"Rubio says Ukraine conflict is part of US-Russia proxy war
Lauren Irwin
Secretary of State
Marco Rubio in a Wednesday interview described the war in Ukraine as a
proxy war between the United States and Russia, as he sought to explain
on the Oval Office blowup last week between Ukraine President Volodymyr
Zelensky, President Trump and Vice President Vance.
“I
think an important thing to understand about last Friday is not last
Friday. It’s everything that led up to it,” Rubio said during an
interview on Fox News’s “Hannity.”
“It’s
been very clear from the beginning that President Trump views this as a
protracted, stalemated conflict,” Rubio said. “And frankly, it’s a
proxy war between nuclear powers, the United States helping Ukraine, and
Russia.”...
Describing the fighting between Russia and Ukraine as a proxy war meshes
with a Russian narrative of why the war started. Russia argues that
Ukraine’s efforts to join NATO, coupled with the western military
alliance’s encroachment on Russia, triggered the fighting.
Trump in the past few weeks has accused Ukraine of starting the war and
blamed Zelensky and the Biden administration for its continuation. He
also cut off aid to Ukraine on Monday...
Rubio slammed Ukraine during the interview on “Hannity,” arguing that it
has no plan besides asking allied countries for more aid “for as long
as it takes.”."
"Trump envoy says Ukrainians 'brought it on themselves' after US pauses aid and intelligence sharing
AAMER MADHANI
"WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukraine was given “fair warning” by the White House before President Donald Trump this week ordered a pause on U.S. military assistance and intelligence sharing with Kyiv, a senior administration official said Thursday.
The Republican administration announced the pauses this week after Trump and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy'sOval Office meeting
devolved into a shouting match, with the U.S. president and Vice
President JD Vance excoriating the Ukrainian leader for being
insufficiently grateful for the tens of billions of dollars in U.S.
assistance sent to Ukraine since Russia invaded three years ago.
Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg,
Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, said the pause is already
having an impact on Kyiv, adding that the Ukrainians "brought it on
themselves."
“The best way I can
describe it is sort of like hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the
nose,” Kellogg said at an event Thursday at the Council on Foreign
Relations. “You got their attention.”
Kellogg
said it was made clear to the Ukrainians before last week’s Oval Office
meeting that the talks would focus on signing a critical minerals deal. The agreement, which the two sides still have not signed, would give the U.S. access to Ukraine's rare earth deposits... Zelenskyy had been pressing the White House for explicit security guarantees, to no avail.
Kellogg
said last week's talks went sideways because Zelenskyy pressed Trump —
who is trying to play the role of intermediary to broker peace between
Ukraine and Russia — to side with Kyiv...
“I think what’s going to happen is Ukraine wants to make a deal, because I don’t think they have a choice,” Trump said."
"Trump says Putin is currently 'doing what anybody else would do'
DPA
On a day when he
threatened Moscow with sanctions over its heavy bombardment of Ukrainian
positions, US President Donald Trump expressed understanding for
Russian President Vladimir Putin's current approach in the Ukraine war.
"I
actually think he's doing what anybody else would do," Trump said on
Friday when asked whether Putin was taking advantage of the current
suspension of US military aid to Kiev.
"Probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now," the US president added.
Trump again emphasized
his "good relationship" with Putin and claimed that the Russian
president wants "to end the war," adding: "I think he's going to be more
generous than he has to be."
Asked
why his administration was no longer providing Ukraine with defence
funds and what would happen when those funds ran out, Trump replied:
"Because I have to know that they want to settle. 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.""
***
So far, however, Trump has only increased death - death of Ukrainians, whom he hates as any evil man hates good people.
"Yes, America has an obligation to help defend Ukraine
Bohdan Vitvitsky, opinion contributor
When the former Soviet
republics declared independence in the early 1990s, Ukraine became the
owner of the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. At the time,
American leaders seemed to think that, as far as our own security was
concerned, Russia would be a safer repository than Ukraine for nuclear
arms.
We were, to be
sure, a bit enamored — first with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
and then with Russian President Boris Yeltsin. In retrospect, it is
unclear which was more mystifying: thinking that Russia would be a
better friend to America than Ukraine, or thinking that Ukraine could be
a bigger threat than Russia to America.
But after numerous
negotiations and much American arm-twisting, the Ukrainians agreed to
our demands. That agreement was memorialized in what is referred to as the Budapest Memorandum, signed by Ukraine, the U.S., the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation in 1994.
The
Budapest Memorandum is something of an odd document. It was executed in
three languages — English, Ukrainian and Russian. The English-language
version is titled “Memorandum on Security Assurances in Connection with
Ukraine’s Accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons.” The title of the Ukrainian version starts “Memorandum on
Security Guarantees” — not “Assurances.”
Ukrainian negotiators
have maintained that America promised that if Ukraine were attacked, the
U.S. would respond in defense. Former Amb. Steven Pifer, a member of
the U.S. negotiating team, has confirmed to me that indeed, although
never providing a NATO Article Five-type guarantee, American negotiators
did promise the Ukrainians that if they were invaded, the U.S. would
take an interest and act in their defense.
But
what is perhaps most striking about the Budapest Memorandum is the
extraordinary imbalance in bargaining power among the parties. Between
1991 and 1994, the U.S. and Russia basically ganged up on Ukraine to
pressure it to denuclearize. Ukraine did do, destroying or transferring
to Russia its bombers and rockets.
Some have since argued that, because it is very expensive to maintain a
strategic nuclear arsenal, and because it was then undergoing a
difficult economic transition, Ukraine would not have been able to
afford to maintain the bombers and rockets whose nuclear warheads
required frequent and expensive refueling. Perhaps. But during that same
three-year pressure campaign, Russia also managed in 1992 to
surreptitiously extract for itself the tactical nuclear arms located in
Ukraine. Tactical nuclear arms are much easier and less expensive to
maintain and would today serve as a valuable deterrent.
