It’s been quiet here. I have been digesting the news. Having watched the interview between Zelensky, Trump, and Vance, I have very mixed feelings. I’ve also read and watched the thoughts of others from across the spectrum before coming to a conclusion.
My thoughts, then, are this:
Zelensky is not an English speaker. What others saw as antagonism, I saw as frustration with a situation that is unlikely to be easily resolved. His point was made clumsily and probably not the right time or place to say it, but it was accurate – you cannot appease Putin. Sorry, but the man has form. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, he has invaded Chechnya twice and then Georgia. He took Crimea and then poked about in Donbas, eventually invading. The point Zelensky made was that a deal wouldn’t mean he would stop because he has shown no sign of honouring agreements so far.
That said, Vance’s point was also a valid one. Both sides were right here and this kind of conversation would have been better held behind closed doors. Some have suggested that Zelensky was threatening the USA with consequences. I saw it differently. I saw it as a warning from history. After all, no one was overly concerned when Archie Duke shot the ostrich half a continent away. I see this as similar. The USA is looking more and more isolationist, but if there is a major conflagration, they will be drawn in, like it or not.
Then there is one other thought. If you are getting praise from the Kremlin, you aren’t on the right side of the argument. Much of what I’ve heard from people with whom I usually align politically has been Kremlin propaganda without a hint of nuance or consideration that invading another country is morally repugnant and indefensible. An internal conflict is not a justification. The popular uprising that overthrew Yanukovych, which some attribute to the CIA—as if they have that level of power (they don’t)—does not justify an invasion. There was never a justification.
The deal on the table is a shitty one for Ukraine and a good one for Russia. I always felt that the least bad outcome would be the one that would have to happen, but sucking up to Putin and pretty much rewarding him for his invasion is going to backfire. The accusations of NATO expanding eastwards begs the question, why do those countries want to join if Russia is such a peaceful neighbour? Zelensky’s point, clumsily and inappropriately made, is that diplomacy hasn’t worked so far and he is right. Moldova, Estonia, Finland and Sweden are getting twitchy and with good reason, they know how this is likely to pan out, hence the point Zelensky was making about security. Without that, no deal is worth signing, for the bloodshed will merely be delayed.
When Trump was elected for a second term, I had high hopes of a swift settlement and an end to the conflict. Those hopes are fading fast.
As for the bollocks about wearing a suit, FFS! Churchill didn’t and no one made a fuss. Wearing fatigues is not disrespectful. The man’s country is fighting for its survival and people are bitching about a suit. Jesus! Reading some of the comments on X, I realise that the MAGA people can be just as deranged as their leftist counterparts. Putin must be laughing his arse off.
All of that said, I’m not feeling upbeat at all. Mrs L elect’s son is still out there somewhere, alive or dead, no one knows. A shitty deal without security means it was all for nothing.
Well said
It’s a tricky one but, three years in, the situation looks increasingly like WWI trench-warfare, no-one making progress, just killing and destroying whilst consuming vast amounts of resources. Something has to give to stop the killing etc. Trump’s characteristically blunt approach at least offers a potential channel to achieve that.
Let’s face it, Ukraine was never going to win without vast manpower from elsewhere and that ain’t going to happen. So the best outcome is some sort of a deal, it won’t be the one they wanted, but not the one Putin wanted either – somewhere on that grey-scale there’s an adult deal to be done. All Trump’s trying to do is short-circuit the process of getting there.
For anyone personally involved it’s not been a good experience, those folk deserve a chance to get back to as normal a life as possible, as soon as possible, after all the pointless carnage and destruction. Right now it seems that Trump’s very direct approach offers the best chance, far better than the usual Euro-talking-shop ever could.
My view is exactly this, Mudpligger. Thanks for articulating it well.
I, too, have watched the whole press conference. First of all the fact that Zelensky was not wearing a suit is a complete red herring. It was a question raised by a journalist, Trump was not bothered about Zelensky’s dress and the session continued for some minutes before the row started.
Vance’s comments were entirely reasonable and delivered calmly. Vance did not speak ‘loudly’ and Trump was quite right to pull Zelensky up on that immediately.
Now comes what was possibly Trump’s first mistake. Trump started the meeting in a wholly gracious way, but perhaps after the ‘loudly’ comment Trump should have ended the meeting and continued it in private because that was the start of the downward spiral. Zelensky started the debacle by interrupting, disrespecting, the Vice President who was there on the orders of the President. And Zelensky was indeed trying to ‘litigate’ a change in agreed terms in front of the press.
