Zelensky\u2019s latest Washington humiliation is about more than yet another Trump mood swing<\/p>\n
Leave it to Mr. Unpredictable, aka Donald Trump, President of the United States, to pack a policy U-turn, a harsh unfriending, and some fuzzy ambiguity into just a few days. As things stand now, Trump has said \u201cno\u201d to American Tomahawk cruise missiles for Kiev \u2013 maybe not yet forever, as his vice president J.D. Vance has stressed \u2013 but, clearly, for the foreseeable future, whatever that may mean with Trump.
\nIn the process, he has also made it clear \u2013 painfully clear \u2013 that Kiev\u2019s Vladimir Zelensky is back in the doghouse. Seemingly in favor for a while \u2013 after donning a suite like a good boy and flattering Trump at every opportunity and without inhibitions \u2013 the Ukrainian leader-without-elections is out in the cold again: No welcome at the airport; a Friday-afternoon meeting demonstratively scheduled to get a nuisance visitor out of the way before the weekend; and, we hear, some rough talk, even shouting, again.
\nIt is as if Zelensky did not board a plane to pay another submission visit to Washington but a time machine. And it deposited him right back in February, when he received an urgently needed public drubbing in the Oval Office.
\nCompulsive optimists among the thinning crowd of deadly \u201cfriends\u201d-of-Ukraine in the West may want to take solace in the fact that, this time, Trump had the decency to administer Zelensky\u2019s spanking behind closed doors. But then, it was leaked immediately, to the Financial Times, no less.
\nOf course, the leaker may have been a desperate pro-Zelensky holdout still hiding somewhere in the US administration (that you, Keith Kellogg?), trying to alert the Europeans so they can come again to their Ukrainian prot\u00e9g\u00e9\u2019s aid and sabotage the oh-so-horrible prospect of a quick peace. And according to Maria Zakharova, speaking for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they have already started interfering again.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
US shouldn\u2019t deplete Tomahawk arsenal for Ukraine \u2013 Trump<\/p>\n
Lucky Ukrainians! You have a government that feeds you into a lost meatgrinder war for which your Western friends-from-hell once promised you NATO (Remember that one? Never mind, it was always a transparent lie) and now simply nothing. And you have diehard European \u201csupporters\u201d who fear nothing more than that this bloody scam will stop while some of you are still alive.
\nIf the leak really came from someone attempting to sabotage Trump, we\u2019ll hear about a dismissal soon. Come to think of it, the designated US delegation for Budapest does not seem to include Kellogg, as it happens. Yet we probably will not, because the better explanation is that it came from the very top and was meant to make Zelensky\u2019s crash just as public as last time.
\nFinally, with the \u201cforget-about-it\u201d on the Tomahawks and the big, bruising unfriending, came the message on how to end the war. This time, Trump had no time for silly fairytales about Kiev still turning it around and winning. His blunt message was that Kiev must make concessions, including all of the Donbass. According to the rapid leak, Zelensky\u2019s attempt to present his fantasy maps of \u201cRussian weak spots\u201d met with brusque rejection.
\nWhat does it all mean and where did it come from?
\nRegarding where it came from, let\u2019s get one daft but popular take out of the way: Yes, Trump had just had a phone conversation with Russia\u2019s president Vladimir Putin. In fact, the longest of the eight we know about since Trump\u2019s second inauguration. The talk went well, as was shown by both immediate Western reports (if, in NATO-EU Europe especially, often in a sour mood) and Russian reactions.
\nMost importantly, the presidents agreed to meet in person again soon, this time in the Hungarian capital Budapest. That choice is clearly due to the fact that Hungary \u2013 next to Slovakia \u2013 has been the only EU government to stay rational about the Ukraine War, affirming a belief in diplomacy instead of forever-war. The whole mainstream EU+UK, meanwhile, has furiously maneuvered itself into irrelevance.
\nYet the conversation between Putin and Trump does not mean that Moscow has manipulated oh-so-na\u00efve Trump into changing his approach, as claimed again \u2013 rather arrogantly \u2013 by some hapless Western commentators and Kiev politicians such as Aleksandr Merezhko, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of Ukraine\u2019s parliament: \u201cMr. Trump fell again for Putin\u2019s old trick,\u201d Merezhko wants to believe or make us believe.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Trump blindsided Zelensky with Putin call \u2013 Axios<\/p>\n
The reality is, obviously, that Trump is not being \u201ctricked\u201d at all. On the contrary, he understands key things that Kiev \u2013 not Moscow \u2013 has done its utmost to deceive him about: that Ukraine cannot win; that Russia is winning; that the Tomahawks would not change these facts but make the war much worse again, in particular by increasing the risk of a regional or even global escalation (which may well be the real aim of the desperate gamblers clinging on in Kiev). And even if Russia were once again to show the restraint that the West so sorely lacks, there can be little doubt that it would retaliate massively inside Ukraine.
\nThe US, of course, would never have sold enough Tomahawks to make a difference, as even half-way honest Western experts note. The weapons themselves, while dangerous, are fairly old (originally developed half a century ago) and slow (subsonic in an age of a hypersonic cutting edge). Their use would have involved US targeting data and personnel, a \u201cnew stage of escalation,\u201d as the Russian president has warned explicitly.
\nWithholding the Tomahawk missiles from Kiev is very likely to also have to do with strategic priorities at the Pentagon. Its current brain, policy chief Elbridge Colby, has made no secret out of his \u2013 correct \u2013 view that a proxy war against Russia in Europe is a shortsighted waste of resources (at the very best) which, so Colby \u2013 incorrectly \u2013 believes, should be reserved for a potential conflict with China in Asia. Colby\u2019s name has already been associated with a temporary halt in supplies to Ukraine this summer. In the Tomahawk debate, he has stayed quiet, but he has certainly not been passive.
\nAnd what does it all mean?
\nThat\u2019s where things get tricky, especially with Trump. We have just been through a phase of, if not aggressiveness, then pronounced rhetorical toughness toward Moscow, which followed a period of eager rapprochement and complementary iciness toward Kiev.
\nNow we are back to where we started: Ukraine is out, Russia is in again. Trump himself has acknowledged that he thinks of others, including Moscow, as trying to play him but doesn\u2019t really mind. That\u2019s, of course, a way of admitting that he is playing as well. And, frankly, why should Moscow mind? Yet, as a minimum, it means that what Trump says and does on any given day can be either a strategic move or a tactical ploy \u2013 or, potentially both, depending on how things work out.
\nAnd that is where the fuzzy ambiguity we have mentioned at the beginning comes into play. Once the great Zelensky-bashing leak was out, Trump started backpedaling and contradicting the leaked information. Whereas, according to the leak, he had twisted Zelensky\u2019s arm to give up all of the Donbass, the next day he started telling journalists that he is in favor of freezing the frontline where it is now. Those two positions are irreconcilable because Moscow has not yet completely taken this area, but, as far as we know, aims to have all of it as a condition for peace.
\nAnd there we are \u2013 and remain \u2013 in Trump World, where the ground is never quite firm, and yet some opportunities may be real. Moscow has shown restraint not only in the war, resisting a long sequence of Western provocations that could easily have made the war all-European or global. Russia also has a record of staying calm in the face of Trump\u2019s turns. And rightly so. There is a chance that his \u201cno\u201d to the Tomahawks will solidify, his realistic distrust of Kiev will stay in place, and a door for a peaceful compromise will open. That is what every sane and decent person should want, for all of us and also for Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zelensky\u2019s latest Washington humiliation is about more than yet another Trump mood swing Leave it to Mr. Unpredictable, aka Donald Trump, President of the United States, to pack a policy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t