When two parties with very unequal bargaining power reach agreement,
often because the much weaker party is acting under duress, and the
weaker party performs its part of the deal, courts sometimes try to fix
the bargain to make it less unfair. To be sure, there are no
international courts as there are domestic courts that could force
America or Russia to act in compliance with their respective promises in
the first paragraph of the Budapest Memorandum, in which they
reaffirmed “their commitment to Ukraine … to respect the Independence
and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.” But the lack of
such a court does not make America’s moral and political obligation
disappear.
The U.S. placed intense pressure upon Ukraine to denuclearize, although,
given the repeated invasions that Ukraine had endured over the
preceding century, it was not in Ukrainian interest to do so fully. But
Ukraine did completely denuclearize, as the U.S. had insisted and as
memorialized in the Budapest Memorandum.
Since then, Ukraine has twice been invaded by Russia, in 2014 and 2022.
Based on the promises it made to Ukraine and on the nature of the
negotiations it conducted, the U.S. has an obligation — short of boots
on the ground — to provide Ukraine with what it needs to defend its
territorial integrity and political independence. Pretending that we
have forgotten all about the Budapest Memorandum and the negotiations
leading up to it won’t wash, and it certainly is not befitting a great
power to ignore its past promises."
"Trump Doubles Down on America’s Betrayal of Ukraine
Mac William Bishop
The United States has
stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine, less than two days after
announcing Washington was suspending military aid to its former ally.
“We
have taken a step back and are pausing and reviewing all aspects of
this relationship,” said National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, speaking
to reporters outside the White House Wednesday.
CIA
Director John Ratcliffe, in an interview on Fox Business, confirmed
that President Donald Trump had ordered a halt to intelligence
cooperation, as well as military aid.
The Trump
administration’s eagerness to blow up relations with America’s erstwhile
ally over a mineral-extraction deal highlights the reality that there
is no actual U.S. peace plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine — only an
effort to secure economic advantage over a nation devastated by war
through the withholding of critical aid.
American
intelligence capabilities — particularly electronic intercepts, signals
intelligence, and real-time imagery — cannot be easily replicated. The
loss of access to this information will be keenly felt in Kyiv.
“Intelligence being
stopped is a much bigger deal than the Americans stopping weapons and
ammo deliveries,” Franz-Stefan Gady, the founder of independent defense
research firm Gady Consulting and an associate at the International
Institute for Strategic Studies, tells Rolling Stone. “It could be temporary, but I think the damage is already being done.”
The
Ukrainian military particularly relies on U.S. intelligence for
tactical targeting, Gady says, such as intercepting units that are on
the move, hitting temporary command posts, or striking staging areas
where Russians are forming for offensive operations.
“Ultimately, the U.S. decision will cost more Ukrainian lives,” Gady notes.
Ukraine
has relied on support from Washington and other democratic allies to
stave off Russia’s invasion, which began just over three years ago.
European nations have provided about $142 billion in financial support, according to
the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research
organization which tracks aid to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the United States
has provided about $123 billion, more than half of which was military
assistance in the form of weaponry, ammunition, and intelligence support
— dwarfing any other source of direct military aid.
Although Trump and key members of his inner circle have long signaled
their intention to walk away from Ukraine, the speed with which
Washington has conducted a complete turnaround in policy is dizzying.
This was evidenced in a disastrous meeting last week that was supposed
to showcase the signing of a resource-extraction deal intended to give
the United States access to key minerals in Ukraine, such as rare-earth
minerals used in batteries and various defense applications.
Instead, Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance delivered a televised lashing to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office before the assembled international press corps.
Zelensky
was then unceremoniously booted from the White House, with the resource
deal unsigned, amid demands that he apologize to Trump.
On Tuesday, Zelensky responded with a carefully worded social media post
aimed at placating his irate counterpart — and putting the onus on the
American president to deliver on his rhetoric of overseeing a peace deal
that protects Ukraine’s sovereignty.
“Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to
work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that
lasts,” Zelensky wrote.
Zelensky also said he was still ready to sign the resource deal.
Waltz,
speaking outside the White House, said conversations with Kyiv were
ongoing “just in the last 24 hours since the public statement from
Zelensky.”
“I think we’re going to see movement in very short order,” he added.
Other
members of Trump’s cabinet, however, have implied that the original
agreement is no longer adequate. When asked if the deal was still on the
table, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told one reporter: “Not at present.”
The
White House does not yet appear to have officially responded to
Zelensky’s message, but Trump did reference it in his joint address to
Congress on Tuesday night.
“Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible,” Trump said.
The
move to end intelligence-sharing with Ukraine is part of a broader
shift in American foreign policy under Trump, who wants to force Kyiv’s
capitulation to Moscow. Support for Ukraine in its ongoing resistance to
Russia’s full-scale invasion is a barrier to Trump’s ambitions to
normalize relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and reduce
Washington’s commitments to its traditional allies in Europe.
The broadside in the
Oval Office last week came as a shock to European leaders, who had
continued to hope that the U.S. under Trump would make a good-faith
effort to secure a peace deal advantageous to Ukraine and Europe more
generally. The announcement of the suspension of aid on Monday
reinforced that this was more than a minor disagreement between Trump
and Zelensky.
Now, Europe is awakening to the reality that they are on their own.
“We are living in the
most momentous and dangerous of times,” European Commission President
Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday, announcing a proposal for a $160
billion pan-European fund to pay for air defenses, drones, and other
critical military items, saying that the eventual amount will reach $800
billion.
