I can’t show you how it will work out. Often, when you draw the line, you can’t predict the consequences. They depend on the reactions of others. Drawing the line means precisely that.
But ducking drawing the line because you fear the consequences is akin to kowtowing to a bully. That may be Churchillian. “We will never surrender”. Nor should we.
Absolutely, completely, totally agreed. We need to build an iron curtain in the east. I can see how Farage could be isolated like Moseley.
I have a theory that there is a certain mindset in the US that regards thev
New World as the Enlightened City Set on a Hill to which their forefathers escaped from the irredeemably corrupt and backward-looking Old World, which is doomed and not worth caring about, let alone fighting for. I may be wrong, of course.
I have a theory that there is a certain mindset in the US that regards thev
New World as the Enlightened City Set on a Hill to which their forefathers escaped from the irredeemably corrupt and backward-looking Old World, which is doomed and not worth caring about, let alone fighting for. I may be wrong, of course.
I don't think it's that complicated. They believe 'soft power' is woke and have decided to try their luck at hard power instead. That's the only explanation for lists like this one:
I have a theory that there is a certain mindset in the US that regards thev
New World as the Enlightened City Set on a Hill to which their forefathers escaped from the irredeemably corrupt and backward-looking Old World, which is doomed and not worth caring about, let alone fighting for. I may be wrong, of course.
There is a kind of a "We are God's Chosen People" attitude among some American's.
I would not say all Americans have this chosen people attitude now. True, it was prevalent in the 50s right after WWII. That is one reason why the Supreme Commander of NATO forces has aways been an American. But that is where Trump's mindset is. He is frozen in time--actually maybe even earlier than that. Think Chamberlan.
I think it is important Europe Leaders find a way to stand up to Trump and Putin. They should not ignore other people who have a right to be at the table.
I would not say all Americans have this chosen people attitude now. True, it was prevalent in the 50s right after WWII. That is one reason why the Supreme Commander of NATO forces has aways been an American. But that is where Trump's mindset is. He is frozen in time--actually maybe even earlier than that. Think Chamberlan.
I think it is important Europe Leaders find a way to stand up to Trump and Putin. They should not ignore other people who have a right to be at the table.
Trump isn’t fit to lace Chamberlain’s boots.
A lot of modern scholarship suggests that whatever he said publicly he knew war was inevitable and used appeasement to buy time for (some) rearmament.
Even if his appeasement stance was as genuine as it looked at the time, that was motivated by not wanting to get loads of people killed (however naive), not personal enrichment, aggrandisement or attempts at international extortion.
So Starmer has proposed that UK troops could be part of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine.
I am dubious for these reasons:
* it would seem to legitimise the sell-out now underway
* it is unlikely to deter Putin since he has a low opinion of European military spine (whether justifiably or not)
* it may expose divisions among European allies if they take a different line
If Europe does put forces into Ukraine then we must definitely be prepared to have a full-scale war against Russia without US support if Putin moves against us. If we're not ready for that it would be better to admit it now.
But I think what is actually happening now is that Trump is presenting Ukraine with an impossible list of demands, rather as Austria-Hungary did to Serbia in 1914. Zelenskyy will have to reject the terms and this will give Trump the excuse to pull all support from Ukraine, allowing Putin to seize the lot.
Zelensky will probably hear first. I think he’ll be expecting bad news. I think that’s a part of the negotiating strategy.
I suspect it’s mostly about setting the scene for a Trump - Putin summit. My guess is that Trump will say “we’ll stop sanctions but only if there’s something in it for us. Oh and Ukraine too. Maybe.”
Does anyone know a bit more about the role Turkey plays in these politics? Zelensky has been meeting Erdoğan who
said on Feb. 18 that Turkey is an ideal host for potential peace talks on Russia's war against Ukraine, offering Ankara as a venue for future negotiations.
"Our country is an ideal host for the negotiations that are likely to begin between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States," Erdogan said during a press conference with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Erdogan highlighted Turkey's previous mediation efforts, including the Black Sea grain deal, which enabled Ukrainian agricultural exports until Russia withdrew in 2023.