Trump’s words were entirely reasonable, but his manner of delivering them was not as calm as they could have been. That is regrettable but understandable.
Trump was and is right. Tens of thousands of people are being killed. Trump is trying to find a path to peace and if Zelensky’s route is followed we are indeed facing the risk of World War III.
The least bad outcome for Ukraine is a border at the current front line. Every other possible outcome is worse.
Returning to the border before February 2022 is impossible. Impossible.
We are where we are, and if the fighting continues tens of thousands more deaths, avloidable deaths, will occur.
Trump wants peace. Vance was 100% right to point out that President Trump is trying to end the war.
Unfortunately it looks as if Zelensky wants it to continue.
Beyond the hysteria, and dishonesty, that we’ve seen from the mainstrean media and many politicians my interpretation is that President Trump is a giant. A flawed giant of course but a giant nonetheless.
Our host here has mentioned the Black Belt Barrister. I commend his youtube videos on this matter to all readers, after watching the whole 50 minute confewrence on youtube.
There’s a lot to unpick here. You have emphasised some of what I’ve already said and I agree, Trump should have pulled the plug and taken it to another place out of sight of the press. That was a missed opportunity. However, when it comes to Zelensky’s reaction, human factors come into play. He’s been fighting a war for three years, so is going to be stressed. He and his country have lived with the outcome of diplomacy that Russia has ignored, so pointing this out was accurate. Vance was right, diplomacy is the right solution, but Zelensky is right that you do so holding a big stick. Also, on the matter of respect, he went to the White House having been publicly insulted by his hosts in the previous few days, so that will have played on his mind. Neither Trump nor Vance (nor, for that matter Musk) helped by spouting Russian propaganda and insulting the leader of the country that had been invaded. FFS! I would have been pretty angry with them, too after that little performance. Diplomacy is more than just being polite at press conferences, it also means not publicly shooting your mouth off between meetings. The claim that Zelensky wants the war to continue is conjecture. He wants some sort of security in place. This a reasonable requirement.
On the red herring issue, if you look at comments across the spectrum, it’s grown into a mako shark, so now it has to be addressed unfortunately.
More briefly : anyone who has only read the headlines and seen the edited clips shouwn by the BBC etc. will indeed think that Zelensky was ‘bullied’.
The narrative against Trump, which has been going on for 8+ years continues.
Watch the whole 50 minutes of that Oval Office event.See the truth.
Never, ever, trust the BBC..
I think Zelensky should have used a translator – gives time to think he could have used jet lag as an excuse.
Zelensky and Trump have one thing in common – Iran would like to kill both of them – he should have mentioned that. After all the enemy of my enemy is my friend!
Yup, that would have given him some thinking time.
At least now some lines are drawn. The US won’t be funding or supplying arms to keep the meat grinder going. That will be up to our useless leaders in Europe.
This could bring the end forward and finish it faster than support from the US would do. Every day this war goes on no matter what your views on how it started is wasting lives.
I agree. The least bad option is to draw a line and stop the fighting, Cyprus/Korea style.
But will that actually “stop the fighting” more than briefly? I have my doubts.
Moreover, the glowing pink elephant in the room is people are acting as if Putin has said Russia will stop where it is & be satisfied, whereas his various spokesmen have *repeted* said they have not yet acchieved their objectives.
That elephant is what caused the spat in the Oval Office, of course.
TTK’s 4 point plan for Ukraine is DOA. There won’t be:
– Any increase in military aid without the US.
– Negotiations including Ukraine that the US and Russia agree to.
– EU deterrence for future Russian aggression (see first point).
– A “Coalition of the willing” to defend Ukraine when the US won’t provide a backstop.
Total waste of time.
Starmer, and Macron, are just blowing hot air in an attempt to appear relevant. If by some miracle anything were to come of it, their frantic backpedalling would be most amusing.
Oh and Starmer’s £1.6B on 5000 missiles, guaranteeing 200 jobs in Belfast? Making some reasonably generous assumptions on salaries for those people, overhead rates, etc. the spend might come to £100M a year. So that’s a 16 year project delivering 300 odd missiles a year. I don’t have figures for how fast this massive war of attrition is using up ammunition but that’s got to be a drop in the ocean. And then they’ll probably get used to shoot down drones at a third of a million quid a pop …
Yes. But does TTFGKier have the minerals?