While
Trump can unilaterally cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine and abandon it to its
fate — much to the dismay of American allies around the world — he
cannot actually force Ukrainians to stop defending themselves against
Russia.
Nor can he force Putin
to withdraw his forces from Ukraine. So far, the Trump administration
has not publicly demanded any concessions from Moscow as it works to
restore ties. It has, however, already signaled its willingness to make
concessions to Putin — taking NATO membership for Ukraine off the table, saying Kyiv would have to concede territory, floating economic partnerships with Moscow, and permitting an expanded Russian diplomatic mission to Washington.
Trump
obliquely referred to this process before Congress, saying that
“serious discussions with Russia” were ongoing, and adding that he had
“received strong signals that they are ready for peace.”
“Wouldn’t that be
beautiful? It’s time to stop this madness. It’s time to halt the
killing. It’s time to end this senseless war. If you want to end wars,
you have to talk to both sides,” Trump said.
In
the meantime, Russian drones and missiles continue to bombard Ukrainian
cities nightly. The bulk of these are intercepted by Ukrainian air
defenses. But some get through. Ukrainians awake each day to the night’s
grim tally of destruction and casualties. The suspension of U.S. aid is
sure to increase the carnage.
“Ukraine relies heavily
on U.S. Patriot systems for its air defense umbrella to protect against
Russian missile strikes against Ukraine’s rear areas,” the Institute
for the Study of War notes.
“The shortage and eventual lack of Patriot missiles is likely to have
severe impacts on the safety of Ukraine’s critical, industrial, and
civilian infrastructure.”
Ukraine’s
military situation is grim. While its defensive lines are holding and
it consistently inflicts greater casualties on Russia than it suffers
itself, the numbers are not in its favor and it continues to lose
ground.
“It
looks like [Trump] is pushing us toward capitulation,” Oleksandr
Merezhko, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Verkhovna
Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, told Reuters when asked about the
suspension of aid.
While Ukraine is not on
the verge of defeat, the defense analyst Gady notes, the overall trend
is still negative. The suspension of American aid will affect Ukrainian
morale.
“The message
is that you cannot rely on the United States in this war any longer to
help you beat back Russian aggression,” he says.
“Roosevelt and Churchill are turning in their graves,” wrote Ukrainian activist Yuri Kasyanov on his Telegram channel. “America has finally switched to the side of global evil.”"
"Russian Sociologist Says American Ruling Elite Now Following ‘Typically Soviet Traditions’
Paul Goble
Staunton, Mar. 3 – Igor Eidman, a Russian sociologist
who now lives in Berlin exile, says that under President Donald Trump,
the ruling elite is restoring “typically Soviet traditions,” including a
cult around the leader, servility before him, doublethink and readiness
to change directions upon instructions from that leader.
According to the sociologist, “the cult of Trump has already surpassed
the glorification of ‘dear Leonid Ilich’ and approached that of Stalin:
The leader is always right, period. Anyone who doubts is an enemy of the
people and anyone who argues with the leader is insulting the country
(t.me/igoreidman/2037 reposted at
https://echofm.online/opinions/amerikanskij-sovok-i-ego-vozhd).h
Eidman continues: “Trump’s boorish attack on Zelensky is somewhat
reminiscent of the start of the conflict between Stalin and Tito. At the
end of the war, Yugoslav leaders timidly complained that Soviet
soldiers were raping local women.” Stalin was outraged and immediately
went on the attack. “Interestingly,” the Russian commentator
says, “Stalin accused Tito as Trump has Zelensky, of ingratitude.”... Tito went from being viewed as a hero to an
enemy overnight. “As soon as Stalin took offense, all Soviet leaders
began to imitate hatred towards the leader of Yugoslavia,” Eidman says.
“The same is true now: as soon as Trump and Vance attacked Zelensky,
most of the Republicans who had earlier sympathized with Ukraine,
servilely joined in these attacks.”
Russians remember that in Soviet times, people “cut out the faces of
friends declared to be enemies of the people” from photographs, he
continues. “Many Republicans are behaving in the same way. Senator Roger
Wicker for example immediately deleted a post with a photo of himself
shaking hands with Zelensky after Trump’s display of anger.”
Such people, Eidman argues, “are themselves against Putin and in their
hearts are for Ukraine, but they publicly support the anti-Ukrainian
hysteria of the narcissistic boss.” That parallels what happened in the
USSR: “Soviet party critics condemned ‘dissident bourgeois art,’ while
at the same time secretly collecting” the paintings and poems they
slandered.
In short, “the Republican Party is becoming an
American clone of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union - M. M.]. Several party dissidents still sit in
Congress, but they probably will be purged in the next round of
primaries and will not be allowed to take part in elections again. The
rest praise Comrade Trump, ‘the organizer and inspirer of all our
victories.’ Slaves, miserable slaves.”
And these parallels will
continue after Putin leaves the scene. When the situation changes, when
criticizing the leader becomes not dangerous but profitable, the party
slaves will gladly take him out of the virtual Mausoleum and declare
that ‘our father turned out to be not a father but a bastard,’ just as
their Soviet predecessors did after 1953."
"Trump halting Ukraine’s military aid is ‘pushing us towards capitulation,’ Ukrainian lawmaker says
Christiaan Hetzner
The United States ordered a halt on all shipments of military support to Ukraine—a
move that drives a deeper wedge between President Donald Trump and
Volodymyr Zelensky. “The Trump administration no longer wants to feed
the Nazi mutt in Kyiv,” crowed Putin official Dmitry Medvedev.
President
Donald Trump’s decision to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in
arms and ammunition for Ukraine has emboldened Russia while pushing Kyiv
further to the brink.
