks were completed yesterday, and today, with a lot of huffing and puffing, I edited my page. Now, it looks like this:
"US response to Russian ballistic missile strike 'weak,' Zelenskyy says
DAVID BRENNAN
Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for "sufficient pressure on Russia" after a
day of missile and drone strikes that killed at least 23 people and as
Kirill Dmitriev -- the CEO of Russia's Direct Investment Fund and an
envoy of President Vladimir Putin -- met with officials in the U.S.
Eighteen
people were killed -- among them nine children -- in a Russian
ballistic missile attack on the central city of Kryvyi Rih on Friday,
Oleksandr Vilkul -- the head of the local defense council -- said in a
post on Telegram. Another 56 people were injured in the strike, Vilkul
said.
U.S.
Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink wrote in a post to X, "Horrified
that tonight a ballistic missile struck near a playground and restaurant
in Kryvyi Rih. More than 50 people injured and 16 killed, including 6
children. This is why the war must end."
Zelenskyy said in a Saturday morning post to Telegram that the American reaction was inadequate.
"Unfortunately,
the reaction of the American Embassy is unpleasantly surprising: such a
strong country, such strong people - and such a weak reaction," he
said. "They are even afraid to say the word 'Russian' when talking about
the missile that killed children."
Russia's Defense
Ministry said the strike targeted a meeting of Ukrainian commanders and
"Western instructors" at a restaurant in the city. Ukrainian officials
disputed the Russian justification.
Zelenskyy
said in a statement on Friday evening that the strike in Kryvyi Rih --
his home town -- hit "an area near residential buildings: hitting a
playground and regular streets," describing those responsible for the
attack as "inhuman."...
"Yes, the war must
end," Zelenskyy wrote in his Saturday morning statement. "But in order
to end it, we must not be afraid to call a spade a spade. We must not be
afraid to put pressure on the only one who continues this war and
ignores all the world's proposals to end it."
"We
must put pressure on Russia, which chooses to kill children instead of a
ceasefire. We must introduce additional sanctions against those who
cannot exist without ballistic strikes on neighboring people. We must do
everything possible to save lives."...
Both Ukraine and Russia have accused the other of continuing strikes on
energy facilities despite the U.S.-brokered partial ceasefire that all
parties said they agreed to last month...
Zelenskyy on Friday again accused Russia of violating the terms of the deal.
"These
strikes cannot be accidental," the president said. "The Russians know
exactly that these are energy facilities and that such facilities should
be protected from any attacks under what Russia itself promised to the
American side."
"Every Russian promise ends with missiles or drones, bombs or artillery," he continued..."
The photos below (18+) are from Ukrainian sources, documenting the scene of the carnage in Kryvyi Rih.
"Addressing the nation
later on Saturday, Zelensky said that it was “wrong and dangerous to
keep silent about the fact that it is Russia that is killing children
with ballistic (missiles).”
“It
only incites the scumbags in Moscow to continue the war and further
ignore diplomacy. Weakness has never ended a war. That is why I am
grateful to every country whose representatives have spoken out:
leaders, foreign ministers, embassies,” he said.
Several European officials condemned Russia for the strike.
British
Ambassador to Ukraine Martin Harris wrote on X: “While Ukraine pursues
peace, Russia is striking civilians far from the frontline. Today’s
ballistic missile attack on Kryvyi Rih shows it has no intention to stop
the war.”
The
German Ambassador to Ukraine Martin Jaeger wrote “Russia is the
aggressor” while reposting information about the strike on X."...
Ukrainian and European leaders have made clear they believe Putin is
stalling, believing time is on his side, while Trump and his envoy Steve
Witkoff – who has met Putin twice this year – have insisted Putin does
want a peace deal."
"Putin is using a classic Russian negotiating tactic to delay a ceasefire
Roland Oliphant
Vladimir Putin had
three options: accept Ukraine’s ceasefire offer, but surrender momentum
on the battlefield; reject it and risk antagonising Donald Trump; or try
to drag things out so he can continue fighting as long as possible.
He has chosen option three.
By praising the US president
and the idea of stopping the war, he hopes to stay in Mr Trump’s good
books. But his immediate raising of “nuances” to discuss should be a red
flag.
By
breaking every proposal down into an infinite number of constituent
parts, he will attempt to appear co-operative while playing for time,
bogging down the talks, and trying to use facts on the ground to squeeze
out the maximum possible concessions.