His dear wife, or pally alli may tell us.
There’s a suggestion (no solid evidence, but it would not surprise me) going about that Zelensky was advised to play it the way he did by some American Democrat politicians, who were then taken aback when Trump didn’t give in.
I’m of the opinion with no evidence at all that the meeting was engineered so that Trump could publicly pull the plug. This will lead to withdrawal from NATO and letting us Europeans sort out our own issues without having a big brother we can call on when we open our big mouths.
500 million Europeans wringing hands and calling for help from 300 million Americans to deal with 100 million Russians. This is what disarming your people and making them wusses reduces the once mighty European nations too.
I tend to avoid conspiracy theories, but I’m coming to the same conclusion. Bearing in mind the bad-mouthing in the days before, meaning that Zelensky was entering the lion’s den. That hostile environment was bound to create a reaction, and I have come to the conclusion that they got exactly what they were looking for.
Sen. Chris Murphy is one of the dimmest bulbs in the Senate. He put out a tweet after the meeting with Z He said Z confirmed that his people would not accept a fake peace agreement that gives Putin everything without security arrangements for Ukraine. Then after being called out Murphy “Oh no, we all encouraged him to sign the minerals deal.”
Murphy said Z wouldn’t accept a bad ceasefire that sold out his company. Notice in the first tweet nothing was said about encouraging Z to sign.
What is our interest in all this – our actual, genuine interest?
Who are the players, and how did it all end up as the blood drenched clusterfuck that somebody – Trump – seems to want to actually bring to an end.
His statement – if he’d been in charge, none of it would have happened – is one of the few made that I would give any credance to.
Yes, I know Putin invaded, and in doing so miscalculated spectacularly and also discovered that his vaunted peer military is a ramshackle, festering pustule of corruption.
I think Trump is also looking at the wider picture, and likely does not see the “punishment” of Russia as being in the US interest globally.
You can consider what Trump is doing as rewarding Russia – and I can see why. But if it carries on, maybe it won’t be “Finland and the baltics next”, but an increasingly ramshackle China grabbing large swathes of Siberia as Russia falls apart. Not necessarily by invasion – I don’t think the vaunted Chinese military is that vaunted in reality – which would not be in US interests.
Trump has made his decision, no US backstop and that’s the end of it.
Toytown Austria-Hungary is a wannabe superpower and Trump has said “fine, now piss or get off the pot”.
I won’t be holding my breath!
Couldn’t we have said something similar? We left it after all, and this “superpower” is between us Russia.
But no. Orange man bad, fourth reich (what else does it have to do to demonstrate it’s contempt!) good.
I despair, I really do
A suggestion being going around about the cause of Russian’s invasion is that the Biden administration (whoever was actually running it) pushed for Ukraine to join NATO. Don’t know how popular that actually was in Ukraine itself. Doubtful that Trump would have pushed that as it’s a well known red line for Putin. Don’t know if that actually was the flashpoint but it seems to be a popular theory.
My reading is that the Ukraine government was looking at joining the EU. God knows why.
Seduced by the irresistibly seductive song of the siren Anne Doubts!
Baboom Tish!
My take on this as an outside observer, therefore not of value. Nonetheless…
1) Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine but equally Ukraine’s actions against the Russian-speaking eastern part of their own country was not a good thing as it pricked the great bear;
2) Tens of thousands of people are being killed and this has to stop. Ultimately it achieves nothing but despair and decay, so someone has to be ready to call a halt;
3) There is something to be said about the level of corruption both inside Ukraine and the way money is being moved from the west to fund what is looking increasingly like a ‘forever’ war. None of this is good, as there are far-reaching consequences (human, environmental, political) we cannot foresee;
4) ‘The first casualty of war is truth.’ Given how easily the MSM tells lies and obfuscates, little of what is happening is clear. Probably it will be a hundred years before we are likely to get clarity in any of this—if we are still around;
5) Very few people are coming out of this well, but the propensity to LARP such as, say, a comedian by profession dressing in olive green fatigues as if ready to fight (I suspect he isn’t, but then politicians never volunteer for the front line) might not be the best person involved in wanting peace.
In short, dunno what to think, other than war is only good for those not directly suffering. But one thing is clear: modern Britain is in no position to join any protracted war.
This article made sense to me. Worth reading:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/throwing-good-money-after-bad-the-great-divide-between-europe-and-america-over-ukraine/