Ukrainian
lawmaker Oleksiy Honcharenko called the move a “catastrophe,” while
Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the foreign affairs committee, said it
appeared Trump was “pushing us towards capitulation.”
“To stop aid now means to help [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” Merezhko told Reuters.
“On the surface, this
looks really bad. It looks like he is pushing us towards capitulation,
meaning [accepting] Russia’s demands.”
The
decision is the latest setback for Ukraine, which is still reeling from
a tense Oval Office press briefing Friday, where friction between Trump
and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky boiled over.
Kremlin
officials were quick to celebrate. “The Trump administration no longer
wants to feed the Nazi mutt in Kyiv,” said Dmitry Medvedev, a top
Russian official and former president. Putin spokesman Dmitry Leskov
added that the move “can push the Kyiv regime toward a peace process”
but did not acknowledge Russia’s role as the aggressor in the war...
Trump campaigned on ending the war but has so far leaned on Kyiv to
accept territorial concessions without securing Russian guarantees in
return...
Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio held talks with Russian
officials in the highest-level U.S.-Russia meeting since the war began. A
day later, Trump labeled Zelensky a “dictator” and echoed Moscow’s
claims that Ukraine provoked the war.
Trump has also
reportedly instructed his cabinet to explore lifting U.S. economic
sanctions on Russia and ordered the Pentagon to halt cyber operations
targeting the country.
Yet, despite these overtures, Russia has made no concessions.
Musk floats exile for Zelensky
As
Trump moves away from Zelensky and toward closer ties with Russia, some
of his allies have sought to justify the shift. While Trump’s MAGA base
largely supports Putin over Zelensky, most Americans still view Putin
as an authoritarian who has imprisoned or killed political opponents.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk added to the controversy Monday by suggesting that Zelensky be offered exile.
“As distasteful as it is, Zelensky should be offered amnesty in a
neutral country in exchange for a peaceful transition back to democracy
in Ukraine,” Musk wrote—a statement that, critics noted, would make more
sense if applied to Putin and Russia instead."
"Former NATO commander says war in Ukraine ‘a long way from being over’
Tara Suter
Former NATO Supreme Allied Cmdr. Wesley Clark said on Sunday that the war in Ukraine is “a long way from being over.”
“[The]
war’s a long way from being over,” Clark told NewsNation’s Chris
Stirewalt on “The Hill Sunday.” “It’s [hard] to look at Russia through
Russian eyes. Most of us look at Russia, we say, ‘The economy’s in
trouble, forces aren’t going very far very fast, they’re taking a lot of
casualties.’”
“But,
you have to look at Russia through Russian history, Russian culture and
Russian current mechanisms. Putin’s building a war machine. Military
industrial complex in Russia going 24/7, getting a lot of support from
China, Iran, North Korea. He hasn’t really tapped all of his manpower
reserves. He’s trying to do this on the cheap,” he added.
Following
the meeting, Trump said on his Truth Social platform that the Ukrainian
president “is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he
feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations.”
Trump has been pushing for an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, with U.S. and Russian officials meeting in Saudi Arabia last month.
In his “The Hill Sunday” appearance, Clark said that Putin is “in a very strong bargaining position.”
“But Chris, the other thing is, so is Ukraine. This incident in the
White House, it resulted in support for Zelensky and Ukraine from Europe
and from the people in Ukraine,” Clark added. “They’re not about to
surrender Ukraine to Russia.”"
***
As
you see, the expert Clark agrees with Zelensky that peace is nowhere in
sight - the same statement that allegedly enraged Trump, the great
peacemaker.
"Opinion - Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was never about NATO expansion
Oleh S. Ilnytzkyj, opinion contributor
Last week, Trump-appointed special envoy Steve Witkoff called Ukraine’s NATO ambitions “a threat to the Russians,”
implying that this is what provoked the war three years ago. “The war
didn’t need to happen — it was provoked. It doesn’t necessarily mean it
was provoked by the Russians,” Witkoff said on CNN.
His
message is clear: Russia was backed into a corner, forced to act in
self-defense when it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in
2022. The evidence, of course, tells a different story — one of imperial
ambition, not self-preservation.
The claim that NATO expansion triggered the war is nothing new. Western
leaders, including those in the Biden administration, France and
Germany, have long voiced concerns
about Ukraine’s membership, often out of fear of escalating tensions
with Russia. But what President Trump is doing is qualitatively
different, and far more dangerous.
Previous
administrations sought to prevent an all-out NATO-Russia conflict, but
they never endorsed the idea that Ukraine was to blame for the war.
Their hesitation was a strategic calculation to avoid another world war.
Witkoff’s comments, however, go much further: they directly echo Russian propaganda, arguing that Ukraine’s pursuit of security guarantees was reckless and that NATO ambitions caused the war.
With these remarks, the U.S. has now officially embraced one of Russia’s biggest lies.
The
truth is that Ukraine was nowhere near joining NATO. There was no
Membership Action Plan, and key NATO members had made it clear they were
unwilling to admit Ukraine any time soon.
Ukraine’s NATO
aspirations were not a provocation. They were a response to Russian
aggression: the illegal annexation of Crimea, the Russian proxy war in Donbas, and Moscow’s long-standing efforts to control Ukraine politically, economically and culturally.
In his Feb. 21, 2022,
speech justifying the war, Putin barely mentioned NATO. Instead, he
fixated on Ukraine as an artificial state, an accident of history, a
wayward part of the so-called “Russian world.” His argument had nothing
to do with military threats or self-defense; it was an assertion of
imperial entitlement. It echoed his 2021 essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which outright denied Ukraine’s legitimacy as a sovereign nation.