He reaffirmed that during his talks with Zelensky, Turkey expressed its support for Ukraine's complete territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence
However I gather that the geopolitics is a lot more complicated than that and Erdogan and Putin also have interests in common over eg. energy - does anyone know a bit more about how this might play out with Turkey and what they, as a NATO member, might be making of all this?
Turkey have played a brilliant game (sorry, the Turkish regime has played a brilliant game) where they’ve managed to ride all three horses - Moscow, Washington, Kyiv - without getting booted out of NATO.
I’m a huge Turkophile, and worked alongside their armed forces. I’ve no idea what the long term result of all this is, but their government has played a magnificent game here.
IME, the Turkish police and military are pretty western (and thoroughly competent, sensible people) and all the way along the (vast) coast you may as well be in Western Europe. Once you inland, and the further you go… there’s a huge divide between the urban Turks (who largely buy into Ataturk even now) and the probable Islamist majority.
Sorry @Louise - to directly answer your question, anyone who claims they know the answer is either deluded or lying. I can see what’s in it for them, but as I say, they’ve ridden the three horses so well.
I’d put my mortgage on no one (outside Ankara) knows.
It’s a wonderful, wonderful country, with an amazing culture*. Everyone should go there. But secularism is dying. Whether for good or bad… but the people, the place, it’s wonderful. My favourite (broadly) European country
Turkey have played a brilliant game (sorry, the Turkish regime has played a brilliant game) where they’ve managed to ride all three horses - Moscow, Washington, Kyiv - without getting booted out of NATO.
Yeah, although for the same reason I think it's going to be a bit of an ask to see them as part of a bulwark against Russia circa 2024. Within their own backyard they are a (strong) regional power and expect to be treated as such.
There has been disquiet among Republicans for quite some time about continuing to support Ukraine after last years elections weren't held (Ukrainian law forbids elections while under martial law). Although, I'm sure there have been other occasions where the US government found it convenient to support other national governments where elections hadn't been held or elections that had been held were dubious. Currently there will be elections in Ukraine no earlier than 6 months after the end of martial law - it's recognised that it will take that much time to reinstate the necessary infrastructure, including updating voter registers with 14 million displaced citizens and working out how to conduct voting within areas that have either been heavily damaged during the war or may still be under Russian occupation.
There has been disquiet among Republicans for quite some time about continuing to support Ukraine after last years elections weren't held (Ukrainian law forbids elections while under martial law).
This is also, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, a popular Russian talking point. Putin claims part of his reluctance to engage in negotiations is that the current government of Ukraine is not legitimate because elections were cancelled (due to the war). Such a champion of democracy and representative government, that Vladimir!
Trump is now attacking Zelebsky's dwmocratic legitimacy for refusing to hold elections in Ukraine during wartime (how they could be orgsnised is anycody's guess). There were no elections in Britain during WWII, so I suppose in Trump's playbook that makes Churchill a rotten PM. He seems to have swallowed the Kremlin story hook, line and sinker. I think the Atlantic Alliance is finished. Goodbye, Uncle Sam.
I think we can probably assume for at least the next four years the US is not a reliable ally - that is probably not the same as it being a wise statement for European leaders to make publicly even if they take account of that privately.
Parts of the right have been Putinists all along, the question is whether we now see a schism between them and their 'useful idiot' pals who didn't realise that while they were bedecking themselves in flags and poppies and frothing about foreigners they were actual traitors to their country.
Trump is being outrageous but Europe is unable to agree a strategy and is therefore weak. Zelenskyy does not have to accept the Trump deal but if he wants to continue fighting he may not have the support to do so.
A slight disagreement there. European policy since WWII has been to direct security issues through NATO and the US as the presence of large European armies without the US was seen as too close to the unstable interwar paradigm.