So Mr Trump and his cabinet now face a test of nerve and credibility.
They
could ignore Mr Putin’s excuses about “nuances” and demand he order a
ceasefire immediately – it is, after all, entirely in his power to do
so.
That would mean showing the kind of impatience and coercion they applied to Volodymyr Zelensky.
This could include unleashing the “bone-breaking” sanctions package
Senator Lindsey Graham has threatened if Russia does not comply – in
other words, smacking the Kremlin’s “donkey” face with a two-by-four, as
Gen Keith Kellogg, Donald Trump’s special envoy, boasted to have done
to Ukraine.
Mr Putin is far from invincible. He has been losing upwards of 1,000
soldiers a day, his economy is overheating, and he’ll face serious
domestic headaches by 2026 on the current trajectory.
If the Americans get tough, he will probably fold.
However,
they could get drawn into Putin’s painstaking discussion of the
details. That would be to repeat mistakes made by successive US
presidents going back to Barack Obama.
Putin already gave a sense of the cards he will seek to play on in those talks.
He also demanded that Ukraine be prevented from mobilising troops during
the proposed 30-day truce or redeploying weapons to the front. That
would effectively deny Ukraine the opportunity to defend itself from
renewed Russian attack.
This will give
Ukrainians deja vu. In 2014 and 2015, Mr Putin twice used encirclement
of Ukrainian troops to force punishing ceasefire deals on his own terms.
Last
time, it was the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
that provided unarmed observers to diligently count explosions and
measure the size of fresh craters. They were unable to stop the war,
because they were constantly deceived.
In
2014, for example, Russia made a great show of agreeing to host OSCE
observer missions at its border checkpoints to make sure no troops or
weapons were crossing into Ukraine.
In fact, Russia
confined the observers to the official customs post in accordance with
their mandate, while driving tanks and troops – including the missile
launcher that shot down MH17 – into Ukraine across a field just a few
miles away.
I know, because I saw them do it.
Maybe, in defiance of all expectations, the fighting will cease this weekend.
Otherwise,
Putin will try to lure the Americans into open-ended diplomacy while
using force to wring maximalist concessions and lay the groundwork to
blame Ukraine if – when – the talks (or the ceasefire, if things get
that far) collapses.
Now the world is waiting to see what Russia wants, rather than what Ukraine needs or the United States desires.
The U.S. president sees peace as a means to an end. In his case, bragging rights over Joe Biden and European leaders who have fretted over the bloody conflict for three years.
Of
course, Trump also wants the killing to stop. But picking up the phone
to the Kremlin and sending over your golfing buddy to knock some sense
into the Russians is playing into Putin’s hands.
Because Moscow has no interest in peace.
It is Trump’s strategy, or rather, his lack of strategy, that interests Putin and his pit bull foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov...
There’s a reason the Russian leader sees Witkoff as a man he can do
business with. He may be a good negotiator, but he’s a property guy.
World peace is a new gig...
“It’s like sending Witkoff into a lion’s den with Putin and Lavrov,”
said the source. “Putin is now in a position where he can call the
shots. Trump has created a situation for him that simply wasn’t there
before.
“Whatever he says, Putin will not stop the war. Even if he agrees to a
ceasefire, he will look for a way to blame Ukraine for breaking it.”
Another insider, who
asked not to be named for fear of reprisals from Trump, added: “He may
not know it, but Trump is Putin’s puppet right now. He thinks he knows
what he’s doing, but he is dancing to Russia’s tune. And they don’t want
peace.”
The insider said Putin’s overriding interest is in achieving his imperialist goals..."
Donald Trump’s approach
to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has always been to root for Russia
while pretending he isn’t. Trump just hates killing and death. More than
that, he hates sending American money overseas. The claim that he
actually agrees with Moscow is a hoax, remember. Trump is all
about putting America first. Or so he’s said, and so his mostly
non-Russophilic supporters claim to believe.
But
now he has flung the mask to the ground. The president’s latest
positions on the war reveal that he is indifferent to ongoing
slaughter—indeed, he is willing to increase it—and that his opposition
to Ukraine’s independence has nothing to do with saving American tax
dollars. Trump simply wants Russia to win.