Russia’s pre-invasion demands further
expose the hollowness of the NATO excuse. Moscow didn’t just insist
that Ukraine never join the alliance — it demanded NATO withdraw from
Eastern Europe entirely, rolling back security guarantees for Poland,
the Baltics and other frontline states. This was never just about
Ukraine. It was a broader push to reassert Russian dominance over its
former empire.
Russia’s pattern of aggression is the clearest refutation of the “NATO expansion” myth. Georgia, attacked in 2008, was not on the verge of NATO membership. Ukraine, invaded in 2014,
had no realistic path to joining the alliance. Russia was not and is
not defending itself against NATO — it is targeting neighbors seeking
independence from its grip.
Witkoff’s disgraceful parroting of Kremlin propaganda is not diplomacy
in pursuit of peace. It is a demoralizing attempt to undermine Ukraine
and weaken Europe. By framing any defensive posture as a “provocation”
against Russia while excusing Russian aggression as self-defense, he
legitimizes the very logic used to justify war and subjugation.
"Trump is surrendering a century's worth of U.S. global power in a matter of weeks
Matt K. Lewis
Donald Trump didn’t
invent the American tradition of ditching our friends like a bad prom
date (ask the Kurds, Afghan interpreters or anyone who sat through
“Rambo: First Blood Part II”). But since returning to office, he’s taken
this all-too-frequent bad habit and made it official U.S. policy.
The
latest example? Trump’s conclusion that Volodymyr Zelensky, the leader
of Ukraine — you know, the country currently being turned into rubble by
Russian missiles — is “not ready for peace” and that he “disrespected
the United States of America.” This latter statement (made live on TV
during a heated Oval Office meeting), came on the heels of Trump taking
to social media to call him a “dictator.”
It would be hard to
overstate how rapidly this relationship has fallen apart. In case you
missed it, Trump took it upon himself to negotiate Ukraine’s fate
without having Ukraine in the room. His team also floated an “offer” to
Ukraine straight out of “The Godfather”: Hand over some mineral rights
as “payback” for our past help, and maybe we’ll think about letting you keep defending your country. Maybe.
And
if that wasn’t humiliating enough, during that aforementioned Oval
Office meeting, Trump and Vice President JD Vance escalated things to a
new low, staging a televised Oval Office attack on Zelensky in a
spectacle more suited to the WWE than international diplomacy.
During the exchange,
Vance called Zelensky “disrespectful” and said he should be more
thankful to Trump. The clash, broadcast for the world to see, wasn’t
just a political power move — it was a calculated act of degradation,
reinforcing the message that under Trump, Ukraine is expected to grovel
for every bullet. It was a diplomatic disaster and a propaganda gift to
Moscow, all rolled into one.
Never
mind the fact that we assured Ukraine (before and after Russia’s
invasion) that we’d have their back. If we break that promise now — as
it appears we are poised to do — the consequences won’t stop at Kyiv.
The message will travel far beyond Ukraine to our allies (who are
watching nervously) and our enemies (who are taking notes).
For the better part of a
century, America’s foreign policy has boiled down to this: We foot most
of the bills and prevent bullies from rolling over weaker sovereign
states. In return, we get a world that (mostly) behaves itself.
Trump,
however, looks at this mutually beneficial deal and assumes he’s
getting “scammed.” He views NATO like a group dinner where everyone else
orders lobster, and he thinks he’s stuck with the bill.
Why should we pay for security? Why should we defend our allies?
Uh, because it keeps the world from becoming a flaming dumpster fire.
The
alternative is far worse: Allies either rearm (including nukes) or they
start making new, less-savory friends. Neither scenario ends well for
the U.S.
Let's talk about our
allies. Germany is rearming, which — if you've read even a single
history book published after 1945 — might make you a bit uneasy.
That said, the free world may need Germany to step up if the U.S. retreats from the global stage like Homer Simpson disappearing into the bushes.
“My
absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible
so that … we can really achieve independence from the U.S.A.,” Germany’s
chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz said
before the final results of his election were even announced. “After
Donald Trump’s statements last week at the latest, it is clear that the
Americans … are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”
It’s not just Europe.
Longtime friends Australia, Taiwan and Canada (or as Trump calls our
neighbor, America’s 51st state) are starting to look around and get
nervous. Even Japan — yes, that erstwhile empire we politely asked not
to conquer the Pacific ever again — has begun since the first Trump administration to stock up on weapons like there is an apocalypse fire sale.
All
of this marks a rather stark departure from the nuclear umbrella and
post-war liberal order that — barring a few notable exceptions — has let
Americans enjoy a blissful, air-conditioned peace, complete with
two-car garages, well-manicured lawns and shopping malls since 1945.
But hey, who needs
stability when you can have excitement? After all, maintaining these
alliances took effort. For one thing, you have to keep sucking up to
people who aren’t as strong as you, and probably aren’t chipping in as
much cash as they might.
Take,
for example, President Reagan’s speech commemorating the 40th
anniversary of D-Day. I remember hearing it as a boy and thinking, “Why
all the talk about the Allies?” I mean, Reagan raves about the
“impossible valor of the Poles,” “the forces of Free France” and the
“unsurpassed courage of the Canadians.” And he throws in seemingly
extraneous references to British troops hearing bagpipes and to Lord
Lovat of Scotland.
Why? Because back then,
we knew the world worked better when our friends believed we were in
this existential struggle together. Trump seems to be going out of his
way to send the opposite message: You’re on your own!
But
the biggest reason that abandoning our allies is dumb can be summed up
in one word: China. You remember China, right? The country that sends us
fentanyl and TikTok propaganda and outnumbers us four-to-one? Well,
guess what — if the free world sticks together, we pretty much match
them in population, land and strength. But only if we stick together.