The difficulty is that it doesn't really matter who takes the lead in trying to mediate a ceasefire (much less a peace deal), because everyone has to deal with the facts that a) while the Russian offensive isn't collapsing Putin has nothing to lose (the same can't be said of the Russian people who are already paying heavily, but Putin doesn't appear to care about the people of Russia) by keeping the war going if a ceasefire doesn't give him what he wants, and b) no sane government wants to reward aggression by encouraging Ukraine to trade territory for peace, and a deal that would do that is unlikely to be acceptable to a large proportion of the people of Ukraine and so the best that will happen is an ongoing resistance movement against Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory.
Any strategy for achieving a ceasefire, much less peace, is going to have to tackle those two factors. That's going to be a very difficult path to tread, and it's not surprising no one can really agree on it beyond the biggest picture. So far, the strategy has been to make keeping on fighting too costly to Putin (by both sanctions on Russia and military support for Ukraine) and also to reduce the costs on Ukraine (the economic aid keeping Ukraine functioning as a nation state) in the hope that the Russian offensive will eventually collapse removing point a) from the equation. It's unlikely that a satisfactory deal (for Ukraine, Europe and the wider world) can be achieved until Putin has little choice but to come to the table.
Of course, sanctions have also been a point of disagreement within Europe. Sanctions are costly, and not just on the country on the receiving end of them. The most obvious cost to Europe of sanctions is the price of gas and the need to find alternatives to Russian gas, but sanctions hit Europe in other ways as well. Different nations will carry different costs from imposing sanctions, and this leads to differences in what sanctions nations would like to impose.
A deal the Ukrainians actually endorsed, if not iin it's details. Similar to war loans instead of aid, the deal only means anything if Ukraine is alive and territorially intact,
I don't think the right are 'Putinists', more that they're ideologically aligned with authoritarian regimes generally. [Had the Ukraine war not happened, I expect Dugin would still be receiving invites from ginger groups on the further right.]
Arguably this is much worse, as it means they aren't actually biddable in any way, and they aren't doing it out of cynicism (except insofar it also shores up their own position).
It also means a more careful look at those from more traditional conservative backgrounds who play footsie with the far right (including people like Meloni, Modi, Orban etc.) - I'm especially thinking here of media organs like The Spectator, Quillette etc.
First, about Trump’s proposal to Ukraine. I don’t think we should call it a “deal.” After all, isn’t a deal something in which both sides bring something to the table? What Trump suggested was that Ukraine give the United States half of the revenue it gets from resource extraction, as far as I can tell in perpetuity. Trump suggested that this would amount to $500 billion, although this seems like a wildly exaggerated sum.
In return, Trump offered, well, zero. No additional aid, no security guarantees, no nothing.
This is one of those situations where describing things accurately and without euphemism sounds like wild hyperbole. I'm guessing there is going to be a lot of that going forward.
Trump is offering Putin his victory in Ukraine, possibly saving Putin;s life and probably sacrificing Zwlenskyy's as a makeweight. But what's in the deal for Trump? Ukraine's rare earth? A free hand in Canada, Greenland and the Americas generally? I think we have only half the story as yet, and it looks dishonourable.
I think Trump is still mad about that business with the quiproquo with Zelenskyy that got him impeached the first time.
Can you expand?
In 2019 Trump asked Zelensky to launch an investigation in the business dealings of Hunter Biden in Ukraine as part of a scheme to discredit Joe Biden in the run up to the 2020 Presidential election. Zelensky refused to get involved in a US political smear campaign, so Trump cancelled $400m of aid to Ukraine.
Trump is known for holding grudges. It's not impossible that that's clouding his judgement in dealing with Zelensky now.
I always keep coming back to the strategic aims of both as the way to understand the situation.
Russia's strategic aim in two fold:
1: To either formally conquer and control Ukraine or install a puppet government.
2. Having taken control of Ukraine to imitate their other neighbours to come under influence/control of Moscow.
Ukraine's strategic aim is to hold out long enough for the combination of internal and external pressure to force Russia to withdraw.