In recent days, Trump has said
he is “looking at” a plan to revoke the temporary legal status of
Ukrainians who fled to the United States. After Ukraine expressed
willingness to sign away a large share of the proceeds from its
natural-resource sales (in return for nothing), Trump said that might
not be enough to restore support. Trump is now pushing Ukraine’s
president to step down and hold elections, according to NBC. Volodymyr Zelensky’s domestic approval rating
sits at 67 percent, and his most viable opponents have said that they
oppose elections at the present time. The notion that Trump actually
cares about democracy, and would downgrade his relations with a foreign
country over its failure to meet his high governance standards, is so
laughable that even a Trump loyalist like Sean Hannity would have
trouble saying it with a straight face.
Trump exposed his
preferences most clearly in his decision to cut off the supply of
intelligence to Ukraine. The effect of this sudden reversal—which does
not save the American taxpayer any money—was immediate and dramatic.
Russian air attacks, now enjoying the element of surprise, pounded newly
exposed Ukrainian civilian targets, leaving scenes of death and
destruction.
The
grim spectacle of watching the death toll spike, without any appreciable
benefit to American interests, ought to have had a sobering effect on
the president. At least it would have if his ostensible objectives were
his actual ones. Instead, he seemed visibly pleased.
Paying close attention to his rhetoric reveals the significance of the
turn. Speaking to reporters from his desk in the Oval Office, Trump,
asked whether the bombing campaign changes his oft-expressed view that
Vladimir Putin desires peace, affirmed that it does not. “I believe
him,” he said. “I think we’re doing very well with Russia. But right now
they’re bombing the hell out of Ukraine, and Ukraine—I’m finding it
more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. And they don’t have the
cards.” It was Trump himself, of course, who had taken “cards” away from
Ukraine by suddenly exposing its cities to bombardment.
A reporter asked if Putin was “taking advantage” of Trump’s move. Trump
made clear that the Russian president was doing precisely what he had
expected. “I think he’s doing what anybody else would do,” he said.
“I think he wants to get it stopped and settled, and I think he’s
hitting ’em harder than he’s been hitting ’em, and I think probably
anybody in that position would be doing that right now. He wants to get
it ended, and I think Ukraine wants to get it ended, but I don’t see—it’s crazy, they’re taking tremendous punishment. I don’t quite get it.”
Why not, a reporter asked, provide air defenses? “Because I have to know
that they want to settle,” Trump replied. “I don’t know that they want
to settle. If they don’t want to settle, we’re out of there, because we
want them to settle, and I’m doing it to stop death.”
Trump’s rhetoric signals an important evolution in his policy. He is no
longer arguing for peace at any price. Instead, he has identified a good
guy (Russia) and a bad guy (Ukraine). The good guy definitely wants
peace. The bad guy is standing in the way of a settlement. Consequently,
the only way to secure peace is for the good guy to inflict more death
on the bad guy. Increasing the body count on the bad guy’s side, while
regrettable, is now the fastest way to stop death...
If you want to see where Trump’s position is going next, pay attention
to the bleatings of his closest supporters, who echo his impulses and
point it in new directions. Elon Musk, for example, has begun demanding
sanctions on Ukraine’s “oligarchs” and blaming them for American
support for Kyiv. This is an echo of Putin’s long-standing claim that
Ukraine is dominated by an unrepresentative class of oligarchs who have
steered it away from its desired and natural place as a Russian vassal.
The fixation with Ukraine’s corruption and the push to replace Zelensky
both reflect Russian war aims. Putin wishes to delegitimize any
Ukrainian government mirroring its population’s desire for independence,
which would allow him to control the country either directly or through
a puppet leader, like the kind he enjoyed before 2014 and has in
Belarus today.
Ukraine certainly has its share of wealthy, influential business owners,
but not nearly to the extent of Russia itself, whose entire economy is
structured around oligarchic domination. And Trump is even less
disturbed by corruption than he is by a lack of democracy. His
administration’s earliest moves
included defending or pardoning American politicians charged with
corruption and ending enforcement of restrictions on bribing foreign
governments. For that matter, Musk himself, who has obliterated
conflict-of-interest guardrails by running much of the federal
government while operating businesses with massive interest in public
policy, fits the definition of oligarch neatly.
Senator Mark Kelly recently visited Ukraine and wrote on X, “Any
agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to
Putin.” (His post did not mention Trump.) Musk replied,
“You are a traitor,” which would be a rather odd sentiment unless one
considered Ukraine an enemy of the United States. Where Musk is going,
Trump is likely to follow.
