Oh, it was glorious, seeing that coked-up midget, “the green T-shirt”, get his spanking from Trump!
In case you live under a rock, Zelensky recently visited the White House, ostensibly to sign an agreement to share in the exploitation of mineral rights with whatever is left of Ukraine after the peace. Trump wants to recoup for the USA the hundreds of billions they poured into that never-should-have-happened war, and set it as a pre-condition for anything else to happen. If he doesn’t take the deal, according to Trump, he can “fight it out” with Russia without US support.
Scott Bessent, the US Treasury Secretary went to Ukraine to sign the deal that had been hashed out and Ukraine had agreed on, and Zelensky “slept in”, arrived late, and wound up shouting at him and did not sign. He later said he would sign in at the Munich summit, and then got into a shouting match with Secretary of State Rubio and Vice President Vance, and didn’t sign it again. Then he said he would come to the White House and sign it. Instead, he became belligerent and refused to sign it without concrete security guarantees from the US. Thus despite the fact he was told by the White House and by all his supporters in Congress that wasn’t happening and he needed to sign.
The deal would have guaranteed investment in post war Ukraine, been prosperous for both parties, and would have created a de-facto security guarantee by putting Americans and American companies and interests in the East of Ukraine, which would deter further aggression from Russia after a peace was established.
All he needed to do was smile and sign, have a nice lunch, say nice things, and go home. But no.
The full exchange is here:
The part where it really goes off the rails is near the end, starting at 38:15
If you want good clips and commentary, here is a Roumanian commentator Sebastian Sas living in the UK whom I like a lot on this topic:
Basically, Zelensky was antagonistic towards Trump and Vance, insisted on concrete security assurances in exchange for signing, and refused to shut up and take it behind closed doors as suggested by Vance, might have called Vance a “bitch” under his breath in Russian (! https://x.com/mylordbebo/status/1895555421269868776?s=61), threatened America with getting directly drawn into the conflict and having its citizens suffer directly, basically said he would never enter into any agreement with Russia, refused any talk of a compromise, and accused Trump of echoing Russian propaganda. Not smart!
It did look like Zelensky was setup, but it was a very mild provocation from Vance that led to this. From the way it ended, it looked like Trump had orchestrated it to show America, Ukraine, and the world that Zelensky was the complete obstacle to peace. This now paves the way for the US to remove support and/or Zelensky to either do a 180 on his attitude or be replaced by his own country.
Trump is playing this brilliantly.
- He always goes back to the talking point that all he wants is for the fighting and killing to stop.
- He always goes back to the talking point that it was a needless war and would never had started if he was in office.
- He wants to recoup the hundreds of billions of tax payer money poured into the war by Biden.
- He’s normalizing relations with Russia, citing diplomacy.
- He and his proxies are saying there will be territorial compromises with Russia, no NATO membership, and no US troops on the ground or US security guarantees.
- He’s finessing the obstacle, Zelensky.
Polling shows that Trump has the US public on his side, and has managed to bring even the war hawk Republicans in Congress to his side as well—Dan Crenshaw (!) Lindsey Graham (!!). Dems, Europeans, and Canada, come off as screeching forever-war mongers without skin in the game. They are being invited to step up if they want to keep the war going. They won’t.
Vance mildly criticized Zelensky on free speech issues and his brutal forced conscription of unwilling Ukrainians, for which there is ample evidence (here’s an X thread with a hundred video examples: https://x.com/mylordbebo/status/1895752927991792126?s=61). Zelenskyy had an American journalist, Gonzalo Lira, arrested and he died in a filthy Ukrainian prison (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Lira?wprov=sfti1#). He’s shut down all free speech critical of him and his actions, he’s stayed in power after his term effectively as a dictator. Corruption remains rampant with billions of aid dollars unaccounted for and US weapons supplied to Ukraine winding up on the black market.
Zelensky said Putin could not be trusted as he “violated the Minsk Accords 25 times”. That’s a very one-sided view as I covered in previous blog posts. In fact, Angela Merkel, the former Chancellor of Germany, was caught saying Ukraine and Europe never intended to uphold the accords as they were just buying time to arm Ukraine against Russia (e.g., see Reuters article https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-russia-may-have-make-ukraine-deal-one-day-partners-cheated-past-2022-12-09/). And then there was the actions of the Ukrainian Banderas Nazis who kept fighting despite the accords.
Some of the more based European countries, such as Slovakia (and no doubt Hungary) agree with Trump.
As I wrote on my blog in January 2022, before the invasion, in Russia and the Ukraine:
War with Russia can be avoided by ratifying their ownership of the Crimea, by promising not to take Ukraine and the nearby countries bordering Russia into NATO, and by guaranteeing Russian-speaking minority rights. Yeah, hate to be pro-Putin on this, but I would advocate for that over war.
The alternative is to take them into NATO, and then there is the requirement to defend it when it's not at all of any strategic importance to the West, but is of massive strategic importance to Russia. Russia has lots of nukes, a giant army, supplies natural gas to most of Europe, and almost half of Ukraine is pretty pro-Russian already. Plus, the West needs Russia cooperation in Iran and Syria, and an ally against China. Extremely unwise to tangle with Russia over Ukraine. And not least because the ultimate loser would be the Ukraine itself.
Yup. Pretty prescient there, although I was just echoing thinkers like John Mearsheimer at the time.
Then after they invaded, in March in Russian Invasion of Ukraine, I said this:
While it is true that Latvia and Estonia border Russia and were NATO countries since 2004, a quick glance at the map shows that it's nothing like the same threat to Russia as would be Ukraine joining NATO. Of course, Russia protested vehemently their membership at the time, but Russia did not invade.
In 2008, the West tried the same trick in Georgia, but this time Russia went to war to successfully prevent that country from joining NATO. It was a very similar situation as in Ukraine.
My take on the matter is that it has been foolishly, foolishly provocative of the West to not make it off-limits Ukraine joining NATO (in fact, the West has been provocatively encouraging the opposite). Most high-level diplomats and analysts would agree with that sentiment.
Do I believe Russia is therefore justified in invading Ukraine? No. But at the same time the West backed them into a corner. Russia has repeatedly made clear, by words and deeds, the results of pushing for Ukraine's entry into NATO. If Russia ever senses it's about to happen, which they now, justly, have, the result was always inevitable and was completely predictable and predicted.
If you are a threatening looking person with a gun in your hand (NATO), and you step closer and closer to a giant known bully with a crazy look in their eyes (Russia), and who have a track record of punching people who step too close (Georgia, Crimea, Donbas), and the crazy man is telling you to stay back, not cross this line, and yet you keep stepping closer, with your gun drawn, until you are nose to nose, is that person justified in punching you? No. But why THE FUCK were you doing that in the first place???
So, do I agree that the war was needless and would never have happened had Trump been in office? Damn straight!
There was even a peace deal fully brokered in Turkey and initialed by both sides that would have been satisfactory to Russia, but Europe and the US famously scuttled it at the eleventh hour via Boris Johnson telling Ukraine to fight and die in a hopeless unnecessary conflict as the West would back them 100%.
FUCKING EVIL WAR MONGERS RESPONSIBLE FOR MILLIONS OF DEATHS AND UNTOLD SUFFERING!!!
At that time, Ukraine would not have had to cede any territory beyond Crimea. That deal was the best they could have ever hoped for. It was clear (to me, and many others, just not the propagandized, that Ukraine had NO chance against Russia).
Thank God Trump is putting an end to it.
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