Prior to Trump's intervention, Russia was losing. They were nowhere near achieving their strategic aims. Expert analysis suggests that they cannot maintain the current operational tempo for more than a few months.
The unknown really is how effective Ukrainian forces can continue to be without US support. Partly that depends on what other Western nations do.
Trump is proposing to gift Putin a strategic win.
The thing is that even if the Ukrainian government agreed to such a deal, there would still be a significant resistance. So 'peace' is not remotely on the table here, never mind actual peace.
Fundamentally, if you ignore Trump's idiocy, there is a problem that many in the US see the situation as the US doing Ukraine a favour. In fact it's the other way round. Supporting Ukraine is by far the cheapest way of dealing with a massive threat to the US's longterm interests.
Which brings me to my final point. The USA is the largest economy, the reserve currency holders and a world leader. Trump is eroding all of that. It's entirely possible that in a decade or even less, Trump will have accelerated geopolitical shifts and massively diminished the US's standing. It can happen very quickly.
Quite and I think this is why it made sense for Ukraine to try to involve China - China does not want either a much more powerful US or a much more powerful Russia.
What is disconcerting is the US Republican Controlled Congress is remaining silent about the spat between Trump and Zelenski. Yet, when Biden was president, the Republicans would be the first to complain about his lack of support.
What is disconcerting is the US Republican Controlled Congress is remaining silent about the spat between Trump and Zelenski. Yet, when Biden was president, the Republicans would be the first to complain about his lack of support.
Yes. People like Marco Rubio (to take only one of a huge possible number of examples) are behaving in a disgusting way. They ought to know better.
There are others like Vance who might even believe what they're saying. I'm not sure which is worse.
Trump is offering Putin his victory in Ukraine, possibly saving Putin;s life and probably sacrificing Zwlenskyy's as a makeweight. But what's in the deal for Trump? Ukraine's rare earth? A free hand in Canada, Greenland and the Americas generally? I think we have only half the story as yet, and it looks dishonourable.
It's Trump. "Dishonorable" is his modus operandi. His business dealings have always been full of what can at best be called "sharp practice". There are large numbers of examples of small businesses that his companies have dealt with that have been screwed over by him. He governs the country in the same way.
Zelenskyy has made an interesting counter-offer (paywall) based on Russian complaints that Ukraine hasn't had elections recently.
Zelenskyy offers to step down in exchange for peace and Ukraine's Nato membership
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said for the first time that he is willing to step down as Ukraine’s president if the move secured Nato membership or lasting peace for his country.
“If it brings peace for Ukraine, if you really need me to leave my post, I’m ready. I can exchange it for Nato [membership],” Zelenskyy told reporters at a press conference in Kyiv on Sunday. “If such conditions exist [I will step down] immediately.”
“I am focusing on security today and not in 20 years’ time . . . I won’t be in power for decades,” Zelenskyy said ahead of the third anniversary of Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine on Monday.
For whatever reason the Financial Times has had some of the best coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war.
I always keep coming back to the strategic aims of both as the way to understand the situation.
Russia's strategic aim in two fold:
1: To either formally conquer and control Ukraine or install a puppet government.
2. Having taken control of Ukraine to intimidate their other neighbours to come under influence/control of Moscow.
Ukraine's strategic aim is to hold out long enough for the combination of internal and external pressure to force Russia to withdraw.
Prior to Trump's intervention, Russia was losing. They were nowhere near achieving their strategic aims. Expert analysis suggests that they cannot maintain the current operational tempo for more than a few months.
The unknown really is how effective Ukrainian forces can continue to be without US support. Partly that depends on what other Western nations do.
Trump is proposing to gift Putin a strategic win.
The thing is that even if the Ukrainian government agreed to such a deal, there would still be a significant resistance. So 'peace' is not remotely on the table here, never mind actual peace.
Fundamentally, if you ignore Trump's idiocy, there is a problem that many in the US see the situation as the US doing Ukraine a favour. In fact it's the other way round. Supporting Ukraine is by far the cheapest way of dealing with a massive threat to the US's longterm interests.