Trump inherited an American government pushing to defend Ukrainian
sovereignty. He has reversed American policy rapidly. The American
position has already passed the point of neutrality. The new American
goal is no longer simply to end the war, but to end it on Putin’s terms.
Asked on Fox News Sunday
if he was comfortable with the possibility that his actions would
threaten Ukraine’s survival, Trump responded blithely, “Well, it may not
survive anyway.” That is not merely a prediction. It is the goal."
From the Guardian / Yahoo!News (read the entire article):
"How Trump is driving US towards Russia – a timeline of the president’s moves
Léonie Chao-Fong in Washington
12 February: Trump-Putin call to begin negotiations on ending war
12 February – rules out Nato membership for Ukraine
On the same day as the Putin-Trump call, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine.
Hegseth, speaking at a summit in Brussels, said it was “unrealistic” for
Ukraine to expect to return to its pre-2014 borders, and insisted that
any peace agreement would have to be secured by “capable European and
non-European troops”, whom he stressed would not come from the US.
14 February – ignores Ukraine war to attack European allies in Munich speech
European leaders were stunned when US vice-president JD Vance launched a blistering ideological attack on Washington’s allies and questioned whether the US and Europe any longer had a shared agenda...
18 February – holds talks to agree on improving diplomatic relations
Top US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to hold their most extensive high-level talks since
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, during which they agreed to
work towards ending the war and improving US-Russian diplomatic and
economic ties...
No Ukrainian or European officials were present at the meeting.
19 February – blames Kyiv for starting the war, calls for elections in Ukraine
Trump also pressured Zelenskyy to hold elections – echoing one of Moscow’s key demands. Under Ukraine’s constitution, elections are suspended while martial law is in force.
24 February – votes with Russia in the UN resolutions
In a dramatic shift in transatlantic relations, the US split with its European allies and sided with Russia in votes at the United Nations to mark the third anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The
US joined Russia, Belarus and North Korea in voting against a
European-drafted UN general assembly resolution condemning Russia’s
actions and supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity...
The
US then drafted and voted for a resolution in the UN security council
which called for a “swift end to the conflict”, but contained no
criticism of Russia. The Kremlin praised Washington for its “much more
balanced” stance and backed the resolution.
28 February – publicly berates Zelenskyy in the Oval Office
1 March – retreats from fight against Russian cyber threats
...Analysts
at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have
been instructed not to follow or report on Russian threats, even though
this had previously been a main focus for the agency.
3 and 5 March: suspends US military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine
The Trump administration was also reported to be drawing up a plan
to restore ties with Russia and lift sanctions on the Kremlin, as part
of the administration’s broad talks with Moscow on improving diplomatic
and economic relations.
7 March – says it’s ‘easier’ to work with Moscow than Kyiv
Speaking
to reporters in the Oval Office after a massive missile and drone
strike on Ukraine, Trump said he finds it “easier” to work with Russia
than Ukraine and that Putin “wants to end the war”.
“I
believe him,” Trump said when asked if he believed Putin still wanted
peace. “I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine.
They don’t have the cards.” He added that he has “always had a good
relationship” with Putin.
Asked
if the Russian leader was taking advantage of the pause in US
intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine, Trump replied: “I
think he’s doing what anyone else would do.”
""This is what happens when someone appeases barbarians": Putin defies Trump, escalates attacks
Sophia Tesfaye
Hours after President Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office where he publicly berated
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the week before that his
administration is "doing very well with Russia" and "it may be easier
dealing with" Russian President Vladimir Putin than Ukraine, the Russian military launched a series of deadly missile and drone attacks, killing dozens of civilians.
"This
is what happens when someone appeases barbarians," Polish Prime
Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X. "More bombs, more aggression, more
victims."
tps://x.com/donaldtusk/status/1898345561637417048
According to the BBC, at least 25 people died as a result of the missile attacks.
"After our emergency services arrived at the scene" of the first wave of
missiles, Zeleneskyy wrote on X, Russia "launched another strike,
deliberately targeting the rescuers."
“I actually think
[Putin is] doing what anybody else would do,” Trump told reporters at
the White House Friday afternoon. “He wants to get it ended.”
This
week, the Trump administration suspended weapons shipments to Ukraine
and stopped sharing satellite intelligence with the nation."