Trump, the so-called
greatest dealmaker, is out here making the worst deal in American
history by giving away U.S. influence, alienating allies, gutting
American soft power by dismantling foreign aid and handing power to the
people who really want to screw us. Nothing says “America First”
like leaving your friends dead last. And here’s the thing: It’s easy to
fritter away our power, but it would be a decades-long struggle to
regain influence once it’s gone.
How does a super power lose its moral authority, allies and standing in the world? Slowly ... and then all at once."
"Trump Loses It After Former Adviser Calls Him Out on Putin Stance
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling
"Another former adviser to Donald Trump has called him out for bowing to Russia in his Ukraine peace deal... McMaster spoke on Trump’s excruciating meeting
with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. On Friday, Trump and Vice
President JD Vance overtly showed where their loyalties lie: Seated in
front of the press in the White House, the pair refused to let Zelenskiy
speak, allowed a conservative reporter to mock Zelenskiy’s wartime
attire, and effectively leveraged the critical meeting for measly
political gain by defending Russian President Vladimir Putin at the cost
of denigrating former U.S. officials. And in doing so, they challenged
America’s strongest alliances while ceding the world stage to its adversaries.
“Vladimir Putin couldn’t be happier,” McMaster told CBS, sizing
up the events of the day. “Because what he sees is all of the pressure
on Zelenskiy, all of the pressure on Ukraine, and no pressure on him.”
McMaster noted that Putin is a “master manipulator” with a deep understanding of how to work Trump to Russia’s advantage.
“He
appeals to President Trump’s sense of aggrievement,” McMaster said.
“And he’s been very successful at it because he’s a master manipulator
and one of the best liars in the world.”"
Statements of Jason Miller, senior adviser to President Donald Trump, from the CNN:
"On the pause in aid to Ukraine, Miller said Trump is being
aggressive in his attempts to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
to agree to a deal that would stop the war.
“President Trump is the only person, the only person talking
about stopping the killing, and sometimes leaders can use the carrot,
sometimes they can use the stick,” Miller said. “And in this case, I
think President Trump is using the 2 by 4 to go and get his point across
to President Zelensky, and that is that President Trump wants to stop
the killing. Zelensky has got to get back to the table. He has to take
this seriously.”"
This is the language used to refer to a democratic ally who was disarmed and promised protection by the USA, and is suffering a genocidal attack by a rogue superpower that is a strategic enemy to the USA. Now, the US administration wants to use the stick on Ukraine. As for the promised carrot, I don't see it under any circumstances. Unless you call a carrot the promise to deprive Ukraine of its occupied territories, to keep it out of NATO and to rob its mineral resources.
WASHINGTON ― A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin praised U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump, saying it "largely coincides" with Russia's vision in a reversal he said was previously "impossible to imagine."
The comments from Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov come as Trump has upended the U.S. approach to Russia's war in Ukraine by holding peace negotiations with Russia, without representation from Ukraine or its European allies. A public spat between Trump
and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last Friday in the Oval
Office raised doubts about continued U.S. financial support for Ukraine.
"The new (U.S.) administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations," Peskov said in an interview aired Sunday on Russian state media. "This largely coincides with our vision."
In additional remarks Monday, Reuters reported,
Peskov said the clash at the White House "demonstrated how difficult it
will be to reach a settlement trajectory around Ukraine ... The Kyiv
regime and Zelenskyy do not want peace. They want the war to continue."
Trump last Friday said Zelenskyy can return to the negotiating table "when he is ready for peace."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also heaped praise on Trump,
calling his efforts to end the war in Ukraine "common sense" as he
criticized European countries that have rallied around Ukraine."
WARSAW, Poland (AP) —
Poland's democracy hero Lech Wałęsa and dozens of other former political
prisoners in Poland have written a letter to President Donald Trump,
telling him that his treatment of Ukraine's president at the Oval Office
last week filled them “with horror and distaste.”
Wałęsa,
who served as president soon after Poland embraced democracy, and the
others tell Trump that they found it offensive that he expected
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to show respect and gratitude
for the material assistance the United States has given Ukraine as it
defends itself against Russia's invasion.
“Gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed blood in
defense of the values of the free world. They are the ones who have
been dying on the front lines," they say.
The White House has
demanded that Zelenskyy show more openness to potential concessions in
order to bring the fighting to an end, but Zelenskyy has been resistant,
saying Monday that any deal with Russia is still “very, very far away,"
while seeking greater security guarantees from Washington.
Wałęsa
posted the letter on Facebook on Monday along with a photograph of
himself with Trump. It was signed by himself and 38 other former
democracy activists who were imprisoned by Poland's Moscow-backed
communist regime before 1989. Among the others who signed are Adam
Michnik, Bogdan Lis, Seweryn Blumsztajn and Władysław Frasyniuk.
“We were also terrified
by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this
conversation reminded us of the one we remember well from interrogations
by the Security Service and from the courtrooms in communist courts,"
they wrote.
"Prosecutors
and judges, commissioned by the omnipotent communist political police,
also explained to us that they had all the cards in their hands, and we
had none. They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that
thousands of innocent people were suffering because of us. They deprived
us of freedom and civil rights because we did not agree to cooperate
with the authorities and did not show them gratitude. We are shocked
that you treated President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a similar way,” they
wrote."
"Osechkin comments on the plans of Putin and the West concerning the war in Ukraine
[Russian] human rights activist Vladimir Osechkin confidently stated: "Putin wants to smash, discredit Zelensky, maybe even kill him. Then stir some trouble [in Ukraine] and in this unrest, support those public faces who are in principle ready to sit at the negotiating table, shake his hand, come to some agreement... Ukrainian security services must take all possible measures to protect Zelensky because a lot depends on him... Zelensky and Ukraine will be under tremendous diplomatic pressure, because the West really does not want any nuclear war, World War III and so on. It is enough to read Blinken's interview before he left his position, in which he revealed how they made all efforts to "manage the conflict", to keep the risk of nuclear war at 5% or 10%, but even these percentages forced them to do everything possible to "manage the conflict" and minimize the risk."