Which brings me to my final point. The USA is the largest economy, the reserve currency holders and a world leader. Trump is eroding all of that. It's entirely possible that in a decade or even less, Trump will have accelerated geopolitical shifts and massively diminished the US's standing. It can happen very quickly.
AFZ
Just to follow through with this.
EVERYTHING Trump says about Ukraine is basically incorrect.
The last paragraph of the executive summary says this:
The last year of the war has been a gloomy one for Ukraine, which has been forced to stand on the defensive and absorb continuous and intensive Russian offensive operations as well as increasingly effective Russian drone and missile strikes on critical infrastructure. But the gloom has obscured an important reality: The Kremlin threw everything it had at breaking Ukraine in 2024 and failed. Ukrainian forces held in the face of Russian assaults conducted with a shocking disregard for losses in men and equipment and despite shortages imposed by delays in the provision of Western equipment. The front line remains fragile, and Russian forces can continue their pressure for many months to come. The end of US and Western support could lead to a relatively rapid collapse of Ukraine's defense. But the key lessons from 2024 are that Ukraine can withstand enormous Russian pressures, on the one hand, and that the Kremlin has not figured out how to convert its overall numerical advantages into decisive battlefield gains. These lessons should guide Western thinking about the war and Ukraine's prospects throughout any negotiations. They should above all guide thinking about the prospects of developing a post-war Ukrainian military into a force that can deter future Russian aggression with reasonable levels of Western support and commitment.
Let us be clear. Russia is not winning.
Currently the USA has provided about 46% of military support that Ukraine has received and Europe collectively the other 54%. What happens if this aid stops is an important question but Russia cannot sustain the current level of operations beyond this year. Russia needs a peace deal more than Ukraine does.
I always keep coming back to the strategic aims of both as the way to understand the situation.
Russia's strategic aim in two fold:
1: To either formally conquer and control Ukraine or install a puppet government.
2. Having taken control of Ukraine to intimidate their other neighbours to come under influence/control of Moscow.
Ukraine's strategic aim is to hold out long enough for the combination of internal and external pressure to force Russia to withdraw.
Prior to Trump's intervention, Russia was losing. They were nowhere near achieving their strategic aims. Expert analysis suggests that they cannot maintain the current operational tempo for more than a few months.
The unknown really is how effective Ukrainian forces can continue to be without US support. Partly that depends on what other Western nations do.
Trump is proposing to gift Putin a strategic win.
The thing is that even if the Ukrainian government agreed to such a deal, there would still be a significant resistance. So 'peace' is not remotely on the table here, never mind actual peace.
Fundamentally, if you ignore Trump's idiocy, there is a problem that many in the US see the situation as the US doing Ukraine a favour. In fact it's the other way round. Supporting Ukraine is by far the cheapest way of dealing with a massive threat to the US's longterm interests.
Which brings me to my final point. The USA is the largest economy, the reserve currency holders and a world leader. Trump is eroding all of that. It's entirely possible that in a decade or even less, Trump will have accelerated geopolitical shifts and massively diminished the US's standing. It can happen very quickly.
AFZ
Just to follow through with this.
EVERYTHING Trump says about Ukraine is basically incorrect.
The last paragraph of the executive summary says this:
The last year of the war has been a gloomy one for Ukraine, which has been forced to stand on the defensive and absorb continuous and intensive Russian offensive operations as well as increasingly effective Russian drone and missile strikes on critical infrastructure. But the gloom has obscured an important reality: The Kremlin threw everything it had at breaking Ukraine in 2024 and failed. Ukrainian forces held in the face of Russian assaults conducted with a shocking disregard for losses in men and equipment and despite shortages imposed by delays in the provision of Western equipment. The front line remains fragile, and Russian forces can continue their pressure for many months to come. The end of US and Western support could lead to a relatively rapid collapse of Ukraine's defense. But the key lessons from 2024 are that Ukraine can withstand enormous Russian pressures, on the one hand, and that the Kremlin has not figured out how to convert its overall numerical advantages into decisive battlefield gains. These lessons should guide Western thinking about the war and Ukraine's prospects throughout any negotiations. They should above all guide thinking about the prospects of developing a post-war Ukrainian military into a force that can deter future Russian aggression with reasonable levels of Western support and commitment.
Let us be clear. Russia is not winning.
Currently the USA has provided about 46% of military support that Ukraine has received and Europe collectively the other 54%. What happens if this aid stops is an important question but Russia cannot sustain the current level of operations beyond this year. Russia needs a peace deal more than Ukraine does.
Comments
Absolutely, completely, totally agreed. We need to build an iron curtain in the east. I can see how Farage could be isolated like Moseley.
New World as the Enlightened City Set on a Hill to which their forefathers escaped from the irredeemably corrupt and backward-looking Old World, which is doomed and not worth caring about, let alone fighting for. I may be wrong, of course.
I don't think it's that complicated. They believe 'soft power' is woke and have decided to try their luck at hard power instead. That's the only explanation for lists like this one:
https://x.com/DOGE/status/1890849405932077378
At the rate they are destroying state capacity, they aren't even going to get to discover how expensive the alternatives are.
There is a kind of a "We are God's Chosen People" attitude among some American's.
I think it is important Europe Leaders find a way to stand up to Trump and Putin. They should not ignore other people who have a right to be at the table.
Trump isn’t fit to lace Chamberlain’s boots.
A lot of modern scholarship suggests that whatever he said publicly he knew war was inevitable and used appeasement to buy time for (some) rearmament.
Even if his appeasement stance was as genuine as it looked at the time, that was motivated by not wanting to get loads of people killed (however naive), not personal enrichment, aggrandisement or attempts at international extortion.
I am dubious for these reasons:
* it would seem to legitimise the sell-out now underway
* it is unlikely to deter Putin since he has a low opinion of European military spine (whether justifiably or not)
* it may expose divisions among European allies if they take a different line
If Europe does put forces into Ukraine then we must definitely be prepared to have a full-scale war against Russia without US support if Putin moves against us. If we're not ready for that it would be better to admit it now.
Zelensky will probably hear first. I think he’ll be expecting bad news. I think that’s a part of the negotiating strategy.
I suspect it’s mostly about setting the scene for a Trump - Putin summit. My guess is that Trump will say “we’ll stop sanctions but only if there’s something in it for us. Oh and Ukraine too. Maybe.”
Trump says a lot of things.
(Bold mine)
https://kyivindependent.com/turkey-ideal-host-for-peace-talks-on-russia-ukraine-war-erdogan-tells-zelensky/
However I gather that the geopolitics is a lot more complicated than that and Erdogan and Putin also have interests in common over eg. energy - does anyone know a bit more about how this might play out with Turkey and what they, as a NATO member, might be making of all this?
I’m a huge Turkophile, and worked alongside their armed forces. I’ve no idea what the long term result of all this is, but their government has played a magnificent game here.
IME, the Turkish police and military are pretty western (and thoroughly competent, sensible people) and all the way along the (vast) coast you may as well be in Western Europe. Once you inland, and the further you go… there’s a huge divide between the urban Turks (who largely buy into Ataturk even now) and the probable Islamist majority.
I love Turkey, I go a lot. I worry.
It’s a wonderful, wonderful country, with an amazing culture*. Everyone should go there. But secularism is dying. Whether for good or bad… but the people, the place, it’s wonderful. My favourite (broadly) European country
Yeah, although for the same reason I think it's going to be a bit of an ask to see them as part of a bulwark against Russia circa 2024. Within their own backyard they are a (strong) regional power and expect to be treated as such.
This is also, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, a popular Russian talking point. Putin claims part of his reluctance to engage in negotiations is that the current government of Ukraine is not legitimate because elections were cancelled (due to the war). Such a champion of democracy and representative government, that Vladimir!