***
Do you see that Osechkin points out that Putin and the West actually want the same thing? Is it strange that right now, it is Trump and not Putin who makes all efforts to discredit and remove Zelensky, and replace him with someone who "wants peace"?
уверенно заявил: "Путин
хочет продавить, опозорить, дискредитировать Зеленского, может быть,
даже убить его. Потом действительно добиться какой-то смуты и в этой
смуте поддержать тех самых, вот этих вот, медиаблогеров, которые с ним в
принципе готовы садиться за стол переговоров, пожимать руки,
договариваться о чем-то.
читайте подробнее на сайте "Диалог.UA": https://www.dialog.ua/opinion/307373_1736098
This analysis of the Institute for the Study of War is from last summer, but every word of it rings true today. If only Trump would read such informed sources... But I don't think Trump is a reader; if he were, he would possibly be more intelligent.
"Why Putin Remains Uninterested in Meaningful Negotiations with Ukraine
The following excerpt was originally published as part of the May 24, 2024, Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.
Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Christina Harward, Angelica Evans, and Frederick W. Kagan
Western media continues to report that Russian President
Vladimir Putin is interested in a negotiated ceasefire in Ukraine,
although Kremlin rhetoric and Russian military actions illustrate that
Putin remains uninterested in meaningful negotiations and any settlement
that would prevent him from pursuing the destruction of an independent
Ukrainian state. Reuters reported on May 24 that four Russian
sources who currently work or have worked with Putin stated that Putin
is ready to negotiate a ceasefire that recognizes the current frontlines
and that Putin is prepared to present the current amount of occupied
Ukrainian territory as a Russian military victory to the Russian
public.[1] Western media reported similar interest from Putin in a
negotiated ceasefire or settlement based on statements from unspecified
Russian sources with some level of alleged connection to Putin or the
Kremlin in December 2023 and January and February 2024.[2] Western media
has cited limited unspecified US and international officials as
confirming that Putin has expressed interest in a ceasefire, although
other Western media has reported that US sources have denied that there
has been any official Russian outreach to the US on the matter.[3]
The Kremlin routinely feigns interest in meaningful negotiations as
part of a longstanding information operation that aims to persuade the
West to make concessions on Ukrainian territorial integrity and
sovereignty, and it is unclear if the unspecified Russian sources
talking to Western media are advancing these efforts or accurately
portraying Putin's interests and viewpoints.[4] ISW cannot determine the
veracity of the Russian sources' claims about Putin's intentions, and
these private anonymous statements contrast sharply with Russian
official public rhetoric and action. Putin and the Kremlin have notably
intensified their expansionist rhetoric about Ukraine since December
2023 and have increasingly indicated that Russia intends to conquer more
territory in Ukraine and is committed to destroying Ukrainian statehood
and identity completely.[5] Russian forces have conducted offensive
operations in recent months that aim to make operationally significant
advances and collapse the frontline, have opened a new front in Kharkiv
Oblast (which Russia has not claimed through illegal annexation), and
have sought to cause long-term damage to Ukrainian warfighting
capabilities and economic potential in regular large-scale missile and
drone strikes.[6] These military operations suggest that the Kremlin is
more interested in achieving its long-term goal of maximalist victory in
Ukraine than in any settlement that would immediately freeze the
frontline where it is currently located.
Russian sources that have spoken to Western media have also
offered mutually contradictory characterizations of Putin's stance on
negotiations. Reuters reported that a Russian source
stated that Putin aims to take as much territory as possible in order to
compel Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate, but another
Russian source assessed that Putin is unwilling to negotiate with
Zelensky.[7] Russian sources also told Reuters that Putin
believes that the West will not give Ukraine enough weapons but
understands that making any "dramatic" Russian advances would require
another Russian nationwide mobilization.[8] Delays in Western security
assistance have severely constrained Ukrainian defensive capabilities in
recent months, and if Putin believes that there are limits to Western
support for Ukraine, then he would logically conclude that such
constraints could reemerge in the medium term and allow Russian forces
with their current capabilities to make "dramatic" gains without
conducting a wider mobilization of manpower or the Russian economy.[9] A
Russian source stated that Putin is concerned that a longer war will
generate more dissatisfied veterans with poor job prospects and economic
situations that could generate domestic tensions, although this
assessment is at odds with Russia's ongoing chronic labor shortages and
the Kremlin's effort to prepare Russian society for a long war
effort.[10] These contradictions cast further doubt on the accuracy with
which these Russian sources are reflecting Putin's actual thinking.