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/trump-is-making-false-claims-about-zelenskys-popularity
Any strategy for achieving a ceasefire, much less peace, is going to have to tackle those two factors. That's going to be a very difficult path to tread, and it's not surprising no one can really agree on it beyond the biggest picture. So far, the strategy has been to make keeping on fighting too costly to Putin (by both sanctions on Russia and military support for Ukraine) and also to reduce the costs on Ukraine (the economic aid keeping Ukraine functioning as a nation state) in the hope that the Russian offensive will eventually collapse removing point a) from the equation. It's unlikely that a satisfactory deal (for Ukraine, Europe and the wider world) can be achieved until Putin has little choice but to come to the table.
Of course, sanctions have also been a point of disagreement within Europe. Sanctions are costly, and not just on the country on the receiving end of them. The most obvious cost to Europe of sanctions is the price of gas and the need to find alternatives to Russian gas, but sanctions hit Europe in other ways as well. Different nations will carry different costs from imposing sanctions, and this leads to differences in what sanctions nations would like to impose.
Arguably this is much worse, as it means they aren't actually biddable in any way, and they aren't doing it out of cynicism (except insofar it also shores up their own position).
It also means a more careful look at those from more traditional conservative backgrounds who play footsie with the far right (including people like Meloni, Modi, Orban etc.) - I'm especially thinking here of media organs like The Spectator, Quillette etc.
It's worse than that. The U.S. demanded half the mineral wealth of Ukraine as payment for support already given, with no explicit promise of any more aid going forward.
This is one of those situations where describing things accurately and without euphemism sounds like wild hyperbole. I'm guessing there is going to be a lot of that going forward.
Can you expand?
Trump is known for holding grudges. It's not impossible that that's clouding his judgement in dealing with Zelensky now.
Russia's strategic aim in two fold:
1: To either formally conquer and control Ukraine or install a puppet government.
2. Having taken control of Ukraine to imitate their other neighbours to come under influence/control of Moscow.
Ukraine's strategic aim is to hold out long enough for the combination of internal and external pressure to force Russia to withdraw.
Prior to Trump's intervention, Russia was losing. They were nowhere near achieving their strategic aims. Expert analysis suggests that they cannot maintain the current operational tempo for more than a few months.
The unknown really is how effective Ukrainian forces can continue to be without US support. Partly that depends on what other Western nations do.
Trump is proposing to gift Putin a strategic win.
The thing is that even if the Ukrainian government agreed to such a deal, there would still be a significant resistance. So 'peace' is not remotely on the table here, never mind actual peace.
Fundamentally, if you ignore Trump's idiocy, there is a problem that many in the US see the situation as the US doing Ukraine a favour. In fact it's the other way round. Supporting Ukraine is by far the cheapest way of dealing with a massive threat to the US's longterm interests.
Which brings me to my final point. The USA is the largest economy, the reserve currency holders and a world leader. Trump is eroding all of that. It's entirely possible that in a decade or even less, Trump will have accelerated geopolitical shifts and massively diminished the US's standing. It can happen very quickly.
AFZ
Indeed. Can we go back to precedented, uninteresting times, please?
Yes. People like Marco Rubio (to take only one of a huge possible number of examples) are behaving in a disgusting way. They ought to know better.
There are others like Vance who might even believe what they're saying. I'm not sure which is worse.
It's Trump. "Dishonorable" is his modus operandi. His business dealings have always been full of what can at best be called "sharp practice". There are large numbers of examples of small businesses that his companies have dealt with that have been screwed over by him. He governs the country in the same way.
For whatever reason the Financial Times has had some of the best coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Just to follow through with this.
EVERYTHING Trump says about Ukraine is basically incorrect.
Here's some detailed, expert analysis on the current state of affairs: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russia-has-failed-break-ukraine
The last paragraph of the executive summary says this:
Let us be clear. Russia is not winning.
Currently the USA has provided about 46% of military support that Ukraine has received and Europe collectively the other 54%. What happens if this aid stops is an important question but Russia cannot sustain the current level of operations beyond this year. Russia needs a peace deal more than Ukraine does.
Yes. Agree with that.