These Russian sources notably highlighted territorial
concessions as part of Putin's alleged envisioned ceasefire but have
sparsely addressed the wider strategic objectives of Putin's war in
Ukraine. Reuters reported that its Russian sources
stated that Putin views Russia maintaining control over currently
occupied Ukrainian territory as a non-negotiable basis for negotiations,
and previous Western reporting about Putin's openness to negotiations
has similarly highlighted Russian territorial desires.[11] Bloomberg reported
in January that two unspecified sources close to the Kremlin stated
that Putin signaled to senior US officials that he may be willing to
drop demands for Ukraine’s “neutral status” and even may ultimately
abandon his opposition to Ukraine’s NATO accession.[12] Russian demands
for Ukrainian “neutrality” and a moratorium on NATO expansion have
always been and continue to be one of Putin’s central justifications for
his invasion of Ukraine and any hypothetical concession on these
demands would represent a major strategic and rhetorical retreat on
Putin’s behalf that Putin is extremely unlikely to be considering at
this time.[13] Putin also launched his invasion of Ukraine to replace
the Ukrainian government with one he determined appropriate and to
"demilitarize" the Ukrainian military so that Russia could unilaterally
impose its will on Ukraine in the future without facing significant
Ukrainian resistance.[14] Russian sources that have talked about a
ceasefire to Western media have not mentioned these two goals, which
Kremlin officials regularly reiterate.[15] The repeated focus on the
recognition of occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian territory does
not indicate that Russia would drop these wider strategic objectives,
however. A ceasefire that cedes currently occupied territory would
concretize the idea that Ukrainian territorial integrity is negotiable, a
precedent that the Kremlin would most certainly revisit to push for
further territorial concessions and contest the idea of Ukrainian
statehood altogether.[16]
A ceasefire does not preclude Russia from resuming its
offensive campaign to destroy Ukrainian statehood, and Russia would use
any ceasefire to prepare for future offensive operations within
Ukraine. Russia’s military intervention in Crimea and the
Donbas in 2014 violated numerous Russian international commitments to
respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, including
Russia’s recognition of Ukraine as an independent state in 1991 and the
1994 Budapest Memorandum in which Russia specifically committed not to
undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty or territorial integrity.[17] There is
no reason to assess that the Kremlin will respect any new agreement
obliging Russia to not violate Ukrainian sovereignty or territorial
integrity. A ceasefire would provide Russia with the opportunity to
reconstitute degraded forces, divert manpower to large-scale expansion
and reform efforts instead of ongoing fighting in Ukraine, and allow
Russia to further mobilize its defense industrial base (DIB) without the
constraints of immediate operational requirements in
Ukraine.[18] Russia could use a ceasefire to prepare a force more
suitable to pursue a subsequent series of offensive operations in
pursuit of regime change, demilitarization, and conquest in Ukraine. A
ceasefire would provide Ukraine opportunities of its own to address
force generation and defense industrial capacity, to be sure, but the
Kremlin may not unreasonably expect that a frozen frontline will make
support for Ukraine less urgent and salient for the West and allow
Russia to outpace Ukraine in preparing for a resumption of hostilities.
Russia is currently preparing for the possibility of a
conventional war with NATO, and the Kremlin will likely view anything
short of Ukrainian capitulation as an existential threat to Russia's
ability to fight such a war.[19]Russian
military leaders planning a war against NATO will have to assume that
Ukraine might enter such a war on NATO’s behalf regardless of Ukraine’s
membership status.[20] A front with NATO along Russia's entire western
border with Europe presents the Russian military with serious
challenges, as ISW has previously assessed, whereas a Ukrainian defeat
would give Russia the ability to deploy its forces along Europe's entire
eastern flank from the Black Sea to Finland.[21] Russian victory in
Ukraine would not only remove the threat of Ukraine as a potential
adversary during a possible conventional war with NATO but would also
provide Russia with further resources and people to commit to a
large-scale confrontation with NATO. Regardless of how Russian victory
would partition Ukraine between Russian annexation and the
Kremlin-controlled puppet state that would follow Putin's desired regime
change, Russia would have access to millions more people it could
impress into military service and the majority of Ukraine's resources
and industrial capacity. Putin and the Kremlin therefore likely view
victory in Ukraine as a prerequisite to being able to fight a war with
NATO and any ceasefire or negotiated settlement short of full Ukrainian
capitulation as a temporary pause in their effort to destroy an
independent Ukrainian state.
The Kremlin will continue to feign interest in negotiations
at critical moments in the war to influence Western decision-making on
support for Ukraine and to continue efforts to extract preemptive
concessions from the West. The Kremlin has repeatedly engaged
in a large-scale reflexive control campaign that aims to influence
Western decision-making.[22] Reflexive control is a key element in
Russia's hybrid warfare toolkit and relies on shaping an adversary with
targeted rhetoric and information operations in such a way that the
adversary voluntarily takes actions that are advantageous to
Russia.[23] Kremlin officials claimed that Russia was open to
negotiations in December 2022, likely to delay the provision of Western
tanks and other equipment essential for the continuation of Ukrainian
mechanized counteroffensives.[24] Western reporting on Putin's alleged
interest in negotiations in Winter 2023-2024 coincided with prolonged
debates in the US about security assistance for Ukraine, and the Kremlin
may have feigned interest in a ceasefire at this time to convince
Western policymakers to pressure Ukraine to negotiate from a weakened
position and agree to what would have very likely been a settlement that
heavily favored Russia.[25] The Kremlin may again be feigning interest
in negotiations in order to influence the ongoing Western debate about
lifting restrictions on Ukraine's use of Western-provided weapons to
strike military targets in Russia and convince Western policymakers that
changes in these restrictions may lead to Russian unwillingness to
negotiate in the future. The Kremlin may also be feigning interest in
negotiations again to preemptively influence any future Western
discussions about the provision of the additional aid that Ukrainian
forces will need to contest the initiative and launch their own
counteroffensive operations in the medium term. ISW continues to assess
that the consistent provision of key Western systems will play a crucial
role in Ukraine's ability to contest the theater-wide initiative and
conduct future counteroffensive operations.[26] US officials have
recently stated that the resumption of US security assistance will help
Ukrainian forces withstand Russian assaults throughout the rest of 2024
and that Ukrainian forces will look to conduct counteroffensive
operations to recapture territory in 2025.[27]"
The photos below show the true face of Russia, to which Trump has so much love and is eager to hand Ukraine and all Europe. From the Ukrainian site Obozrevatel:
